"Like Trump, G.O.P. Rivals Feed Distrust in Vital U.S. Institutions" is the front-page headline over an alarmist New York Times news article, warning that "the tenor of the campaign rhetoric has reached new and conspiratorial levels."
To its credit, the article notes low down, briefly, that "Casting doubt on the integrity of government is hardly limited to Republican candidates" and that "President Biden...has mused about his skepticism of the Supreme Court — 'this is not a normal court,' he said after the court's ruling striking down affirmative action in college admissions." Also, "Democrats have far more doubt about the Supreme Court and the police. (There is bipartisan distrust in the criminal justice system, with less than one in four voters expressing confidence in the system.)"
But the headline and the lead paragraphs of the Times news article are tilted to appeal to the prejudices of left-leaning Times readers—oh, those evil Republicans undermining trust in our vital institutions. Could it be that the institutions are distrusted because of their real failures, rather than because of conspiratorial rhetoric from Republican presidential candidates? The Times itself hasn't exactly been innocent when it comes to fueling distrust in the Supreme Court, publishing several articles depicting the justices as basically corrupt.
Headlines and articles like this in the Times serve their own role in feeding public distrust in a vital institution—the media. Readers see through it. The idea that it's okay for the New York Times to criticize institutions but that it's "conspiratorial" for Republican politicians to do it, or that it's okay for Democrats and the press to criticize the police and the Roberts-Alito-Thomas Supreme Court, but it's not okay for Republicans to criticize the IRS and the Ivy League, just seems tendentious and partisan, rather than an example of the consistent application of a principle.