As Conservatives Gather, Anger at the News Media Runs Deep

The Conservative Political Action Conference is usually a moment to hammer out what divides the fractious conservative movement. What it has revealed so far is what unites it: contempt for “#fakenews” and the journalists that the former Breitbart News writer Ben Shapiro memorably described as “advocates of leftism, masquerading as objective truth-tellers.” Perhaps the most fervent anti-media broadsides came from Dana Loesch, the spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association, who used her remarks to accuse news organizations of rooting for gun massacres. The scorn toward journalists  reflected genuine concern from some attendees that mainstream news outlets willfully misunderstand conservatives. Several speakers expressed a sense of victimhood, that their beliefs were portrayed by reporters as intolerant or tantamount to bigotry. And there were reminders that the media-as-punching-bag trope among conservatives is a tactic that shows few signs of going away.