Meaning of sanewash | Babel Free

Definitions

1. To restate one’s perspective to seem more palatable or acceptable.
   intransitive, transitive
2. To present someone's apparently crazy rantings as sensible discourse by editing out the bizarre portions or summarizing them with a more coherent interpretation.
   transitive

Examples

“You can try to sanewash these claims as merely urging researchers to examine their own biases and try to include the perspectives of people outside the research community. But that would require a willful misreading of a document that all but declares research has to affirm a left-wing perspective.”

“It also represents a good example of "sanewashing,” an internet term that refers to the process through which radical ideas are gradually watered down to be more appealing to the wider public.”

“This “sanewashing” of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism; it’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy.”

“President Donald Trump's rhetoric and ideas are being "sanewashed" by the mainstream media as they pull selective quotes from his speeches and mask otherwise obvious extremism, argued Jon Allsop for the Columbia Journalism Review.”

“He essentially sounded the same as he does at his rallies — except that this time TV viewers experienced his ranting raw, not sanewashed by summaries that make him sound more coherent than he is.”

“Pollster Nate Silver suggested Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) was “sanewashing” his Republican rival, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), in Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate.”

“During the US presidential campaign, legacy mainstream media[…]refrained from reporting how incoherent and bizarre Donald Trump was becoming, normalizing and “sanewashing” his increasingly wild utterances even as it reported every minor slip by Joe Biden. The New York Times headlined its report on the September 2024 presidential debate […] as: Harris and Trump bet on their own sharply contrasting views of America.”

CEFR level