Study finds media often downplays Trump's incoherent remarks while highlighting policy points

A team of scholars investigated whether news coverage of Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign speeches was subject to “sanewashing,” the tendency to focus on his coherent statements while overlooking his erratic comments. They analyzed a 374-word, disjointed response on childcare and a rally remark in Latrobe, Pennsylvania that referenced Arnold Palmer’s anatomy. By processing hundreds of articles from both mainstream newspapers and digital outlets, they discovered that reporters usually zeroed in on one or two policy topics, using language that differed from Trump’s own phrasing.

Traditional papers such as one outlet tended to describe his speech as “meandering,” whereas online sites employed harsher descriptors like “bizarre.” Coverage of the Pennsylvania rally was more prevalent in online media, while the childcare blunder received little attention. The authors argue that while some filtering is inevitable, excessive sanewashing could distort voters’ perception of a candidate’s fitness for office.