Media Failure Has Become a Bipartisan Consensus Issue

Plus, more Biden blunders; Menendez; the Republicans’ second night

Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders spoke at the Republican National Convention.

In the heat of a presidential campaign, frequently there doesn’t seem to be much about which the Biden campaign and the Trump campaign agree. Yet at least one thing is emerging as an area of rare bipartisan consensus: the press is terrible.

Republicans have complained about the press for years, from Nixon’s “enemies list” and Spiro Agnew’s speech about “The Responsibilities of Television” to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney using an obscenity in 2000 to describe Adam Clymer of the New York Times. And Hillary Clinton’s 2017 book faulted the New York Times: “Over the years, going all the way back to the Whitewater inquisition, it’s seemed as if many of those in charge of political coverage at the New York Times have viewed me with hostility and skepticism.”

The past few days, though, have featured the somewhat unusual situation of both campaigns picking fights with the media.