When does the presentation of speeches that border on the illogical, inflammatory or simply incoherent, breach the journalistic ethic of accuracy and move into the disputed territory of sanitising? In early September, at the Economic Club of New York, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump responded to a question on how he’d address the issue of childcare outpacing inflation in the US with a solution that was both off-centre and circumlocutory: Increasing tariffs on foreign imports to ensure the generation of adequate funds to meet the crisis. Instead of addressing the non sequitur, much of the mainstream media presented a parsed down interpretation of what might have been the 78-year-old’s intended solution — that his economic policies would address childcare. Enter “sanewashing” — the persistent rationalisation of Trump’s purported meanings by a section of the US media that has been called out for the distortionary lens it creates for consumers of news.
From his constant references to the “late, great Hannibal Lecter” to his outlandish remarks on job creation and economic policies, there is much in Trump’s rhetoric that could do with the ministrations of a fact checker. But does the job of smoothing out the jagged edges of his vitriol, the opacity of his policy proposals or the bizarreness of his conspiracy theories — in short, the task of making him credible to the electorate — become the responsibility of the traditional media? Especially since the courtesy is selectively afforded. As Parker Molloy of The New Republic, one of the early users of the term “sanewashing”, says, “By continually reframing Trump’s incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty…”
In a post-truth world, there are deeper implications of sanewashing politicians. It can make inconveniences of thought and action disappear with a coat of linguistic varnish. The question remains: Do electorates deserve this sanding down of facts with fiction?
