CNN's Fareed Zakaria offered a different take on Sunday: The media's serial freakouts are not only justified but necessary.

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Zakaria didn't specifically advocate dramatic historical comparisons, but he argued that the press should not become desensitized by Trump's constant departures from precedent.

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“The media must cover the administration's policies fairly, but it also must never let the public forget that many of the attitudes and actions of this president are gross violations of the customs and practices of the modern American system — that they are aberrations, and they cannot become the new normals,” Zakaria said. “That way, after Trump, the country will not start the next presidency with tattered standards and sunken expectations. Our task is, quite simply, to keep alive the spirit of American democracy.”

Zakaria, who offered the same commentary in a Washington Post opinion column last week, is, of course, an imperfect lecturer on journalistic practices. He has been caught in — and apologized for — multiple acts of plagiarism.

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While Carlson sees the media as existing in a perpetual state of hysteria, there is evidence of the erosion of standards Zakaria warned about. As I wrote after Trump's first address to a joint session of Congress, in February, many journalists who gave the speech positive reviews seemed to be grading the president on a curve. Trump has set expectations of his rhetoric so low that he can appear to soar simply by rising for a moment to the baseline of his predecessors.