Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

To hear them tell it, Republican congressional candidates aren’t only running against their Democratic opponents. They are also waging political combat against the nation’s journalists.

More than 20 GOP campaigns have criticized the press in roughly 50 emails to their lists over the past 10 weeks, at times adopting President Donald Trump’s “fake news” terminology and calling out particular outlets for their purportedly biased coverage.

The emails come from the campaigns of sitting U.S. senators and representatives, as well as from candidates running in closely watched races against Democratic incumbents and for open seats.

Republican leaders have blasted the press as biased for over half a century, more recently encouraging their voters to eschew mainstream reporting in favor of avowedly right-wing outlets like Fox News. Trump built on their effort with a deliberate, systematic campaign to dehumanize and denigrate journalists. His goal is to shield himself from negative coverage by convincing his base that he is the only trustworthy source for information about his administration.

With Trump successfully reshaping the Republican Party in his image, his anti-media animus is trickling down to Republican candidates across the country. While none of them have adopted the president’s Stalinist descriptor of journalists as the “enemy of the people,” many are seeking donations and other support by raising the spectre of an unfair “fake news” press. The campaigns are trying to take advantage of the way Trump has primed the GOP base to respond to attacks on journalists.

The Senate

The campaign of Nevada Sen. Dean Heller leads the pack with 12 separate emails attacking the press. Six missives cited the need for more donations in order to “fight” the “fake news.” A September email signed by Heller’s finance director said that the campaign needed funds to “push back on the spin from Washington Democrats and their allies in the media.” Emails addressed from Heller himself claimed that he is the victim of “outrageous media bias and attacks” and asked for contributions to “cut through my opponents' advertising barrage and the liberal media filter.”

Heller isn’t the only sitting senator up for re-election who has criticized the press in emails to his list. The campaign of Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) sent a fundraising email signed by Trump highlighting “Fake news” and another from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich claiming that Democrats have a “partnership with the anti-Trump media.”

Several Republican Senate candidates in targeted races are using the same talking points.

Rep. Martha McSally, who is running for an open seat in Arizona, wrote in an October 15 email that she needed to raise money because she had been “off the debate stage less than 30 minutes, and liberals and their fake news allies are already twisting my words into complete lies.”

State Sen. Leah Vukmir, who is running against Sen. Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, argued, “Study after study has proven the bias of the mainstream media -- they’re in it for the left and the establishment -- and they’re not planning on changing anytime soon.” She also asked the recipients to sign her team’s “official REJECT FAKE NEWS petition.”

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley sent an email arguing that his opponent incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill “and the liberal media have lost their minds” and sent another pointing to an instance in which he claimed The New York Times demonstrated “clear liberal bias” to support her.

Massachusetts state representative Geoff Diehl has criticized the “‘Fake News’ propaganda” for not holding his opponent, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, accountable “for what she’s said and done.”

And Indiana businessman Mike Braun’s campaign to unseat Sen. Joe Donnelly has sent two emails signed by Trump targeting the “Fake News Media” and another from Braun’s campaign manager alleging that the “radical liberal media is more than eager to report #fakenews.”

An excerpt of an email that the campaign of Mike Braun, the Indiana businessman running against Sen. Joe Donnelly, sent to its list in August.

The House

The campaign of Rep. Jason Lewis (R-MN), a former talk radio host, has been the leading offender on the House side, sending five emails attacking the press since the summer. In an email signed by Lewis himself, the congressman’s campaign asserted that “the far-left media will broadcast everything” that his opponent, Democrat Angie Craig, “says, no matter what.” In another, Lewis’ campaign manager wrote,“The liberal media is doing everything they can to suppress all the good things that President Trump and Jason are accomplishing in Washington.”

Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has been waging a public war against journalists in his district, using an online ad and a “38-page glossy mini-magazine” to condemn the Fresno Bee newspaper as a “propaganda machine” that “has worked closely with radical left-wing groups.” In emails to his campaign list, he accused the “biased, far-left media” and the Democrats of using “personal attacks to intimidate me,” claimed that “the radical Left and their media echo chamber attack” him daily, and asked for contributions to help “cut through the nasty attacks and vicious lies of the liberal mainstream media.”

Rep. Greg Gianforte of Montana, best known for body-slamming a reporter during his last campaign and then lying about it, has sought a “great grassroots conservative funding effort” because “the liberal mainstream media are crowing” about his Democratic opponent’s fundraising tally.

Other Republicans to lash out at the press in emails to their campaign lists include Reps. Andy Biggs (AZ), Claudia Tenney (NY), Don Bacon (NE) Jackie Walorski (IN), Lloyd Smucker (PA), Markwayne Mullin (OK), and Ron Estes (KS); as well as House candidates Casper Stockham (CO), Charlotte Bergmann (TN), Marty Nothstein (PA), and Seth Grossman (NJ).

Shelby Jamerson contributed research to this article.