It's Not Sanewashing, It's Just Dialect

Newspapers have a certain way of saying things. When more people read them, this was more widely understood and accepted.

Emily Dickinson, 1946-7.

“Tell the truth but tell it slant,” wrote Emily Dickinson, “success in circuit lies.” When I was a young man I thought: What a load of crap. Just say it, I thought. The truth will set you free! To hell with that mouseburger from Amherst.

I still tend to prefer stating facts directly, often to the verge of brutality, but as I grow older I understand better that although speaking the unvarnished truth will set the speaker free (or at least make him feel so), it may not have that same effect upon the listener. When talking among ourselves we journalists often prize a swaggering and often comic hyperbole, especially on sensitive subjects. But we don’t write this way for our readers, because we know them to be more literal-minded. That goes double for people in the “straight news” business, as opposed to opinion journalism. As Miss Dickinson would say: Success in circuit lies.

During this last political season we heard a lot of accusations that the mainstream press was engaged in “sanewashing” Donald Trump and his followers. As someone who’s spent his career migrating back and forth from straight news to opinion journalism, I find that judgment too harsh. The mainstream media renders its harshest judgments in a sort of euphemistic dialect because the rules of objectivity dictate that it isn’t supposed to render judgments at all. You can say this deceives news consumers, but where is the evidence? Hardly anybody who reads a newspaper voted for Donald Trump. The dwindling reading public knows the score, however gently it’s communicated.

If there’s a failure to understand what the press is trying to say, it’s because many people don’t read the newspaper, or perhaps just came up in a generation in which this habit was not widely shared. They may not know, for instance, that when a newspaper says somebody “maintained” or “insisted” or “alleged” something, it means that person was probably lying, whereas if that person merely “said” something, it means that person was probably telling the truth. They don’t know that a “person familiar with X’s thinking” is almost always that person himself, speaking off the record, or perhaps an aide directed by that person to explain things in a certain way. As Miss Dickinson writes:

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind —

Now there’s a person who knew how to read her New York Times.

My latest piece explains why you’re suddenly seeing the word “fiery” in practically every story about a Trump nominee. It is not a compliment! You can read my piece here.