The poll from Quinnipiac University showed 51% of GOP respondents identified with President Donald Trump's "enemy of the people" line -- a result that reflected an ongoing partisan breakdown on the validity of the press.
If we change the wording to "certain news organizations are the enemy of the American people," then it jumps to 81% of Republicans.
4 comments:
It would be helpful to have some clarity on that. "Fake news" is certainly the enemy of self-governance, as is propaganda (including Russian and Chinese foreign propaganda, but also our own government's attempts to 'nudge' us). Insofar as the American project is a project of the American people, being an enemy the self-governance that is entailed by that project might reasonably be read as being an enemy of the people. But each step of that needs to be argued; and nobody in the administration is arguing it.
Nor, really, are the media arguing against it. They're just trying to shame Republican voters.
I agree. I think that's part of why there was the difference between "news media" and "certain news organizations". Polls tell us something, but what exactly is often not clear.
Americans really have been taught to argue in a long time. One thing I remember from Louis L'Amour's autobiography was his comment that American schools teach us to have opinions, not to think. If that was true in his day, maybe in general our education system hasn't taught us to think and argue in several generations.
Never mind that it's a dishonest poll as it regards Trump's view of the media and the carefully distorted question put to the voters. Trump has never said, as far as I've been able to determine, that the media is the enemy of the people; although he has said, freely and repeatedly, that the Fake News media is that enemy.
Eric Hines
If the media claim that the reference "enemy of the people" applies to them, well, we should just accept their self-identification. I mean, have they not been telling us that if an anatomically male individual says "I am a woman," we must treat that person as a woman?
LittleRed1
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