…Central to MAGA culture is the idea that its rage and anger against the so-called mainstream media is completely justified by the media's bias and the media's mistakes. They are "the true enemy of the people." When I tell people here in Tennessee that I work for The New York Times, I often get a visible negative reaction. Sometimes, the negative reaction is verbal and I'm condemned to my face as "fake news."
I try to respond with a spirit of curiosity. I know that we make mistakes and I'm curious as to what specifically made them angry. Rarely do I get a precise answer. There is simply a sense that we can't be trusted, that we're on the other side.
When I ask which news outlets they follow, invariably they give me a list of channels and sites that were so comprehensively dishonest and irresponsible in 2020 and 2021 that many of them have been forced into settlements, have retracted stories and have issued apologies under pressure.
Yet all these outlets are all still popular on the right. Long after their dishonesty was exposed, the MAGA faithful continue to believe their reports and share their stories. It turns out that people will in fact trust liars — so long as the liars keep telling them what they want to hear...
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