I wasn't disagreeing with your thesis so much as pointing out that for both Republicans and Democrats, "trust" is more of a proxy for "does this coverage agree

I wasn't disagreeing with your thesis so much as pointing out that for both Republicans and Democrats, "trust" is more of a proxy for "does this coverage agree with my politics" (you might be making the same argument). I don't know if you can say it shows a media shift one way or the other though, since one could make a pretty strong argument that Trump was fairly terrible among Republican politicians and the media didn't have to move at all for his coverage to be worse and delight Democrats while angering Republicans.