When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, it quickly became clear that much of the media was not up to the challenge of covering a candidate who openly lied, espoused racist ideologies, bragged about sexual assault, and encouraged his supporters to embrace a toxic vision for America by playing on their fears and insecurities.

Part of the problem was that coverage of Trump was a ratings boon for the struggling news industry—with the “Trump bump” sending record numbers of viewers and readers to newspapers, online publications, and TV shows. It was intoxicating for the industry. News channels were captivated by Trump’s roadshow, famously airing empty podiums as they waited for him to arrive, instead of going live to his opponent Hillary Clinton giving a speech about her plans to raise incomes for working families. Newspaper journalists spent countless hours in red state diners trying to probe the psyche of Trump voters as if they were unknowable mysteries, instead of people who regularly expressed exactly who they were and what they were about.

Even so, the American media establishment was blindsided by Trump’s 2016 victory, and vastly underestimated his ability to carry out his far-right agenda as president. While he was in the White House, many in the press fell back upon euphemisms and false equivalencies, as Perry Bacon, Jr. wrote recently in the Washington Post: They “played down Trump’s radicalism to appear neutral and objective, to get access to Trump and his top aides or to appeal to Republican officials and consumers.” And even now, they continue to curry favor with Trump and traffic in the rhetoric of “both sides”—as if there is more than one side to bigotry.