538:

That’s not the only problem. Trump also challenges the media’s notion of what it means to be “objective.” Among other things, Trump has frequently invoked misogyny and racism; he has frequently lied, and he has repeatedly encouraged violence against political protesters. As far as we’re concerned at FiveThirtyEight, these are matters of fact and not opinion and to describe them otherwise would make our reporting less objective. Other news outlets will bend over backward to avoid describing them in those terms, however.

An underappreciated problem is that Trump’s candidacy is relatively lacking in precedent, which means we’re all trying to figure this out as we go along. Traditional journalists have had trouble covering Trump, but so have empirically-minded ones like us here at FiveThirtyEight. We laid long odds against Trump getting this far, in large part because no similar presidential candidate has done so since primary and caucus voting became widespread in 1972.

Put another way, Trump has hacked the system and exposed the weaknesses in American political institutions. He’s uncovered profound flaws in the Republican Party. He’s demonstrated that third-rail issues like racism and nationalism can still be a potent political force. He’s exploited the media’s goodwill and taken advantage of the lack of trust the American public has in journalism. Trump may go away — he’s not yet assured of winning the GOP nomination, and he’ll be an underdog in November if he does — but the problems he’s exposed were years in the making, and they’ll take years to sort out.