Editor,

RE: "Is Trump right about the media after all?” (The New Times, February 24).

Nobody should be surprised by how President Trump is dealing with the media. He is facing an unusual post-election situation no other new American president ever had to deal with. President Trump is probably the first American president to be hated by the mainstream media right from the start of an election campaign up to today, weeks after his inauguration.

In fact the mainstream media in the US has become an opposition party that is doing everything to unseat him. They have been doing this by publishing all sorts of fake news to discredit him thinking that, hopefully, it can help cut short his presidency. So, he has to deal with the mainstream media like he would deal with a hostile and dangerous opposition to his presidency and nobody should be surprised by that.

As an African, I would say that there is something good that comes out of this. Many people, including Western countries, never used to question the veracity of news from such networks as CNN. Not anymore though. I hope the West could also try to reflect on the fake news that CNN, BBC and the like have all along been publishing about Africa and African leaders.

Due to the fake news from those networks, no ordinary people in the West think that there are good African democratic leaders who are busy taking their countries forward. Thanks to CNN, BBC and the like, all African leaders are dictators, and killers — which is not true.

Seth