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 […]
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.