My favorite genre of political journalist response to critiques is when they try to argue what they write or how they frame things doesn't matter because people's opinions are set. If that's what you really think then why are you are doing political journalism?
I love the 19th! Also, most of us don't see anything BUT the headline, so when it purports to be an accurate report of what tangeranus meant rather then what he actually said that's how he gets sanewashed grrr.
The sanewashing goes hand in hand with "both sides"-ing. Not only the the NYT keep sanewashing Trump, they also intentionally pushed hard on the "Biden is to old" narrative. Outlets seem to have some belief that you have to have some equilibrium of coverage, as if somehow one candidate or side can't be materially worse than the other - despite 10 years of evidence to the contrary.
Trump or Vance tell an outrageous enough lie, it might be a story. And then they tell another outrageous lie, and maybe that's a story too. But what NEVER happens is the story that connects the dots and says, "Gosh Trump and Vance sure do lie an awful lot, why is that?"
Contrast that with the coverage of Biden. He'd get someone's name mixed up, that's a story. He does it a second time, now it's a PATTERN, and we just gotta do a story bringing together ALL the instances of Biden brain farts, now it's a NARRATIVE.
There is a perfect example of sanewashing in today’s New York Times. The article about how Trump and Republicans are spreading racist lies about legal immigrants which is directly leading to violence against those communities is headlined “How an Ohio Town Landed in the Middle of the Immigration Debate.” Framing this as a debate instead of blatant racism is incredibly disingenuous.
Now he's saying “the largest deportation in the history of our country” would “start with Springfield.” Too bad for them, guess they just "landed in the middle" of an "immigration debate." Kinda like how in 1939 Poland "landed in the middle" of a "debate about Germany's borders."
Also, Politico's headline here is "Trump uses harsher rhetoric to describe Haitians in Ohio" rather than "Trump threatens mass deportations of legal immigrants"
I sometimes wonder about this myself, how much the awfulness of the Times and Post is influencing the election, especially since I saw some data from the Times claiming 91% of their readers identified as Democrats (so it's not likely their awful coverage has moved a lot of people into the Trump camp.)
But how about the idea that these people should just be better at doing their jobs, even if I can't exactly quantify the harm done by their suckitude? People who take any pride in being journalists (who, I believe, are supposed to be conveying an accurate picture of the world to their readers?) just shouldn't do the lazy shit that the Times and Post do.
And at the same time it's clear that most voters don't really see anything unusual about this particular election, see it as just business-as-usual, freeing them to vote purely based on party identity or the price of gas. I get that's mainly force of habit, and it would take an enormous, concerted effort to wake people up and shock them out of their long-held voting routines. And that effort is clearly not being made by anyone in the media, and that's a thing they should be ashamed of.
I get what they’re up against—good reporters take a jumble of chaotic events and turn them into something coherent every day. What they don’t see is that in the case of Trump, the chaotic swirl isn’t from the chaotic swirl of life; it’s the workings of a distorted mind. Which is a trait people should know about before casting their vote!
If Paul Farhi absolutely needs to deny sanewashing, he can at least find some way of referring to the fact that Trump has been running for president for 10 years, has been president for four of them, and is still treated like an unknown entity, an upstart outsider who can’t be expected to have every i dotted and t crossed yet.
When Farhi writes "suggesting that those who fall for sanewashing likely aren’t reading the news to begin with", he gives away the game. He doesn't care about journalistic standards or his obligation to the public. And I think he's being disingenuous (or maybe just ignorant) implying that people who do read The Atlantic, WAPO, NYT, etc. are not influenced by the constant normalization of Trump.
Has anyone else noticed that the word "gaffe" has all but disappeared in the Trump era? The man kicks out what we used to refer to as "gaffes" at a rate of like 20 a day. But, the media doesn't point it out. They don't use the word anymore, at least. That word is easy enough for even a casual follower of politics to catch. I feel that if the press used it more, that would be sufficient enough for the average voter to understand. And for those in the press that are getting defensive about being accused of "sane-washing" (Like Paul Farhi here), surely using that one word to describe at least *some* of his incoherent babble should make them feel like they're being objective, impartial and unbiased enough in their coverage to feel like they're being fair.
It's a simple, very common way to point out that he's not making sense, and also causing irreparable damage to our democracy.
Shouldn't "gaffe" be at least the bare minimum for covering his buffoonery in a fair and honest manner?
Agreed, the 19th is bad-ass for all the reasons you cited. And I think you're totally right about the role that fear of bias accusations play on sanewashing. Conservatives have been obsessed with the "liberal bias" theme for decades, but nothing will ever satisfy them, because they're not actually making a good faith argument. They're just working the refs.
Journalists need to stop trying to placate these fascists, and instead just do their f-ingredients job as joirnalists.
That piece was such a transparent moment of “let me mansplain bc I have to have the last work”, I couldn’t believe they printed it! There no “critique” of sane-washing to be had since 2016 because we all know it has happened and continues to happen. All the time. The defensiveness is LOUD in that piece.
And what Parker wrote was a SPECIFIC criticism of ONE particular way the media is failing us, which he deliberately misreads as, "Oh, you're saying the media is generally biased in favor of Trump." And yes, there are people who say the media is generally biased in favor of Trump, BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT PARKER WROTE. When he gets to the specific criticism, all he can do is say, "Yeah, but who cares? Not like it matters or anything."
The media seems to want to normalize Trump as if to obscure the notion that one of the two major parties is helmed by an absolute lunatic. But that's where we are now. That's the state of the Republican Party.
Just saw you on The Left Hook. Great Job! Already a subscriber, but his praise of you is too right.
I think one thing to notice about sanewashing is how much is reflected in the headlines, even more than the stories. I don't watch TV news so I can't comment on how it works there. But so many headlines actually contradict what the story itself says. I think most headlines are written by someone other than the writers of the story, and those headlines must be driving some of them crazy.
The problem isn't really what NYT READERS will think. It's that the headlines get amplified in other media in the form of a even smaller sound bite. "The NYT says that trump spoke about childcare policy to the Mom's for Liberty." Very few are going to drag out the NYT to see what actually was said about it. Not to mention looking to find WHAT he said.
I no longer subscribe (for all the reasons others have cited here) but I'm seeing their headlines all the time in my Google news feed. Probably way more people get their "content" like this than actually read the articles.
Some people in the media seem so accustomed to people on the right working the refs that they can only read media criticism from the left in partisan terms. They assume left-of-center critics just want good coverage for Democrats and bad coverage for Republicans, hence Farhi's contention that all the negative coverage of Trump should placate critics or invalidate their specific criticisms of how he's covered. Hence Joe Kahn thinking critics of the New York Times simply want it to cheerlead for the Biden administration (https://www.readtpa.com/p/7-smart-responses-to-semafors-interview). However, what Parker and other smart critics are arguing is that the media should stop thinking that good, neutral, and unbiased coverage is that which treats both political parties equally and should instead judge their work based on whether it helps to cultivate an informed public. Media critiques from the left (as I read them at least) aren't highlighting a bias in favor of the right per se but a bias for the status quo, for outdated conventional narratives that render the media unable to adequately grasp and convey the malignant reality of Trump and the MAGA movement (a bias which ends up benefiting figures on the right).
Reminds me of how specific, fact-based critiques of US foreign policy ("We shouldn't have invaded Iraq in a war based on lies") get deliberately misrepresented as some kind of general hatred of America. A nice way to avoid the specific criticism, claim it's simple hatred and then dismiss it offhand.
You know a lot more about journalism than I do. My objection is pretty basic. He says unhinged things, and also nonsensical things, and one cannot necessarily tell this in reporting when they discuss a specific speech, or event, or when he has spoken on an issue. They also don't report *that* very much, except obliquely.
The excuses for the various ways their coverage spin plain facts are endless--and are often coming from people critical of them. I am seeing some elaborate theories on social media about why they do this. They might be too sympathetic. Also, a justification for it might be irrelevant.
Perhaps because we are relying so much on the press, it's unnerving to think they might not care very much about giving us a fully accurate picture of reality. But that's their purpose. What DO they care about then? Maybe we aren't so sure.
Here were simply get the answer this failing doesn't matter. It does no harm. We don't have a right to expect more, and there is no reason for us to expect more.
How very odd though. Doesn't, for example, The New York Times, tout themselves as 'the paper of record'? Are they leaving an adequate record about what is happening? Maybe they are leaving a partial record, but you have to read between the lines to understand the current moment much more than you would if things were put more plainly.
This is strange to me.
The elaborate attempts to be sympathetic to the newspapers when they are displaying a fairly glaring problem remind me of the excuses that abused people give so they don't have to confront that maybe the person abusing them is callous, cruel, and untrustworthy.
I'm not saying it's a perfect analogy, and definitely not saying the NYT is 'abusing' the public or is callous or cruel. Nevertheless, it might be untrustworthy.
All I mean with this comparison is that it rattles people's sense of safety when they don't think they can trust those they are reliant upon. It's very confusing, and you don't know what to make of it so you find a reason why it is OK. What does their failure to uphold standards and values you thought they believed in mean? Maybe you cannot really say. It is way easier to suppose they are guided by the same values you are, but simply weighting them a bit wrong, and it's an understandable disagreement about what matters.
Seeing your expectations, as someone reliant on them for the whole truth as reasonable, and then seeing a gulf between what you expect and what they're doing might require changing one's views of many other things, and asking questions that are disorienting.
Still, I think these people will get more clarity if they stop worrying about WHY they are not reliable or honest, and focus more on what they do as Parker Malloy is doing there. And it also helps to look at why it is harmful even over and above how it might shape the election. There IS a relationship between the public and the press in a democracy. We've seen how dangerous it can be when people stop having a sense the accounts they receive in the press reflect reality--because they can start making a lot of shit up to fill in the blanks.
There are just a lot of harmful (and even unpredictable) side effects, many of which are very well-described here. But even if it adds to the burden of those, we can't pretend anymore that they are fully trustworthy. And it doesn't matter why.
My favorite genre of political journalist response to critiques is when they try to argue what they write or how they frame things doesn't matter because people's opinions are set. If that's what you really think then why are you are doing political journalism?
I love the 19th! Also, most of us don't see anything BUT the headline, so when it purports to be an accurate report of what tangeranus meant rather then what he actually said that's how he gets sanewashed grrr.
The sanewashing goes hand in hand with "both sides"-ing. Not only the the NYT keep sanewashing Trump, they also intentionally pushed hard on the "Biden is to old" narrative. Outlets seem to have some belief that you have to have some equilibrium of coverage, as if somehow one candidate or side can't be materially worse than the other - despite 10 years of evidence to the contrary.
Trump or Vance tell an outrageous enough lie, it might be a story. And then they tell another outrageous lie, and maybe that's a story too. But what NEVER happens is the story that connects the dots and says, "Gosh Trump and Vance sure do lie an awful lot, why is that?"
Contrast that with the coverage of Biden. He'd get someone's name mixed up, that's a story. He does it a second time, now it's a PATTERN, and we just gotta do a story bringing together ALL the instances of Biden brain farts, now it's a NARRATIVE.
There is a perfect example of sanewashing in today’s New York Times. The article about how Trump and Republicans are spreading racist lies about legal immigrants which is directly leading to violence against those communities is headlined “How an Ohio Town Landed in the Middle of the Immigration Debate.” Framing this as a debate instead of blatant racism is incredibly disingenuous.
Now he's saying “the largest deportation in the history of our country” would “start with Springfield.” Too bad for them, guess they just "landed in the middle" of an "immigration debate." Kinda like how in 1939 Poland "landed in the middle" of a "debate about Germany's borders."
Also, Politico's headline here is "Trump uses harsher rhetoric to describe Haitians in Ohio" rather than "Trump threatens mass deportations of legal immigrants"
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/13/trump-haitians-ohio-pets-00179147
I sometimes wonder about this myself, how much the awfulness of the Times and Post is influencing the election, especially since I saw some data from the Times claiming 91% of their readers identified as Democrats (so it's not likely their awful coverage has moved a lot of people into the Trump camp.)
But how about the idea that these people should just be better at doing their jobs, even if I can't exactly quantify the harm done by their suckitude? People who take any pride in being journalists (who, I believe, are supposed to be conveying an accurate picture of the world to their readers?) just shouldn't do the lazy shit that the Times and Post do.
And at the same time it's clear that most voters don't really see anything unusual about this particular election, see it as just business-as-usual, freeing them to vote purely based on party identity or the price of gas. I get that's mainly force of habit, and it would take an enormous, concerted effort to wake people up and shock them out of their long-held voting routines. And that effort is clearly not being made by anyone in the media, and that's a thing they should be ashamed of.
I get what they’re up against—good reporters take a jumble of chaotic events and turn them into something coherent every day. What they don’t see is that in the case of Trump, the chaotic swirl isn’t from the chaotic swirl of life; it’s the workings of a distorted mind. Which is a trait people should know about before casting their vote!
If Paul Farhi absolutely needs to deny sanewashing, he can at least find some way of referring to the fact that Trump has been running for president for 10 years, has been president for four of them, and is still treated like an unknown entity, an upstart outsider who can’t be expected to have every i dotted and t crossed yet.
Hey, he's got concepts of plans!
When Farhi writes "suggesting that those who fall for sanewashing likely aren’t reading the news to begin with", he gives away the game. He doesn't care about journalistic standards or his obligation to the public. And I think he's being disingenuous (or maybe just ignorant) implying that people who do read The Atlantic, WAPO, NYT, etc. are not influenced by the constant normalization of Trump.
Thank you for taking him on.
Has anyone else noticed that the word "gaffe" has all but disappeared in the Trump era? The man kicks out what we used to refer to as "gaffes" at a rate of like 20 a day. But, the media doesn't point it out. They don't use the word anymore, at least. That word is easy enough for even a casual follower of politics to catch. I feel that if the press used it more, that would be sufficient enough for the average voter to understand. And for those in the press that are getting defensive about being accused of "sane-washing" (Like Paul Farhi here), surely using that one word to describe at least *some* of his incoherent babble should make them feel like they're being objective, impartial and unbiased enough in their coverage to feel like they're being fair.
It's a simple, very common way to point out that he's not making sense, and also causing irreparable damage to our democracy.
Shouldn't "gaffe" be at least the bare minimum for covering his buffoonery in a fair and honest manner?
I'm not a journalist, but am I off base here?
Agreed, the 19th is bad-ass for all the reasons you cited. And I think you're totally right about the role that fear of bias accusations play on sanewashing. Conservatives have been obsessed with the "liberal bias" theme for decades, but nothing will ever satisfy them, because they're not actually making a good faith argument. They're just working the refs.
Journalists need to stop trying to placate these fascists, and instead just do their f-ingredients job as joirnalists.
Not ingredients. Darn auto-correct
I kinda like f-ingredients, and may steal it.
OMG thank you for writing this. I like Farhi, I do, but the cognitive dissonance in that piece made me vibrate. And not in a good way.
That piece was such a transparent moment of “let me mansplain bc I have to have the last work”, I couldn’t believe they printed it! There no “critique” of sane-washing to be had since 2016 because we all know it has happened and continues to happen. All the time. The defensiveness is LOUD in that piece.
And what Parker wrote was a SPECIFIC criticism of ONE particular way the media is failing us, which he deliberately misreads as, "Oh, you're saying the media is generally biased in favor of Trump." And yes, there are people who say the media is generally biased in favor of Trump, BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT PARKER WROTE. When he gets to the specific criticism, all he can do is say, "Yeah, but who cares? Not like it matters or anything."
100%!!!
The media seems to want to normalize Trump as if to obscure the notion that one of the two major parties is helmed by an absolute lunatic. But that's where we are now. That's the state of the Republican Party.
Just saw you on The Left Hook. Great Job! Already a subscriber, but his praise of you is too right.
I think one thing to notice about sanewashing is how much is reflected in the headlines, even more than the stories. I don't watch TV news so I can't comment on how it works there. But so many headlines actually contradict what the story itself says. I think most headlines are written by someone other than the writers of the story, and those headlines must be driving some of them crazy.
The problem isn't really what NYT READERS will think. It's that the headlines get amplified in other media in the form of a even smaller sound bite. "The NYT says that trump spoke about childcare policy to the Mom's for Liberty." Very few are going to drag out the NYT to see what actually was said about it. Not to mention looking to find WHAT he said.
I no longer subscribe (for all the reasons others have cited here) but I'm seeing their headlines all the time in my Google news feed. Probably way more people get their "content" like this than actually read the articles.
Some people in the media seem so accustomed to people on the right working the refs that they can only read media criticism from the left in partisan terms. They assume left-of-center critics just want good coverage for Democrats and bad coverage for Republicans, hence Farhi's contention that all the negative coverage of Trump should placate critics or invalidate their specific criticisms of how he's covered. Hence Joe Kahn thinking critics of the New York Times simply want it to cheerlead for the Biden administration (https://www.readtpa.com/p/7-smart-responses-to-semafors-interview). However, what Parker and other smart critics are arguing is that the media should stop thinking that good, neutral, and unbiased coverage is that which treats both political parties equally and should instead judge their work based on whether it helps to cultivate an informed public. Media critiques from the left (as I read them at least) aren't highlighting a bias in favor of the right per se but a bias for the status quo, for outdated conventional narratives that render the media unable to adequately grasp and convey the malignant reality of Trump and the MAGA movement (a bias which ends up benefiting figures on the right).
Reminds me of how specific, fact-based critiques of US foreign policy ("We shouldn't have invaded Iraq in a war based on lies") get deliberately misrepresented as some kind of general hatred of America. A nice way to avoid the specific criticism, claim it's simple hatred and then dismiss it offhand.
Yep. I canceled the Atlantic along with the NYT & Wapo. They all suck.
You know a lot more about journalism than I do. My objection is pretty basic. He says unhinged things, and also nonsensical things, and one cannot necessarily tell this in reporting when they discuss a specific speech, or event, or when he has spoken on an issue. They also don't report *that* very much, except obliquely.
The excuses for the various ways their coverage spin plain facts are endless--and are often coming from people critical of them. I am seeing some elaborate theories on social media about why they do this. They might be too sympathetic. Also, a justification for it might be irrelevant.
Perhaps because we are relying so much on the press, it's unnerving to think they might not care very much about giving us a fully accurate picture of reality. But that's their purpose. What DO they care about then? Maybe we aren't so sure.
Here were simply get the answer this failing doesn't matter. It does no harm. We don't have a right to expect more, and there is no reason for us to expect more.
How very odd though. Doesn't, for example, The New York Times, tout themselves as 'the paper of record'? Are they leaving an adequate record about what is happening? Maybe they are leaving a partial record, but you have to read between the lines to understand the current moment much more than you would if things were put more plainly.
This is strange to me.
The elaborate attempts to be sympathetic to the newspapers when they are displaying a fairly glaring problem remind me of the excuses that abused people give so they don't have to confront that maybe the person abusing them is callous, cruel, and untrustworthy.
I'm not saying it's a perfect analogy, and definitely not saying the NYT is 'abusing' the public or is callous or cruel. Nevertheless, it might be untrustworthy.
All I mean with this comparison is that it rattles people's sense of safety when they don't think they can trust those they are reliant upon. It's very confusing, and you don't know what to make of it so you find a reason why it is OK. What does their failure to uphold standards and values you thought they believed in mean? Maybe you cannot really say. It is way easier to suppose they are guided by the same values you are, but simply weighting them a bit wrong, and it's an understandable disagreement about what matters.
Seeing your expectations, as someone reliant on them for the whole truth as reasonable, and then seeing a gulf between what you expect and what they're doing might require changing one's views of many other things, and asking questions that are disorienting.
Still, I think these people will get more clarity if they stop worrying about WHY they are not reliable or honest, and focus more on what they do as Parker Malloy is doing there. And it also helps to look at why it is harmful even over and above how it might shape the election. There IS a relationship between the public and the press in a democracy. We've seen how dangerous it can be when people stop having a sense the accounts they receive in the press reflect reality--because they can start making a lot of shit up to fill in the blanks.
There are just a lot of harmful (and even unpredictable) side effects, many of which are very well-described here. But even if it adds to the burden of those, we can't pretend anymore that they are fully trustworthy. And it doesn't matter why.