5

9 comments

[–] Dii_Casses 1 points (+1|-0)

I think part of the problem is the flat dismissal of the idea that alternative facts exist. Of course they do. You can only fit a dozen or so facts into an article, and the number of facts left out are literally infinite. Most are, of course, irrelevant (age of the oldest person on earth, the temperature under my fridge, the apples:potatoes ratio at the nearest grocery store). It is the journalists' job to choose which facts are most salient to a given topic.

And they've chosen more and more poorly over the last 30 years.

[–] [Deleted] 2 points (+2|-0)

Really?

Many journalists scoffed at Spicer’s defiant distortion of the truth, but Senior Counselor to President Trump, Kellyanne Conway, came to his defence with the extraordinary claim that the press secretary had simply been using “alternative facts”

[–] Dii_Casses 0 points (+0|-0) Edited

See back to the part about not trusting government or media. There were axes to grind, and if one person disputed a Trump claim, they dogpiled onto that like it was gospel. And given the infinite array of facts I previously mentioned, it is easy to fish for an expert that says what you want to write.

It was embarrassing to watch.

[–] smallpond 1 points (+1|-0)

You seem to be choosing a convenient, arbitrary definition of what an alternative fact is. Admittedly it's a stupid term, but from the example in the article, an 'alternative fact' is just a euphemism for an obvious lie:

Though a photograph of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration showed far fewer people than those photographed at Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, Trump’s Press Secretary Sean Spicer declared that Trump drew “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe”.

Many journalists scoffed at Spicer’s defiant distortion of the truth, but Senior Counselor to President Trump, Kellyanne Conway, came to his defence with the extraordinary claim that the press secretary had simply been using “alternative facts”.

Was Trump's or Obama's inauguration bigger? Is stating that Trump's was bigger an 'alternative fact' or just a lie?

[–] Dii_Casses 0 points (+0|-0) Edited

Hard to say. There was some debate whether the most-circulated photo was taken during the inauguration or an hour beforehand. Wouldn't be hard; it isn't like they allow a lot of helicopters over central DC. All it would take is one sour press pool photographer (that was a sour bunch indeed), and they really like committing that particular fraud. They did it just yesterday:

https://nitter.net/RawStory/status/1530678562688323586

https://archive.ph/zpKzb

Ultimately, though, I can believe the 93% Democrat city turned out for their diversity hire more easily than Trump supporters coming from everywhere else.

[–] smallpond 1 points (+1|-0)

Even in some alternative universe where the flimsy press conspiracy theory you've put forward were correct: how incompetent and stupid would an honest Spicer have to be to say the crap he did without any pics or justification to back himself up. It's far more likely that he's a lying piece of shit (as is befitting for his job), who trusts in a certain portion of society to lap it regardless of reality. If Trump's rally really was bigger, there would have been plenty of ground-based pics/videos to compare to the aerial ones.

In the end you seem to admit that it was a lie, but I get the impression it doesn't matter to you. Does supporting the tribe come first regardless of inconvenient aspects of reality?

[–] F6F_Hellcat 0 points (+1|-1)

So WTF is the temperature under your fridge? You can't leave us hanging like this.