Will national news organizations continue to sanewash Trump’s utterances after tonight’s media event?

Sanewashing (or sane-washing) is beginning to appear in columns of traditional news outlets, having migrated from independent voices and magazines.

If you’ve missed the term but are following the utterings of Donald Trump, you might guess that this is shorthand for a mainstream media “coherency bias” that implies Trump has “coherent” policy proposals. It also reflects traditional media ignoring Trump’s increasingly violent rhetoric.

I’m struck by how history can repeat itself. Let me channel Heather Cox Richardson for a moment.

The story of Trent Lott

Once upon a time, when blogging was an infant (almost 22 years ago), political bloggers kept a blockbuster story about then Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) alive over a weekend. We were still operating on a daily, not minute-by-minute, news cycle.

No major newspaper reported that Lott had praised notable racist, Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-NC) on a Thursday night: “[I]f the rest of the country had followed our lead [and voted for him for president], we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years either.”

Two bloggers, one being Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall, “independently uncovered and reported the remarks on Friday.” Others continued to write about the nakedly racist comment over the weekend, with Andrew Sullivan joining on Monday.

Tuesday, the Washington Post picked up the story. This should look familiar:

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post addressed the speech in his column. Kurtz commented that if a Democrat had “made this kind of inflammatory comment, it would be the buzz of talk radio and the Wall Street Journal would be calling for tarring and feathering.”

Wednesday, the New York Time joined. Thursday, then President George W. Bush “delivered a rebuke.” On Friday, Lott resigned as majority leader.

In a time when we measured news in 24-hour increments, Lott’s resignation took eight days.

And one of false coherence

Google suggests that “coherent” (its lacking) was first used in describing Trump’s ‘linguistic challenges’ in May 2017. In STAT News, a medical news site: Trump wasn’t always so linguistically challenged. What could explain the change?

Here’s the Washington Times in June 2024, before the Biden made-for-TV event: Trump advised to be ‘calm, coherent and factual’ in debate with Biden, liberal moderators

Also in June, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeff Goldberg, wrote about a “bias towards coherence” in criticizing political reporting of Trump’s rallies and speeches.

The New York Times addressed Trump’s “credibility” and “coherence” in November 2023 in a headline for his New York City trial. Not politics, legal peril. Flash forward almost a year, to September 1: Meandering? Off-Script? Trump Insists His ‘Weave’ Is Oratorical Genius. Peter Baker, using the written equivalent of a straight face, treated the claim about “rhetorical style” as one worthy of investigation.

These September 5th quotes are not “rhetorical style.”

Q: Overall, what do you estimate will be the impact of the fiscal deficit from your policies?

A: Well, we just hit record highs at numbers that nobody ever thought possible. You’re right, over $2 trillion. Nobody thought that was a number that was – I mean, you could go back four years. Nobody thought a number like that would be possible. It’s crazy. It’s like – it’s just horrible, actually.

But yeah, we’re – $2 trillion – and I view it as profit and loss to a certain extent. A lot of people say, oh, it’s trade. You know, you have many people say trade deficits don’t matter. I think they matter a lot.

I think they matter a lot. We’re going to have tremendous growth. This – what I’m talking about is all about growth. The tax is relatively minor compared to the growth. We’re going to make our money back on growth. We’re going to also – I mean, we’re going to grow like nobody has ever grown before. I think if this all works out, you’re going to have the auto industry come back to America. Right now, China is building two auto factories in Mexico – massive auto factories…

Q: If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make childcare affordable, and if so, what specific piece of legislation would you advance?

A: Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down, and I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that, because, look, child care is child care is. It’s, couldn’t, you know, there’s something, you have to have it. In this country you have to have it.

The members of the Economic Club of New York witnessed unhinged stream of consciousness.

Here’s another example of how the New York Times refuses to address Trump’s incoherence and increasing calls for violence. Voila, two Monday front pages.

compare and contrast https://t.co/w0JIg1oRM4 pic.twitter.com/0Pfj5fMTlX

— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) September 9, 2024

The questioning of Trump’s cognitive state in national news outlets has barely been a drizzle. Focus on his increasing violent rhetoric is reporting the stakes of this election, not odds (polls).

Unlike Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016, which were a nothing burger, news organizations — not just the New York Times — are covering for Trump. The New York Times published more cover stories about Clinton’s emails in six days than it did about policy issues in 69 days.

Journalist Jennifer Schulze reported that the New York Times had published almost 200 stories about Biden’s debate performance, 142 news articles and 50 opinion pieces, over a one week period (from the end debate on June 27 to the morning of July 5). That’s almost 30 stories every day, and one of those was a holiday.

Trump gets much less attention with 92 stories. Almost half are about the SCOTUS immunity ruling. Just one about Trump calling for military tribunals for his opponents. None of the stories focus on Trump’s mental fitness.

Enter sanewashing

“Sanewashing” — a portmanteau of “sane” and “whitewashing” — is a smart visualization of that intellectual concept, masking incoherence. Although it shows up in late August (also here and here), it was Parker Malloy, writing in the New Republic last week, who kickstarted the migration to more traditional news sources: How the Media Sanitizes Trump’s Insanity.

This “sanewashing” of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism; it’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy. By continually reframing Trump’s incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and are instead providing cover for increasingly erratic behavior from a former—and potentially future—president.

The consequences of this journalistic malpractice extend far beyond misleading headlines. By laundering Trump’s words in this fashion, the media is actively participating in the erosion of our shared reality. When major news outlets consistently present a polished version of Trump’s statements, they create an alternate narrative that exists alongside the unfiltered truth available on social media and in unedited footage.

This past week’s headlines are more niche than national, but the drizzle is growing:

• Is the press ‘sanewashing’ Trump? (Columbia Journalism Review)
• Sanewashing and the damage done (Public Notice)
• The power of a single word about media malfeasance. It’s ‘sanewashing’ — and it’s what journalists keep doing for Trump (Margaret Sullivan)
• The “Sane-Washing” of Donald Trump (Mother Jones)
• Trump is 78 and barely coherent. Where’s everyone who questioned Biden’s age and fitness? (USA Today)
• Trump Is Getting More Confused and Incoherent. Will the Media Say So? (Greg Sargent)
• Trump’s word salad shows his incompetency (Great Bend (KS) Tribune)

And CNN’s Lawrence O’Donnell continues his critiques:

Sound up!
Lawrence O'Donnell destroys the @nytimes for sane washing Donald J. Trump on his tariffs pay for childcare nonsense.
"There was a time not so long ago when everyone…at the NYT knew what a tariff is"
The New York Times "hallucinated that explanation into existence." pic.twitter.com/nB44Rq7yTF

— Chris Borkowski (@cborkowski) September 10, 2024

However, the question of the day is this: after Tuesday night’s made-for-TV ‘debate,’ how will traditional national news outlets — ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC on the one hand and the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post on the other — treat Trump’s ramblings?

Will they continue to sanewash Trump by making his answers appear coherent? (His performance in the event with Biden was chock full of lies, but you’d not know that by media focus on Biden’s age.)

Or will they finally pivot and treat Trump like they treated Biden and Hillary Clinton, with headline after headline identifying his incoherence?

Will history repeat itself or will the loudest megaphones show they have no eyes, ears or conscience?

 
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The stakes in November have never been more urgent, nor the choices more extreme.

Remember: you are not voting for one person. You are voting for a team.

I’m voting for Team America not Team Russia-Hungary-North Korea.

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