On Sunday, Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation’s editor and publisher, appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter to criticize leading media outlets for their failure to confront politicians’ “misstatements” as outright lies, and especially for shortcomings in coverage of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Vanden Heuvel observes that the “post-truth” paradigm in American politics isn’t a new one—it dates at least to the run-up to the Iraq War, when Dick Cheney and others’ discourse around weapons of mass destruction was used to mislead the public into supporting military action.

“The system itself leads to a politeness that, in these times, I don’t think we can afford,” vanden Heuvel said, pointing out that many media outlets’ parent corporations do business in Washington and have a vested interest in nonconfrontation.

“There is an art form called the big lie,” she added.

—Daniel Moattar