Most of the whitewashing complaints I've seen are from people who just aren't familiar with journalistic language. (Understandable, if you're only into politics because Trump is making such a mess of things!)

In non-journalistic contexts, when person A describes a series of events matter-of-factly from person B's perspective, they're implicitly vouching that the perspective makes sense and B acted reasonably. Otherwise who cares what Person B thinks? But reporters often have to cover Persons B whose perspectives are important to understand (because they're very powerful) yet nonsensical and unreasonable. It's very hard to square this circle for readers who aren't familiar with the problem.