President Trump and his administration, though, have added a turbocharge. What mattered much more was what Trump’s words really meant, and what the responsibilities of journalists were in conveying that meaning in some sensible way. Don Lemon of CNN flatly declared: “The president of the United States is racist.” His colleague Anderson Cooper went there, too: Trump’s words were not just “racially charged” but simply racist. Should the news media be using that charged word for the president of the United States? Media figures who do that — and there are far too many of them — dump buckets of kerosene on the flames.

Source: Washington Post January 14, 2018 21:10 UTC