43% of Republicans say Trump should have power to shut down media

A new poll shows that 43 percent of Republicans say that President Donald Trump should have the power to shut down the media.

According to a new Ipsos poll, nearly half (48 per cent) of self-identified Republicans agree "the news media is the enemy of the American people."

Some of them said that Trump should be able to take action against certain publications, with 43 percent of Republicans arguing that "the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior."

Meanwhile, 80 percent of Republicans believe "most news outlets have a liberal bias" in comparison to 23 percent of Democrats.

And whereas 79 percent of Republicans agreed "the mainstream media treats President Trump unfairly," this was only 11 percent for Democrats.

The public’s trust in media has struck a historic low during the 2016 presidential election, but faith in the industry had been decreasing for decades.

Only 32 percent of the US population had a "fair amount" of trust in the media when Trump took office, according to Gallup polling.  

Trump has repeatedly undercut the press because of its coverage of the federal government’s investigation into Russian alleged meddling in the 2016 election, as well as its reporting on scandals impacting his White House administration.

"Just stick with us, don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news," Trump said during a convention for military veterans in July. "It’s all working out. And just remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening."

Last week, the UN rapporteur for freedom of expression, David Kaye, warned that Trump’s verbal attacks on the media risks provoking violence against journalists.

In a joint statement on Thursday with Edison Lanza, who holds the same post at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Kaye said Trump’s tirades against the media violated the basic norms of press freedom.