I think it’s fair to say we’ve blown past false equivalence and both sides journalism to the point where institutions like the Times effectively have their thumb on the scale for Trump. Eg, there is no equivalence, false or otherwise, in the way the media is covering the “decline” of Biden and Trump.
In sanewashing Trump’s rantings, the media is simply not doing its job at the most basic level of reporting the facts in a truthful manner. It’s all the more galling that the media is doing this on Trump’s third consecutive electoral run with open eyes about the consequences of a second Trump term. Thank you as always, Margaret, for continuing your beat the drum.
The sanewashing is so blatant that it deserves an SNL skit with a roomful of journalists (and presiding editor) workshopping their “interpretations”.
Frankly, the extent of sanewashing at Bloomberg and the WSJ post the Econ Club of NY debacle was stunning…and perhaps telling. The supposed logical, disciplined numbers guys on Wall St appear more than willing to ignore what they can see with their own eyes to win unfair tax policy and keep oversight and sensible regulation at bay.
My guess is that Trump's handlers will see to it that he is quickly side-lined, should he be elected this fall. Section 4 of the 25th amendment to the U.S. Constitution states:
"Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President."
Oh, I think they're happy with Trump just as he is. They'll get to work on their project 2025 and have him sign whatever he needs, while he focuses on seeing which political enemies and "very bad people" he can get put in jail.
Thank you for your fight to get accurate reporting out to the American public . The media can have no excuses. The NY Times is particularly bad because they have seen Trump for a long time. They know about how he cheats people, they know about the Central Park Five, they know how he abuses women, how he refused to pay his vendors in NY and Atlantic City, and they know that Trump gets led around by Putin and has ties to the Russian mafia. What excuse could they possibly have that justifies their “both sides” reporting?
Thank you. I have subscribed to NYTIMES for over 50 years and am totally mystified by the sanewashing and false balance you describe. Their headlines are often even worse than the articles.
Well said! Sometimes the articles are OK but the titles truly are misleading. The Ukraine coverage of the Times has also been criticized by many experts, both domestic snd international, as prematurely favoring Russia.
If you've subscribed for that long, then you remember Judith Miller beating the drums of war, the constant put-downs of Al Gore when he was running, of John Kerry. You might even recall Maureen Dowd's endless columns about "Barry" [sic] and her reported cozy little chats with Trump in 2016. None of this is new. I haven't cancelled yet b/c they occasionally do good reporting (maybe it slips by the editors), and b/c of Paul Krugman and Jamelle Bouie - and the food section.
The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, has described it as the “bias toward coherence,” which, as the same publication’s Tom Nichols points out, “leads to careful circumlocutions instead of stunned headlines.”
Sanewashing is not objectivity or fairness; it is deception and concealment, in this case, of the fact that Trump is unraveling, incoherent and a boatload of other adjectives. Sanewashing is simply bad journalism. Who ever said that facts should be sacrificed in the name of accurate reporting? A journalist who practices sanewashing is simply lying so as to appear fair. He/she is producing propaganda, not competent reportage. In this case, Trump is demonstrably unable to form and express a coherent thought. HIding this fact is very dangerous, as it hides Trump’s mental incapacity and therefore his unfitness for public office at any level.
I was just in my car when I heard on NPR, a sanewashing story about Trump’s ideas on government support for child care. The story portrayed Trump as making some sense in his response to the question. If compared, however, to what he actually said — incomprehensible word salad — (see, https://nbcchicago.app.link/yli7AGFtHMb) it’s obvious that the hand of a sympathetic editor was at work making sense out of nothing, This is not journalism; it is concealment of Trump’s deterioration.
Thank you for continuing to speak up. It was only after reading your post today that I realized that "sanewashing" is simply another word for gaslighting- systematically feeding false information to subjects with the effect that they question their own perceptions of reality,, become destabilized, and impotent to fight back and withdraw . This is the playbook of autocrats, and clearly many in the Corporate media are willing to use it for money and power. Until now, the role of the mainstream media has been to be our eyes and ears to the stories and information to which we have limited access- but after listening to Trump's speech and then reading the "sanewashing" of it, along with the longline of "sanewashing" lately, I feel a despair for our country that I haven't felt since Trump was elected in 2016. Without truth democracy cannot stand.
This past week, I listened to an NPR report about Trump’s latest ramblings. Twice, in the report, the correspondent used the phrase, “without evidence.” Hmm, I thought. If you have to modify statements as “without evidence,” why are you airing them? It turns out this has been going on for years at NPR, and their public editor even discussed it during the 2020 election. Inserting “without evidence” in a piece essentially allows NPR to get wild stuff on the air without having to take journalistic responsibility. It is their form of sanewashing. https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2020/09/03/908835251/without-evidence-is-a-new-catchphrase-at-npr
Without evidence means they are lying and the media is afraid to say it. Anytime they say without evidence, there should be a special framing of the content so the readers know it's a lie.
It's also their way of avoiding saying, "He lied." And spare me that crap about state of mind. If he knew, or should have known, that what he was saying is untrue, then it's a lie. And if that seems harsh, consider that that's basically the standard for a defamation suit in the U.S.
I think you're too kind to NPR. On All Things Considered Last Week, there was an anondyne discussion of Project 2025, between Mary Louise Kelly and their political correspondent Domenico Montanaro. It made me weep. No reall indication that this is much different than a typical transition document, albeit one that Trump now disavows.
My example of sanewashing this week comes from Kristen Welker on the Friday Meet the Press NOW show. She began the press roundtable segment with the clip of Trump "weaving" (learned this week that's what he calls his nonsensical ramblings) his answer to the childcare question. Kirsten sanewashed Trump's answer by saying something to the effect of, "what he really was saying is that his tariff policy would pay for child care." She then turned to the Reuters correspondent at the table to comment on the clip. He began by saying that he thought Kristen's interpretation was generous, and then proceeded to equivocate about what Trump was actually saying, then ended by saying, "but, to be fair, Kamala Harris has not directly answered questions either."🤦🏼♀️🙄😮💨 I have no idea what the other panelists said. I stopped listening. I would like to think that corporate media is taking criticism of their "objective" political reporting to heart, yet episodes such as this do not boost my confidence.
"But why does the media sanewash Trump? It’s all a part of the false-equivalence I’ve been writing about here in which candidates are equalized as an ongoing gesture of performative fairness."
Why only "sanewash" Trump? There was no hesitancy in attacking Biden whenever possible, any slip-up he made, way over the top with stories about his age . . . .
When clamoring for a sit-down interview with Harris, media claimed she was avoiding doing an interview as she's been know in the past to answer questions with a "word salad." Anything she might say is far removed from the incoherence and unstable speeches Trump is currently making. I don't think false equivalency is the actual, or at least the only, reason. I've never been in the media industry, so have no answer of my own.
Let’s be plain: false equivalencies are distortions of facts that obfuscate and conceal the truth of those facts. In journalism, being objective in reporting does not require that one bend over backwards to find some characterization of a set of facts that purports to be fair simply to keep up the appearance of fairness, e.g., if the car that ran the red light was black, it isn’t necessary to suggest the possibility that it was white. Facts are not opinions! The corporate media’s obsession with offering equivalencies renders their news judgment untrustworthy.
If Harris stumbles over a word, the media will jump on her, just as they did with Biden. What the media does makes no sense to us but if they want the horserace, they have to cover for trump and mask his incoherence.
I'm glad you mentioned the WaPo analysis of Trump's incoherence, and I suppose it's a good sign that the Times at least acknowledged your concern, but there is a long, long way to go if mainstream media is interested in restoring its reputation and earning the trust of its soon-to-be former readers, including myself. It goes beyond how they cover Trump. It's also about what they decide to cover. When Biden was the candidate, the Times often has as many as six front page stories a day on what Trump said or did, and one story about Biden being old. No coverage whatsoever of any Biden's policies or decisions or actions, nor any analysis of the consequences of Trump's completely clueless proposals (if they can be called that.) NPR is not without sin here either. It still remember listening to All Things Considered in late October, 2016. We recorded it because it was so outrageous. The reporter did a 5 minute spot on everything Trump had said that day. It was followed by a single sentence: "Hillary Clinton campaigned in Pittsburgh today. " Thank God for American Crisis, Bulwark and some other new outlets. Hopefully they are the future. I frankly don't see a way forward for maindstream media at this point.
What I would like to know is, why Trump is allowed to outright lie in his speeches without any repercussions? Statements such as that crime was lower during his term than under Biden, or that he created more jobs than Biden. I know "fact checking" after the fact attempts to correct the issue, but that's too late. The damage has been done - impressionable people have heard a lie from someone they trust. I'm so tired of it!
I agree that after-the-fact corrections don’t really get it done. I think limiting the practice of airing speeches and rallies live is a part of the solution. And bringing a lot of context to coverage, as in the “truth sandwich” approach.
An example of a 'truth sandwich' from George Lakoff: It goes like this: Hydroxychloroquine has no proven impact on treating COVID-19, and has a host of dangerous side-effects. Some on the right have falsely touted Hydroxychloroquine as a miracle cure for COVID-19. Trump recently said he was taking it to ward off the disease. The scientific community says there is no proof Hydroxychloroquine can save you from COVID. Doctors do not recommend taking it unless prescribed.
I and a lot of other people have been screaming for years about the media's sanewashing of Trump, even if we didn't always have that handy portmanteau to describe it. Up until this week, though, I had despaired of anything ever changing. This week we had not only the Post article but also a lengthy segment by Lawrence O'Donnell on it on MSNBC. Now they just need to take the next logical step and report as fact that Trump is mentally unfit to have his hand back on the nuclear trigger.
Trump is a textbook example of Strict Father Morality. In a Strict Father family the father is the ultimate authority. Father knows best. He gets his authority from the claim to know right from wrong, and what he says is by definition always right. His word is law and needs to be strictly enforced through strength — swift painful punishment. Even a show is disrespect deserves to be punished.
There is a Strict Father logic: Discipline needs to be imposed. Children need to learn not to do what feels good (like “feel-good liberals”), but to do what they are told. If they do, they will become disciplined and go out into the world and become prosperous. What if they are not prosperous? That just shows that they are not disciplined, which means they cannot be moral, and so deserve their poverty. In short, the poor are poor because they’re lazy and so it’s their own fault. Responsibility is individual responsibility. There is no social responsibility.
This logic is taken as a matter of nature. It imposes a natural ‘moral’ hierarchy, of who is better than whom. By nature, the winners have deserved to win. The hierarchy goes like this: God above man, man above nature (it’s there for us to plunder), the strong above the weak, the rich above the poor, employers above employees, adults above children, Western culture above nonwestern culture, America above other countries. Then the hierarchy extends naturally to: men above women, whites above nonwhites, Christians above non-Christians, straights above gays.
When you repeat Trump, you help Trump. You do this by spreading his message wide and far.
Nobody knows this better than Trump. Trump, as a media master, knows how to frame a debate. When he picks a fight, he does so deliberately. He tweets or says outrageous things, knowing they will be repeated millions and millions of times. When the news media and Democrats repeat Trump’s frames, they are strengthening those frames by ensuring that tens of millions of Americans hear them repeated over and over again.
Quick: don’t think of an elephant. Now, what do you see? The bulkiness, the grayness, the trunkiness of an elephant. You can’t block the picture – the frame – from being accessed by your unconscious mind. As a professor of brain science, this is the first lesson I give my students. It’s also the title of my book on the science of framing political debates.
The key lesson: when we negate a frame, we evoke the frame. When President Richard Nixon addressed the country during Watergate and used the phrase “I am not a crook,” he coupled his image with that of a crook. He established what he was denying by repeating his opponents’ message.
This illustrates one of the most important principles of framing a debate: When arguing against the other side, don’t use their language because it evokes their frame and not the frame you seek to establish. Never repeat their charges! Instead, use your own words and values to reframe the conversation.
I think it’s fair to say we’ve blown past false equivalence and both sides journalism to the point where institutions like the Times effectively have their thumb on the scale for Trump. Eg, there is no equivalence, false or otherwise, in the way the media is covering the “decline” of Biden and Trump.
In sanewashing Trump’s rantings, the media is simply not doing its job at the most basic level of reporting the facts in a truthful manner. It’s all the more galling that the media is doing this on Trump’s third consecutive electoral run with open eyes about the consequences of a second Trump term. Thank you as always, Margaret, for continuing your beat the drum.
Appreciated!
The sanewashing is so blatant that it deserves an SNL skit with a roomful of journalists (and presiding editor) workshopping their “interpretations”.
Frankly, the extent of sanewashing at Bloomberg and the WSJ post the Econ Club of NY debacle was stunning…and perhaps telling. The supposed logical, disciplined numbers guys on Wall St appear more than willing to ignore what they can see with their own eyes to win unfair tax policy and keep oversight and sensible regulation at bay.
I’d watch that SNL skit, Gene.
Agreed on the Wall Street motivation.
It would be great if someone in your orbit has the ability to plant a seed! It would be right up their alley.
My guess is that Trump's handlers will see to it that he is quickly side-lined, should he be elected this fall. Section 4 of the 25th amendment to the U.S. Constitution states:
"Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President."
Oh, I think they're happy with Trump just as he is. They'll get to work on their project 2025 and have him sign whatever he needs, while he focuses on seeing which political enemies and "very bad people" he can get put in jail.
Thank you for your fight to get accurate reporting out to the American public . The media can have no excuses. The NY Times is particularly bad because they have seen Trump for a long time. They know about how he cheats people, they know about the Central Park Five, they know how he abuses women, how he refused to pay his vendors in NY and Atlantic City, and they know that Trump gets led around by Putin and has ties to the Russian mafia. What excuse could they possibly have that justifies their “both sides” reporting?
Thank you. I have subscribed to NYTIMES for over 50 years and am totally mystified by the sanewashing and false balance you describe. Their headlines are often even worse than the articles.
Yes, headlines really matter. A lot of people go no further.
Well said! Sometimes the articles are OK but the titles truly are misleading. The Ukraine coverage of the Times has also been criticized by many experts, both domestic snd international, as prematurely favoring Russia.
If you've subscribed for that long, then you remember Judith Miller beating the drums of war, the constant put-downs of Al Gore when he was running, of John Kerry. You might even recall Maureen Dowd's endless columns about "Barry" [sic] and her reported cozy little chats with Trump in 2016. None of this is new. I haven't cancelled yet b/c they occasionally do good reporting (maybe it slips by the editors), and b/c of Paul Krugman and Jamelle Bouie - and the food section.
The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, has described it as the “bias toward coherence,” which, as the same publication’s Tom Nichols points out, “leads to careful circumlocutions instead of stunned headlines.”
Sanewashing is not objectivity or fairness; it is deception and concealment, in this case, of the fact that Trump is unraveling, incoherent and a boatload of other adjectives. Sanewashing is simply bad journalism. Who ever said that facts should be sacrificed in the name of accurate reporting? A journalist who practices sanewashing is simply lying so as to appear fair. He/she is producing propaganda, not competent reportage. In this case, Trump is demonstrably unable to form and express a coherent thought. HIding this fact is very dangerous, as it hides Trump’s mental incapacity and therefore his unfitness for public office at any level.
I was just in my car when I heard on NPR, a sanewashing story about Trump’s ideas on government support for child care. The story portrayed Trump as making some sense in his response to the question. If compared, however, to what he actually said — incomprehensible word salad — (see, https://nbcchicago.app.link/yli7AGFtHMb) it’s obvious that the hand of a sympathetic editor was at work making sense out of nothing, This is not journalism; it is concealment of Trump’s deterioration.
Thank you for continuing to speak up. It was only after reading your post today that I realized that "sanewashing" is simply another word for gaslighting- systematically feeding false information to subjects with the effect that they question their own perceptions of reality,, become destabilized, and impotent to fight back and withdraw . This is the playbook of autocrats, and clearly many in the Corporate media are willing to use it for money and power. Until now, the role of the mainstream media has been to be our eyes and ears to the stories and information to which we have limited access- but after listening to Trump's speech and then reading the "sanewashing" of it, along with the longline of "sanewashing" lately, I feel a despair for our country that I haven't felt since Trump was elected in 2016. Without truth democracy cannot stand.
This past week, I listened to an NPR report about Trump’s latest ramblings. Twice, in the report, the correspondent used the phrase, “without evidence.” Hmm, I thought. If you have to modify statements as “without evidence,” why are you airing them? It turns out this has been going on for years at NPR, and their public editor even discussed it during the 2020 election. Inserting “without evidence” in a piece essentially allows NPR to get wild stuff on the air without having to take journalistic responsibility. It is their form of sanewashing. https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2020/09/03/908835251/without-evidence-is-a-new-catchphrase-at-npr
“Baseless Accusations” will be my band’s name.
Without evidence means they are lying and the media is afraid to say it. Anytime they say without evidence, there should be a special framing of the content so the readers know it's a lie.
It's also their way of avoiding saying, "He lied." And spare me that crap about state of mind. If he knew, or should have known, that what he was saying is untrue, then it's a lie. And if that seems harsh, consider that that's basically the standard for a defamation suit in the U.S.
I think you're too kind to NPR. On All Things Considered Last Week, there was an anondyne discussion of Project 2025, between Mary Louise Kelly and their political correspondent Domenico Montanaro. It made me weep. No reall indication that this is much different than a typical transition document, albeit one that Trump now disavows.
Of course, Berliner’s critique was the dead opposite!
My example of sanewashing this week comes from Kristen Welker on the Friday Meet the Press NOW show. She began the press roundtable segment with the clip of Trump "weaving" (learned this week that's what he calls his nonsensical ramblings) his answer to the childcare question. Kirsten sanewashed Trump's answer by saying something to the effect of, "what he really was saying is that his tariff policy would pay for child care." She then turned to the Reuters correspondent at the table to comment on the clip. He began by saying that he thought Kristen's interpretation was generous, and then proceeded to equivocate about what Trump was actually saying, then ended by saying, "but, to be fair, Kamala Harris has not directly answered questions either."🤦🏼♀️🙄😮💨 I have no idea what the other panelists said. I stopped listening. I would like to think that corporate media is taking criticism of their "objective" political reporting to heart, yet episodes such as this do not boost my confidence.
I find that much of the media finds it necessary to criticize Harris if they are criticizing something trump said. They call it balance.
"But why does the media sanewash Trump? It’s all a part of the false-equivalence I’ve been writing about here in which candidates are equalized as an ongoing gesture of performative fairness."
Why only "sanewash" Trump? There was no hesitancy in attacking Biden whenever possible, any slip-up he made, way over the top with stories about his age . . . .
When clamoring for a sit-down interview with Harris, media claimed she was avoiding doing an interview as she's been know in the past to answer questions with a "word salad." Anything she might say is far removed from the incoherence and unstable speeches Trump is currently making. I don't think false equivalency is the actual, or at least the only, reason. I've never been in the media industry, so have no answer of my own.
Let’s be plain: false equivalencies are distortions of facts that obfuscate and conceal the truth of those facts. In journalism, being objective in reporting does not require that one bend over backwards to find some characterization of a set of facts that purports to be fair simply to keep up the appearance of fairness, e.g., if the car that ran the red light was black, it isn’t necessary to suggest the possibility that it was white. Facts are not opinions! The corporate media’s obsession with offering equivalencies renders their news judgment untrustworthy.
If Harris stumbles over a word, the media will jump on her, just as they did with Biden. What the media does makes no sense to us but if they want the horserace, they have to cover for trump and mask his incoherence.
So they manipulate the situation, whatever it is, to get the horse race . . . and "false equivalency" is just a nice-sounding cover story.
I'm glad you mentioned the WaPo analysis of Trump's incoherence, and I suppose it's a good sign that the Times at least acknowledged your concern, but there is a long, long way to go if mainstream media is interested in restoring its reputation and earning the trust of its soon-to-be former readers, including myself. It goes beyond how they cover Trump. It's also about what they decide to cover. When Biden was the candidate, the Times often has as many as six front page stories a day on what Trump said or did, and one story about Biden being old. No coverage whatsoever of any Biden's policies or decisions or actions, nor any analysis of the consequences of Trump's completely clueless proposals (if they can be called that.) NPR is not without sin here either. It still remember listening to All Things Considered in late October, 2016. We recorded it because it was so outrageous. The reporter did a 5 minute spot on everything Trump had said that day. It was followed by a single sentence: "Hillary Clinton campaigned in Pittsburgh today. " Thank God for American Crisis, Bulwark and some other new outlets. Hopefully they are the future. I frankly don't see a way forward for maindstream media at this point.
What I would like to know is, why Trump is allowed to outright lie in his speeches without any repercussions? Statements such as that crime was lower during his term than under Biden, or that he created more jobs than Biden. I know "fact checking" after the fact attempts to correct the issue, but that's too late. The damage has been done - impressionable people have heard a lie from someone they trust. I'm so tired of it!
I agree that after-the-fact corrections don’t really get it done. I think limiting the practice of airing speeches and rallies live is a part of the solution. And bringing a lot of context to coverage, as in the “truth sandwich” approach.
An example of a 'truth sandwich' from George Lakoff: It goes like this: Hydroxychloroquine has no proven impact on treating COVID-19, and has a host of dangerous side-effects. Some on the right have falsely touted Hydroxychloroquine as a miracle cure for COVID-19. Trump recently said he was taking it to ward off the disease. The scientific community says there is no proof Hydroxychloroquine can save you from COVID. Doctors do not recommend taking it unless prescribed.
I and a lot of other people have been screaming for years about the media's sanewashing of Trump, even if we didn't always have that handy portmanteau to describe it. Up until this week, though, I had despaired of anything ever changing. This week we had not only the Post article but also a lengthy segment by Lawrence O'Donnell on it on MSNBC. Now they just need to take the next logical step and report as fact that Trump is mentally unfit to have his hand back on the nuclear trigger.
There seems to be a little progress.
From George Lakoff:
Trump is a textbook example of Strict Father Morality. In a Strict Father family the father is the ultimate authority. Father knows best. He gets his authority from the claim to know right from wrong, and what he says is by definition always right. His word is law and needs to be strictly enforced through strength — swift painful punishment. Even a show is disrespect deserves to be punished.
There is a Strict Father logic: Discipline needs to be imposed. Children need to learn not to do what feels good (like “feel-good liberals”), but to do what they are told. If they do, they will become disciplined and go out into the world and become prosperous. What if they are not prosperous? That just shows that they are not disciplined, which means they cannot be moral, and so deserve their poverty. In short, the poor are poor because they’re lazy and so it’s their own fault. Responsibility is individual responsibility. There is no social responsibility.
This logic is taken as a matter of nature. It imposes a natural ‘moral’ hierarchy, of who is better than whom. By nature, the winners have deserved to win. The hierarchy goes like this: God above man, man above nature (it’s there for us to plunder), the strong above the weak, the rich above the poor, employers above employees, adults above children, Western culture above nonwestern culture, America above other countries. Then the hierarchy extends naturally to: men above women, whites above nonwhites, Christians above non-Christians, straights above gays.
When you repeat Trump, you help Trump. You do this by spreading his message wide and far.
Nobody knows this better than Trump. Trump, as a media master, knows how to frame a debate. When he picks a fight, he does so deliberately. He tweets or says outrageous things, knowing they will be repeated millions and millions of times. When the news media and Democrats repeat Trump’s frames, they are strengthening those frames by ensuring that tens of millions of Americans hear them repeated over and over again.
Quick: don’t think of an elephant. Now, what do you see? The bulkiness, the grayness, the trunkiness of an elephant. You can’t block the picture – the frame – from being accessed by your unconscious mind. As a professor of brain science, this is the first lesson I give my students. It’s also the title of my book on the science of framing political debates.
The key lesson: when we negate a frame, we evoke the frame. When President Richard Nixon addressed the country during Watergate and used the phrase “I am not a crook,” he coupled his image with that of a crook. He established what he was denying by repeating his opponents’ message.
This illustrates one of the most important principles of framing a debate: When arguing against the other side, don’t use their language because it evokes their frame and not the frame you seek to establish. Never repeat their charges! Instead, use your own words and values to reframe the conversation.