Authoritarian rulers like Trump and Bannon will seek to sow disinformation and create distrust towards the news media. It makes it easier for them to lie to the public. Right now they are lying about trivial things like crowd size at the inaugural, but in the future it will be about matters of much more consequence. 

Remember that our country's Founding Fathers insisted on a free press and put it in the Bill of Rights precisely for times like these.  They had experienced the tyranny that comes from autocratic regimes and knew that a free and open press was a strong weapon for democracy and freedom.