The days of fighting for principles or even pragmatism have passed, evidently, and without Crooked Hillary™ to fight against, it looks like Republican party strategists plan on framing the 2018 midterm elections as a referendum against the media, according to a recent McClatchy report.
While Never Trump and Bernie loyalists alike were blasted for withholding support for their parties’ respective nominees in the general presidential election, this devolution of elections into “referendums against” rather than a case for the most qualified or principled option represents the exact lesser-of-two-evils culture that both coalitions tried to reject.
But a look at the polls reveals what makes the anti-media crusade so palatable. Poll after poll reveals that the Fourth Estate is less trusted than the Trump administration. In late April, Morning Consult found that a little more than a third of Americans believe what’s coming out of the White House, but only 29 percent trust the media over the Trump administration. A Harvard-Harris Poll the following month found that a strong majority of Americans across the political spectrum believe that the mainstream media regularly propagate fake news.
We see this distrust play out daily. Despite facing criminal charges and bipartisan condemnation for violently assaulting Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs, Republican Greg Gianforte won Montana’s special congressional election just one day after the release of an audio tape of the assault. On Sunday, “CNN Is ISIS” began trending on Twitter. Earlier this week, CNN was accused of staging a Muslims-against-ISIS protest in London. (CNN’s Brian Stelter refuted this allegation on Twitter, claiming “Police allowed demonstrators thru cordon ‘so they could show their signs’ to media”).
So with a Republican House and Senate that’s been slow to get anything done and an executive branch unable to send a unified message to the American public, the GOP will choose running against the media rather than running for something.
Heavy handed? Maybe. Dangerous to future generations of honest media that will want to serve as a check on the government? Probably. Effective? 100 percent.