Where does description end and insult begin?

Journalist Terry Moran had worked for ABC News since 1997, but was fired for a social media post in which he described Donald Trump and his contributor Stephen Miller as "world-class haters." Although he deleted the post, the network suspended him and ultimately decided not to renew his contract. Moran defends himself by saying that when he wrote it, he reread it and thought it was true, that it was a careful portrayal of the men he was describing. As context that may help understand—but not justify—the expeditious measure, it's worth keeping in mind that ABC agreed to pay $15 million in compensation because one of its journalists said Trump had been "guilty of rape" (when he was "guilty of sexual assault").

It's obvious that such a post undermines the journalist's perception of neutrality, no matter how much he defines himself as a radical centrist. But when there's a new political class that has nailed a thing to the game board and has no problem insulting whomever it needs to, having to observe aseptic conditions immediately feels like a surrender and a lost battle. Some figures are so anomalous that pointing out their flaws should count as a civic duty, because not calling authoritarianism by its name ends up making things easier for it and whitewashing it by omission. Moran miscalculated the scope of his words, but letting Miller and Trump display their severed heads is a grotesque injustice, because the excesses of the Trumpist clique have far more devastating consequences than a message written with hot fingers and posted after midnight. The regression in the United States is also evident in small surrenders like ABC's.