Are Americans moved by Trump’s media-as-enemy war cry? The opposite may be true.

[Commentary] At first glance, a new report from Pew Research looks devastating for President Trump’s favorite punching bag, the nation’s news media. One might think that the message Trump has been hammering home is really getting through. After all, Pew’s polling clearly shows that a big chunk of the American public buys his message that the press is a negative force in our society. Amy Mitchell, Pew’s director of journalism research, said the growing partisan divide in attitudes about the news media mirrors a Pew study done earlier in 2017 in which Democrats showed a growing appreciation of the press’s watchdog role; but appreciation for that role plummeted among Republicans. If journalism is to do its job fully, and as the founders intended, it can’t speak primarily to one side of the political aisle. I don’t have the answers to that problem, though I’m planning to explore them in the coming weeks. In the meantime, it’s important to acknowledge what this report doesn’t show: That Trump’s traitorous-media-scum message is moving the needle as he intends. And that — although in a grasping-at-straws way — is good news.