There's a little race for governor in Virginia, and human-weasel manimal Ed Gillespie is going full metal racist in his ads. Dems always think that "the media" is somehow the preventive measure for this stuff, that when Republicans "go there" the wise old white men of the editorial pages will write sternly worded editorials denouncing them and it will backfire.
It doesn't work that way. Those old white men of the editorial pages are often pretty racist themselves, even if they are offended by "the tone." More than that, they just don't have the power and influence they once did.
Working the refs has value, but there are no rules to this game and no one has the power to enforce the ones you just made up anyway.
