There’s a hot new term doing the rounds among media critics: “sanewashing.” The term itself actually isn’t new, and it wasn’t born in media-criticism circles, per se; according to Urban Dictionary, it was coined in 2020 on a Reddit page for neoliberals (which Linda Kinstler wrote about recently for CJR), and meant “attempting to downplay […]
Seems like a problem springing from the press’s bias towards neutrality, or how sometimes a politician is objectively wrong but the press treats them with kid gloves for fear of being accused of unfairness.
They can’t print Trump’s entire 3 minute rant, and they’re scared to characterize it as meandering or incoherent, even if that’s the best description. So, they print a single line from his rant and provide their own context.
Towards the appearance of neutrality, you mean. When person A says “2+2=4” and person B says “2+2=5”, “neutrality” is not reporting some kind of false compromise at 4 1/2, but instead factually reporting that person A is correct and person B is wrong!
Stop oppressing me with your woke math and shit! It’s my deeply held belief that two plus two equals five!
2+2=5 is my heritage!
We jest about bad math being called heritage, but remember that, sadly, 3/5 = 1 was unironically a huge part of their heritage.
For large values of 2 it can even approach 6.
You’re very good at conservative math.
Heh well conservatives are irrational, but then again. Sometimes numbers are too. But 2.999999999999 + 2.9999999999 is pretty darn close to 3.
I feel like the media would roll this out in the most bad-faith and then evolve it in the most malignant way possible:
They write completely content-less headlines and articles that are so “neutral” they look like they were written by an extraterrestrial attorney.
Guy A shoots guy B with a gun and they write it up as “spectators allege that the bullet that happened to strike B may likely have originated from the barrel of a gun that A has been said to have held in or around the same period where B happened to be struck”.
I took journalism in high school and the instruction at the time was not to use the fucking passive voice…but that’s all the motherfuckers use…even when covering extremely high stakes shit.
Didn’t you know? According to Republicans, “Reality has a liberal bias.”
You’re confusing neutrality with objectivity.
Edit: Neutral (adjective): not helping or supporting either side in a conflict, disagreement, etc.
Are you a big enough baby to downvote because you don’t like what words mean? Neutrality and correctness are two different things. Objectivity does factor in what the facts are, neutrality doesn’t.
Perpetuating lies just because one side claims them is neither neutral nor objective!
It is absolutely neutral. You’re mixing up neutrality with equivalence. Just because a neutral party reports on something that’s clearly incorrect doesn’t mean they are sponsoring or supporting it over something else, nor is it saying they are equally valid claims.
The purpose of neutral reporting is to have a record of what happened, not to judge it right or wrong. Unfortunately, sometimes (a lot of the time, nowadays) noteworthy events involve unpleasant and/or malicious actors, but we can’t just shun them from history because their purposes are ignoble.
2+2 is actually 5 I’ve read it in a book with a bunch of numbers as a title. its basic knowledge, just like: War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength
Agreed. Their motivation is money, and there’s more money in keeping the election a neck & neck horse race, even if one of the horses is rabid, lame, and in every way unfit to run. They’ll downplay his blaring faults, and magnify any tiny fault they can find in his competition, just to keep the race “fair” - for ad revenue.
They also don’t like to get sued, and Orange Julius has a habit of suing anybody who offends him.
Too true, also what we call civility politics. I wouldn’t be surprised if corporate backers prefer it that way.
I’m relieved to learn this is a term. I see so many appeals to civility and decorum, and it turns into giving the Supreme Court away.
They did the same with Biden until the horrible debate. It’s not a political bias but a bias towards rich politicians.
I want to know what media you were watching that didn’t highten every biden stutter when that man has had a stutter his entire life