"So, why is being anti-media so central to the Republican identity? It’s not a coincidence that, against a backdrop of growing partisan animosity, Republicans’ distrust of the media is increasing as they grow more suspect that it leans Democratic. But it’s more than that, too. As Hosam explains, “what Trump does is connect that type of opposition to the media into a form of conservatism that just wasn’t around before.” And one byproduct of that is that media distrust is more central to conservatives’ group identity than it was before Trump. Or, as Lee put it, signaling media distrust is “much the same as wearing a red MAGA cap.”

As a researcher, Hosam admits that this can make studying distrust of the media a complicated topic, since distrust has shifted from an attitude about the institution itself to a credential of conservatism. “Now it’s even more difficult to know what people are really getting at when they talk about the media … what media diets and trust in the media are truly telling us.” And for many Republicans, that might mean distrust of the media is better thought of as a way to understand the centrality of their partisanship to their identity. "