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WASHINGTON The dirty little secret may be that Donald Trump could be good for the media.

Americans have loved to hate the press since even before the salacious, down-in-the-muck 1800 presidential campaign. Spurred by a partisan press, that election was dirtier and nastier than the recent unpleasantness that brought forth Donald Trump.

Presidents disliking the press? Trump is a latecomer on that.

Abraham Lincolns administration threw reporters and editors in jail and locked up habeas corpus with them. One of Honest Abes generals, the Old Snapping Turtle George Meade, got so upset at the Philadelphia Inquirers Ed Cropsey who reported that Meade had urged a retreat during the Battle of the Wilderness that Meade had Cropsey run out of camp, backward on a mule, with a libeler of the press sign draped over him.

This transpired within range of Confederate sharpshooters, who by errant eye or mercy did not end it all right there for correspondent Cropsey.

Imagine a general doing that to Anderson Cooper today.

Love or hate it, Americans still count on a free press to probe, inform, explain and push back when constitutional freedoms that will outlast us all are at stake.

So Trumps inauguration is a moment to take stock. We must understand that we are not entirely in uncharted ground and realize that the press sometimes gets it way wrong, as it often did in 2016.

But its also a moment to understand that the press has been a perpetually resilient tool of the principle of open debate and transparent government. And that follow-up and probing and digging and challenging and balancing is what separates a free press from the free expression of one-sided rants on Facebook, or the retweets of suspected falsehoods.

During the Civil War, Southern newspapers reported the Battle of Gettysburg as a glorious victory for weeks after Robert E. Lees shattered army had retreated toward ultimate defeat.

But over the next century, courageous newspapers, South and North, exposed the evils of the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow.

The most crowded places in this city in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 were newsstands, in front of televisions showing the news, and in the pews of houses of worship. At the moment of a generations biggest shock, the people turned to faith, and to faith in a free press.

In a world where everyone has a click button, the media has become something so much more than press or journalism that its ubiquity robs it of meaning. Along with journalists, legions of poseurs and propagandists and fakery artists co-exist in this same sphere. This is the new reality for everyone, and it was coming before Trump.

He was just able to channel the chaos better than anyone so far.

But the president-elect confronts another new truth: There is no longer such a thing as the last word, even if its contained in a tweet in the middle of the night.

Trump, for all his bluster and occasional falsehoods, has forced a re-examination of all these ideas, and ideals. After 2016, the old wrong voices, the old wrong sources, the entrenched divides and paradigms all of it needs a fresh look.

Some on Trumps side say uncertainty may not be all that bad. After a week in which Trump on Twitter attacked civil rights icon John Lewis and discombobulated congressional Republicans with tweets about health care reform, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said he was actually optimistic that the Trump Way might open new doors to solve things.

I am not concerned about either the Twitter communication or even the occasional inconsistency of communication, because I think it provides an interesting approach to solving problems, said Blunt, who will emcee Trumps swearing-in on Friday.

All presidents, at least those in the modern media age, have sought to circumvent the traditional media.

Its in a politicians DNA to try to control the narrative. Its in a journalists DNA to challenge conventional wisdom and those who try to form it. The recognition of those inherent human conflicts is the genius of the First Amendment and the bane of its practitioners since the ink was still wet.

Long before Trump, Barack Obama used social media to help get elected. Yet Obamas administration, while talking transparency, was not always that good at it.

Obama occasionally lectured journalists for putting conflict and froth over substance and reason. Its a valid criticism.

Yet Obama gave an interview to a young woman whose claim to fame was bathing in a bathtub of milk and Froot Loops, while denying one to correspondents of newspapers from cities torn asunder by police shootings of young black men.

The point: Theres always blame to go around. The conflict between president and press will go on. The Founders would have it no other way.

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Raasch: Trump and the press a match made in the First Amendment - STLtoday.com