Sanewashing.
It’s pretty rare for the Columbia Journalism Review and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban to be dishing on the same topic. But media critics touched a nerve this week with accusations that the political press suffers from a “coherence bias,” particularly as it relates to Donald Trump: the tendency of reporters and editors to take his verbal diarrhea and transform it, through the magic of elision and omission, into statesmanship. TNR contributor Parker Molloy has an even better word for this practice: “sanewashing.”
It’s probably another facet to bothsidesing. Instead of reducing everyone to the worse offending party’s level this is making the more insane party seem like just another choice. I’d say it’s weird but it seems like it’s not.
I would say it’s very weird. No sense in normalizing a useless practice like false equivalencies. No one benefits from being unable to determine the difference between a neo-liberal politician and fascist cult leader.
It’s like a reverse She’s All That