Normatively, the phrase may describe the effort to suit one's rhetoric to the widest possible audience, without losing relevant information in the process.
It encrypts morally suspect information in order to dull reaction to it: for example, the phrase "collateral damage" to refer to the manslaughter of innocents.
Orwell wrote a novel, 1984, about a dystopian future controlled through a politically crafted language called "Newspeak."
Comedian George Carlin has famously parodied the phenomenon in his stand-up comedy.
The approach may sound like common sense, but it faces the difficulty of figuring out how to communicate complex and uncommon ideas in a popular way.