Who’s normal?

“If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?”

That’s how a New York Times article yesterday began. It also could have begun:

If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Hillary Clinton is not only a candidate who makes frequent misstatements but is a liar whose intentional fraudulence reaches psychopathic levels, and is the first presidential candidate to gain a major party nomination while under investigation for an egregious security lapse that would land others in jail and may have put others in the morgue, how are you supposed to cover such hellish tendencies?

The New York Times in paragraph 21 of its story explained the differential scrutiny of Trump because he is a political novice and Clinton has been covered for 24 years since her husband’s presidential election in 1992. The result, the Times acknowledged: “There are more ‘gates’ affixed to her last name—Travelgate, Whitewatergate, now Emailgate—than there are gates in the Old City of Jerusalem.” But Richard Nixon had been covered for 22 years at the time journalistic coverage and the work of honesty-seekers (including Hillary Clinton at that time) forced him from office—and it took only one “gate” to sink him.

Trump coverage, the Times admitted, “upsets balance, that idealistic form of journalism with a capital ‘J’ we’ve been trained to always strive for.” Balance has long disappeared at major U.S. newspapers, but rarely in such an obvious way. As the Times noted regarding Trump, “It’s not unusual to see news stories describe him as ‘erratic’ without attribution to an opponent. The ‘fact checks’ of his falsehoods continue to pile up in staggering numbers, far outpacing those of Mrs. Clinton.”

Yes, Trump is erratic and egomaniacal, but so is Clinton, although sometimes more subtly—but aren’t journalists supposed to probe and not just be campaign megaphones? The Times contrasted opinion columnists with news reporters, noting how major columnists are almost always explicitly anti-Trump but “It’s much dodgier for conventional news reporters to treat this year’s political debate as one between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal,’ as the Vox editor in chief Ezra Klein put it recently.”

The difference between columnists and reporters at major newspapers is one of style and explicitness rather than substance—but if Clinton represents the new normal, God save the United States of America.