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Journalism of Courage
Just a few days old and the Donald Trump administration has been making a lot of news, which is not quite unsurprising. But as the new POTUS and his officials have been trying to project him as a popular choice, arguing about the crowd number that attended his inaugural ceremony and concert, it is getting uglier. And as far Netizens are concerned, they are having a field day trolling an official everytime something not-so-convincing makes it to the public space.
After Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer claimed the crowd at his inauguration was the biggest EVER, not only in America but in the world, Twitterati gave it back with other ‘amazing’ Spicer Facts. While that kept Tweeple busy, another opportunity was handed out by Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway.
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Conway got into a heated debate with the channel’s host Chuck Todd over the White House’s statements about the crowd size at the inauguration. Spicer had argued earlier that the media had “deliberately misled the public” by suggesting that the new POTUS’ inauguration crowd was smaller than that of Barack Obama’s.
In the heated exchange when the host pressed Conway on why the press secretary said a “falsehood”, he was snubbed by her and she slammed him for being “overly dramatic.” She continued to defend Spicer and said, “You’re saying it’s a falsehood, and they’re giving — our press secretary, Sean Spicer, gave alternative facts to that.”
Before Conway could continue further, a baffled Todd interrupted her to ask what she meant by ‘alternative fact’? “Wait a minute. Alternative facts? Alternative facts? Four of the five facts he uttered … were just not true. Alternative facts are not facts; they’re falsehoods,” Todd said.
Soon people could not just overlook this new nomenclature of “falsehood”. In fact, within a few minutes, it became the hottest new question in politics: What are alternative facts? And how different it is from plain blunt facts, rather the truth.
Recently, with the influx of fake news, the world became associated with ‘post-truth’ but alternative fact, well nor yet. Soon the #AlternativeFact created a social media stir with people trying to deduce the meaning, the best thing happened when Merriam-Webster, the company that’s most known for publishing dictionaries took to Twitter to explain to Conway, what her new words could mean. Well, to be honest, it took a dig at her and said, “A fact is a piece of information presented as having objective reality.”
As soon as the linguist expert trolled her, people went crazy with hilarious responses. Sample these.
https://twitter.com/LanceBass/status/823240285681393664
https://twitter.com/arainert/status/823201601347354626
https://twitter.com/ziwe/status/823179009332834304
https://twitter.com/joekeene/status/823543381662040066
https://twitter.com/LinzDeFranco/status/823404864310890496
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