The power of a single word about media malfeasance

It's 'sanewashing' — and it's what journalists keep doing for Trump

According to the dictionary — well, the Urban Dictionary, at least — the term '“sanewashing” has been around since 2020. But I only encountered it in the past couple of weeks as a few smart commentators have started using it to describe the way journalists translate the rambling and nonsensical “word salad” that Donald Trump cooks up and turn it into something coherent.

Giving credit where due, Parker Molloy, Michael Tomasky, Aaron Rupar and Greg Sargent have all written about this perceptively. (There no doubt are others — “don’t at me,” as we say in social-media world as we sink into a defensive crouch.)

Tomasky describes Trump’s “half sentences that suddenly veer off toward a distant galaxy, the asides that limn the virtues of Hannibal Lecter.” Maybe you heard his shark speech about battery-powered boats, or even saw the brilliant comic, Sarah Cooper, as she riffed on it.

Trump speaks to the Economic Club of New York on Sept. 5. Much of the press has been “sanewashing” the former president’s incoherent comments / Getty Images

Like whitewashing a fence, sanewashing a speech covers a multitude of problems. The Urban Dictionary definition: Attempting to downplay a person or idea’s radicality to make it more palatable to the general public … a portmanteau of “sane” plus “whitewashing.”

Here, as an example, is a Politico news alert that summarizes a recent Trump speech: “Trump laid out a sweeping vision of lower taxes, higher tariffs and light-touch regulation in a speech to top Wall Streets execs today.” As writer Thor Benson quipped on Twitter: “I hope the press is this nice to me if I ever do a speech where no one can tell if I just had a stroke or not.”

Trump has become more incoherent as he has aged, but you wouldn’t know it from most of the press coverage, which treats his utterances as essentially logical policy statements — a “sweeping vision,” even.

After the intense media focus on Joe Biden’s age and mental acuity, you would think Trump’s apparent decline would be a preoccupation. He is 78, after all, and often incoherent. But with rare exceptions, that hasn’t happened.

I will give the Washington Post some credit here for the way it covered the speech mentioned above, specifically his answer to a question about how he would fund child care.

“Trump offers confusing plan to pay for U.S. child care with foreign tariffs,” the headline said. But many others, including the New York Times, sanewashed what he said, which went like this:

“Well, I would do that and we’re sitting down, you know, I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio and my daughter, Ivanka, who was so impactful on that issue … But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’ve talking about because the childcare is childcare, couldn’t, you know, there’s something you have to have it, in this country you have to have it.”

And then he went on to say that his idea of tariffs on China will take care of the cost of pretty much everything, which might remind you of how he claims deporting immigrants will pay for affordable housing.

Sweeping vision, you say?

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.

And it’s also, I believe, because of the restrained language of traditional objective journalism. That’s often a good thing; it’s part of being careful and cautious. But when it fails to present a truthful picture, that practice distorts reality.

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I did hear from some people at the Times about my criticism last week. Their reaction struck me as defensive, but at least they are aware of readers’ concerns. I also saw some right-wing criticism describing my post as a complaint that the press is being “too fair.”

I hope this dissatisfaction about media coverage is getting some traction and that it might make a difference.

This weekend, I’m in Austin at the annual Texas Tribune event called TribFest. I’ll be interviewing on stage the CEO and president of National Public Radio, Katherine Maher. A former CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, she’s only been at NPR since March — but it’s been eventful. The following month, as you might recall, a longtime NPR staffer, Uri Berliner, published a blistering critique; he wrote that NPR’s liberal bias and lack of “viewpoint diversity” has damaged public trust. Maher soon became part of the controversy.

NPR’s excellent media correspondent David Folkenflik did a fair-minded job of covering the story at his own workplace — never a fun assignment. Berliner later resigned and went to work at The Free Press, the internet outfit co-founded by Bari Weiss. If my conversation with Katherine Maher is available as a recording, I’ll post it here. NPR has its faults but it does a lot right, including being one of the few remaining news organizations to employ a public editor or ombudsman.

Thanks very much to all subscribers here, including a lot of new ones. I appreciate your concerns, your attention and your comments, which I always read with interest.

Let me know your thoughts in advance of Tuesday’s presidential debate. I can’t imagine that it will be as consequential as the last one. But you never know; it’s been a wild few months. And don’t forget Jay Rosen’s urging for the news media’s focus: “not the odds, but the stakes.” And I’ll add: No sanewashing; just the truth.