Did journalists ‘sanewash’ Donald Trump during the 2024 election campaign? An empirical analysis

Donald Trump's political and rhetorical style has presented a challenge to journalists’ modus operandi since he first announced his candidacy for President. During the 2024 election campaign, the practice of ‘sanewashing’ became a talking point among media and political commentators. The term describes the way Donald Trump's rambling, generally unfocussed speech would appear more coherent (and ‘sane’) when it was presented in news reports. In this paper, we empirically test whether ‘sanewashing’ occurred during the 2024 election campaign, focussing on two speeches that drew the most criticism for how they were covered in the media: one delivered to the Economic Club of New York, and the other given at a rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Using topic modelling and semantic similarity analysis, we examine which components were covered and the language used in reporting. We conclude that while ‘sanewashing’ did occur, this may reflect standard journalistic procedures, rather than ideological motivations.