Reporting on a sprawling Washington institution like the Department of Defense can be challenging in the best of times, let alone three weeks into the whirlwind of the new Trump administration.

Helene Cooper, a long-time Pentagon correspondent for The New York Times, spoke about her experience covering President Donald Trump’s first term and how she plans on being more “deliberate” during his second.

“I was trying to tell myself before Inauguration Day, you’re gonna be smarter about it this time … you’re gonna be deliberate,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve quite figured out yet … how we’re going to move from reaction … to actually trying to set a real journalistic agenda ourselves.”

In a wide-ranging conversation with NPF’s Paul Miller fellows , Cooper shared some strategies for how to tackle a complex beat.

        1. Let the story sell itself

“If you’ve got the facts, if you’ve got the news reporting, you don’t have to worry about your tone and your words … You can’t dispute facts; facts are facts,” Cooper said.

With the public’s trust in journalism declining, Cooper said fact-based reporting is the most powerful antidote against bias.

“Don’t tear yourself up right now over how do I present this in a way that’s not going to seem biased. If you’re writing, if you’re reporting, let your reporting do your work for you,” she said.

Noting the divisive political environment, Cooper said reporters’ opinions and personal beliefs don’t belong in news stories.

“It’s not your job to change anybody’s mind … we do have a democratic country, this was a very free and fair election,” she said. “I focus right now on recording what is going on, writing about it, writing about the repercussions, writing about how it affects different people – all of that,” she said.

        2. Report from all sides

“You’re talking to as many different sides of an issue as you can so that when you sit down to start to write, you have not just one point of view that you’ve listened to, and that’s so important,” Cooper said.

The strategy is also essential to building source relationships. With some government agencies under threat, building source relationships has become exceptionally daunting.

“You approach them as a human being,” Cooper said. “I think of the man on the street and the normal sort of civilian people, and I kind of put federal workers in that category as different than I do the big officials I cover,” she said.

When cultivating sources, Cooper prefers the personal touch.

“I’m asking them about their kids … I’m never going to be standing up there just firing questions at people because I don’t get anything that way,” she said.

        3. Don’t let the news cycle wear you out

“Those four years were four of the hardest years working of my life,” Cooper said, referring to Trump’s first term.

A key to survival: “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”

“You lose relationships, you lose friends, you don’t see your family … try to make sure you take a breath,” Cooper said. “Make sure … you’re not just churning out one story after another without pulling back to step back to look at the larger picture.”

Just as the new Trump administration is different from the first, Cooper said the public’s reaction to the reporting also is not the same.

“The first Trump term, all these people were always coming up to you as a reporter, ‘Oh thank you so much for what you do.’ Right now, it feels completely different.”

Access the full transcript here.