Alternative facts

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Kellyanne Conway (2016)

Alternative Facts ( English alternative facts ) is a formulation of Kelly Anne Conway , Advisor to the US President Donald Trump from 2016 to August 2020. In January 2017 she used this phrase during an interview in the American Political talk show Meet the Press , to false statements of White House press secretary Sean Spicer to justify crowd size during Trump's inauguration in front of the Capitol . In Germany and Austria , “alternative facts” was voted the bad word of 2017.

The statement in the context of the interview

In an interview with Kellyanne Conway on the NBC show Meet the Press , presenter Chuck Todd spoke of statements made by then spokesman Sean Spicer , who claimed on January 21, 2017 that significantly more people were present at Trump's inauguration than his Predecessor Obama. However, this claim has not been confirmed by aerial photographs of both events, nor by public transport counts in Washington, DC. After Todd asked Conway several times in vain to explain why Spicer was making “refutable false claims”, Conway initially criticized the allegedly one-sided representation in the media. Last urged Todd to explain again why the president had asked the White House Press Secretary, one in his first appearance on the podium untruth to say ( "to utter a falsehood"). In doing so, he had undermined the credibility of the entire press department of the White House. Conway said no and said, "Sean Spicer, our press secretary, presented alternative facts." Todd interrupted her and said that alternative facts were false statements. Conway said there was no way to safely quantify crowds and, as the interview progressed, complained about Todd's intention to make them and the new administration look ridiculous. He works as a commentator instead of informing.

References to Trump's advertising psychology

Journalists referred to Trump's business book The Art of the Deal , published in 1987 , in which he described a "truthful exaggeration " as an "innocent form of exaggeration - and [...] very effective form of marketing ". According to ghostwriter Tony Schwartz , who coined the expression according to his own statements, Trump approved it.

background

Sean Spicer during the press conference.

On January 21, 2017, Sean Spicer hosted his first press conference as White House press secretary. He accused the media of deliberately downplaying the size of the audience during Donald Trump's inauguration. More people attended this than ever before. However, all available data spoke against this claim. Aerial photographs showed a significantly smaller audience at Trump's inauguration than when Barack Obama was inaugurated in 2009. On the day of Trump's inauguration at 11:00 a.m., the Washington Metro counted 193,000 passengers significantly fewer than the 513,000 passengers in 2009.

Spicer also claimed that the inauguration was the first time that white flooring was used to explain the visual impression of a smaller audience. In reality, the same flooring was used when Obama's second inauguration took place in 2013. Spicer did not allow questions from the press during the press conference.

Reactions

Accusation of lies and fact check

The press conference by Spicer and Conway's comments on it drew a lot of reactions. Journalist and former New York Times editor Jill Abramson characterized Conway's comments on alternative facts as " Orwellian Newspeak " and alternative facts as lies . The journalist Dan Rather published a criticism of the new presidency on his Facebook page: It is extraordinary times when a presidential spokesman ( Conway) wraps a lie in the Orwellian phrase "alternative facts" and a press officer (Spicer) lies on his first appearance . Facts and truth are not partial, but a cornerstone of democracy.

The New York Times responded with a fact-check of Sean Spicer's testimony on Jan. 23 . She compared photos of the audience of the inauguration of Obama in 2009 and that of Trump in 2017, CNN offered a high-resolution 360 ° panorama display.

Comparison with manipulation techniques in Orwell's novel 1984

Conway's utterance has been compared many times with the manipulation techniques in Orwell's dystopian novel 1984 , particularly Newspeak and Doppeldenk . The reference was allegedly first made in the media by CNN's Reliable Sources . "Alternative facts is a George Orwell phrase," said Washington Post reporter Karen Tumulty. The sales of the novel increased extremely after the interview with Conway. Martin Muno also referred to Orwell in Deutsche Welle and the danger of mixing up the difference between truth and lies and asked whether there was a plan behind Conway's statement.

Comparison with gas lighting

Conway's portrayal of untruths, like Trump's behavior, was interpreted as gaslighting , i.e. as a form of psychological violence or abuse with which victims are deliberately disoriented and manipulated and their self-confidence is gradually deformed or destroyed. The alternativefacts.com website linked to an article in Psychology Today that analyzed gaslighting.

Attack on democracy

Political scientists Nancy L. Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead see the concept of alternative facts as an attack on democracy . This presupposes a public deliberation about politics, which in turn can only take place on the basis of a common understanding of knowledge . Government authorities in management and intelligence agencies , universities , research centers , communities of experts and verantwortunsgbewusste media would work together to generate this knowledge to test, correct and improve. The assumption of alternative facts undermines the concept of such jointly verifiable knowledge, it damages democracy and personal orientation and amounts to making claims on reality and being able to impose them on everyone else through constant repetition.

Attempts at justification

On January 25, Spicer defended the use of the term. In his opinion, the statement had been deliberately twisted by the media to give the impression of being untruthful. There are also contradicting weather forecasts without the need for a lie . He admitted that some of the information he was given was incorrect but could not have known at the time of the press conference.

During the week of the interview, Conway commented on the expression alternative facts . You meant alternative or incomplete information.

According to the Guardian , Breitbart News was the only conservative media outlets to defend Conway's use of the term alternative facts on January 23 . It is a common and accurate expression in a legal context for each party to a dispute to present their own view of the facts to the court . From Trump's perspective from the stands, the crowd appeared larger than it was, and the wrong impression was forgivable. The Guardian commented that a search for the legal term in various online dictionaries was unsuccessful. Breitbart's editor-in-chief Joel B. Pollak also emphasized that neither Trump nor Spicer nor Conway had lied: "They were just presenting their version of events."

Political scientist Robert Stoker of George Washington University pointed out that the term alternative facts can and should be distinguished from untruths. Taking up a statement from Trump, he found that when interpreting general statistical statements on poverty or unemployment, for example, one could arrive at very different figures, depending on which indicators one chose and how one defined the terms. The condemnable form of the use of the expression alternative facts can be recognized by the fact that a rational dispute about the truth of the matter is avoided. Conway's statement was the reason for his presentation. He did not explicitly assign them to the admissible or impermissible form of the expression, but quoted Spicer approvingly, who had said: "Sometimes we can disagree with the facts." ("Sometimes we can disagree with the facts.")

Individual cases

"Bowling Green Massacre"

In a television interview with MSNBC on February 2, 2017, Conway justified the entry bans imposed by the US President with Executive Order 13769 with reference to a " bowling green massacre ", which led to the imposition of an entry ban for Iraqi citizens by the then President Barack Obama have led. The terrorist attack is unknown to most people because the media did not report on it. In fact, two Iraqis were arrested in 2011 in the town of Bowling Green , Kentucky, and charged with attempting to send weapons and money to al-Qaeda in Iraq. In this process, there was a sting operation the FBI . The next day Conway corrected herself that she did not want to speak of a "massacre" in Bowling Green, but of the "terrorists" there.

Conway used the term "massacre" in two other interviews. Conway's formulation was put in context with the term "alternative facts" by the media.

Alleged terrorism incident in Sweden

At an event in Melbourne, Florida on February 18, 2017, Donald Trump addressed the terrorist attacks in Brussels , Nice and Paris and included an alleged incident in Sweden the day before. The Swedish State Department then made an inquiry to the United States government asking for clarification. Donald Trump then said on Twitter that he was referring to a report on US television station Fox News about immigrants. A connection to the “Bowling Green Massacre” and the term “alternative facts” has been established in the media.

In response, the Swedish government published a series of statistics on its Foreign Ministry website against “simplistic or completely erroneous” claims: the only such attack attempt in Sweden dates back to 2010; besides the assassin, there were no other victims. Equally wrong is the claim that the country has increased the number of violent crimes with firearms. Although the number of immigrants has been increasing since the 1990s, the number of acts of violence has decreased and there is no evidence that immigration has led to an increase in the crime rate .

Differentiation from fake news

Alternative facts and fake news are perceived as novel phenomena. The delimitation is not always easy and can be done over the presumed horizon of the author.

In the case of fake news, according to Hanna Steinharter, the author himself is convinced from the start that it is a lie, while the author of alternative facts believes what he says. In addition, alternative facts have at least one minimal connection point in reality (a fact) around which the author builds his own reality. Thus alternative facts are in reality only the author's wishful thinking.

An example of fake news is, according to a Spiegel article, that in February 2017 the rumor was spread in Lithuania that soldiers of the Bundeswehr stationed there had raped a girl. The German journalist Matthias Gebauer is of the opinion that the campaign originated in Russia to discredit the Bundeswehr for its engagement in Eastern Europe. The author of the message himself was also aware that it was a complete lie. This is fake news.

When Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway clearly overstated the number of people present at the inauguration of Trump (fact) in the interview and believed what she said, she gave alternative facts, but not fake news.

Alternative facts as "smoke candle"

The communication scientist Elisabeth Wehling sees the term alternative facts as a clever smoke candle in Donald Trump's strategy. Trump made perfect use of the methods of political framing and also resorted to experts who, among other things , had linguistically prepared the Iraq war .

“For example, one of Trump's smoke candles is 'alternative facts'. Everyone screamed and debated the issue for days while Trump was backing up politics that would be more worthy of the headlines: reducing funding for women's health worldwide, capping healthcare for Americans, reversing Obama's decision against the Keystone pipeline . I am amazed how the media can be lured by Trump's smoke candles. "

Wehling is convinced that Trump and Kellyanne Conway are aware of the falseness of the alternative facts , and she also considers the deliberately incorrect assessment of the number of visitors to be “a Trump smoke bomb that is supposed to distract. And for a test to classify the media: Who repeats the ideas and formulations, who criticizes? "

See also

literature

  • Vincent F. Hendricks and Mads Vestergaard: Reality Lost? On the threshold of post-factual democracy . In: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 67, Heft 13 (2017), pp. 4–10 online
  • Lars Distelhorst: Critique of the post-factual . Capitalism and its after-effects . Paderborn, 2019

Web links

Wiktionary: alternative facts  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Alternative Facts" is the bad word of the year 2017. Der Standard , January 16, 2016, accessed on the same day.
  2. ^ Conway: Press Secretary Gave 'Alternative Facts' . In: NBC News . January 22, 2017 ( nbcnews.com [accessed May 9, 2017]).
  3. ↑ Dylan Stableford: Kellyanne Conway cites 'alternative facts' in tense interview with Chuck Todd over false crowd size claims. In: Yahoo! News. January 22, 2017, accessed January 23, 2017 .
  4. ^ Brian Bennett: Trump aides defend inflated inauguration figures as 'alternative facts'. In: Los Angeles Times . February 22, 2017, accessed January 23, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Aaron Blake: Kellyanne Conway says Donald Trump's team has 'alternative facts.' Which pretty much says it all . In: The Washington Post , January 22, 2017. 
  6. ↑ Conway: Trump spokesman gave 'alternative facts' . In: New York Post , January 22, 2017. 
  7. ↑ Rebecca Sinderbrand: How Kellyanne Conway ushered in the era of 'alternative facts' . Washington Post January 22, 2017, accessed February 16, 2017.
  8. ^ David Graham, 'Alternative Facts': The Needless Lies of the Trump Administration. In: The Atlantic . January 22, 2017, accessed January 22, 2017 .
  9. ^ Jon Swaine: Trump presidency begins with defense of false 'alternative facts' . In: The Guardian , January 22, 2017. 
  10. ↑ Trump aides defend inflated inauguration figures as 'alternative facts' . In: Los Angeles Times , January 22, 2017. 
  11. ↑ "truthful hyperbole [...] It's an innocent form of exaggeration - and a very effective form of promotion". Clarence Page: 'Alternative facts' play to Americans' fantasies . Chicago Tribune, January 24, 2017, accessed February 12, 2017; Erica Werner and Lisa Lerer: GOP Congress grapples with Trump's 'alternative facts' . Detroit News January 24, 2017, accessed February 12, 2017.
  12. ^ Matthias Kolb: New US President - Show off, attack, distract . In: sueddeutsche.de . January 22, 2017. Retrieved January 22, 2017 .
  13. ^ Brian Stelter: White House press secretary attacks media for accurately reporting inauguration crowds - Jan. 21, 2017. In: CNN . January 21, 2017, accessed January 23, 2017 .
  14. ↑ Tim Wallace, Karen Yourish, Troy Griggs: Trump's Inauguration vs. Obama's: Comparing the Crowds. In: The New York Times . Retrieved January 23, 2017 (English).
  15. ↑ Ivo Mijnssen: The parallel world of Trump team: "Alternative facts are lies." In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . January 23, 2017. Retrieved January 25, 2017 .
  16. ↑ 'Alt-fact': Trump's White House threatens was on media over 'unfair attacks'. In: Haaretz , Reuters . January 22, 2017, accessed January 23, 2017 .
  17. ↑ Nicholas Fandos: Fact-checking the White House 'alternative facts'. In: The Seattle Times . January 22, 2017, accessed January 23, 2017 .
  18. ^ Salvador Hernandez: President Trump's Spokesman Just Lied About The Size Of The Inauguration Crowd. In: BuzzFeed . January 22, 2017, accessed January 23, 2017 .
  19. ↑ Chris Cillizza: Sean Spicer held a press conference. He didn't take questions. Or tell the whole truth. In: The Washington Post . January 21, 2017, accessed January 23, 2017 .
  20. ^ Jill Abramson : Sorry, Kellyanne Conway. 'Alternative facts' are just lies. In: The Guardian . January 23, 2017, accessed January 23, 2017 .
  21. ↑ Dan Rather takes to Facebook to blast President Trump's 'alternative facts'. In: Tampa Bay Times . January 22, 2017, accessed on January 23, 2017 (English): “When a spokesman for the President of the United States wraps a lie in the Orwellian phrase“ alternative facts ”. [...] When a press secretary threatens, harasses, lies, reporters during his first appearance at the White House and then leaves the conference without the balls to answer a question [...] Facts and the truth are not partisan. You are the cornerstone of our democracy. Either you stand by them, by us, by our constitution, our history and the future of our nation, or you are against all of that. Everyone has to answer this question. "
  22. ↑ Jennifer Calfas: Dan Rather on Trump: 'These are not normal times'. In: The Hill. January 22, 2017, accessed January 23, 2017 .
  23. ↑ Nicholas Fandos: White House Pushes 'Alternative Facts.' Here are the real ones. In: The New York Times . January 22, 2017, accessed January 23, 2017 .
  24. ↑ Tim Wallace, Karen Yourish and Troy Gruggs: Trump's Inauguration vs. Obama's: Comparing the Crowds. In: The New York Times . January 20, 2017, accessed February 3, 2017 .
  25. ↑ Gigapixel: The inauguration of Donald Trump . 2017 ( cnn.com [accessed February 17, 2017]).
  26. ↑ Guardian staff: Sales of George Orwell's 1984 surge after Kellyanne Conway's 'alternative facts' . In: The Guardian . January 24, 2017, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed February 23, 2017]).
  27. ^ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): Comment: About "alternative facts" in the Orwell state | Comments | DW.COM | 01/30/2017. Retrieved February 24, 2017 .
  28. ↑ Someone bought the 'alternative facts' website and did something utterly perfect with it . In: The Independent . January 31, 2017 ( independent.co.uk [accessed February 23, 2017]).
  29. ^ Nancy L. Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead: A Lot of People Are Saying. The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy . Princeton University Press, Princeton 2019, ISBN 978-0-691-20225-9 , pp. 101 ff. (Accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  30. ↑ Spicer compares 'alternative facts' to getting different weather reports . In: Fox News . January 25, 2017 ( foxnews.com [accessed February 17, 2017]).
  31. ↑ Fact check: The controversy over Trump's inauguration crowd size . In: USA TODAY . January 24, 2017 ( usatoday.com [accessed February 17, 2017]).
  32. ^ A Conversation With Kellyanne Conway: "I'm the Face of Trump's Movement" . In: The Hollywood Reporter . January 26, 2017 ( hollywoodreporter.com [accessed February 23, 2017]).
  33. ^ Even rightwing sites call out Trump administration over 'alternative facts' . In: The Guardian , January 23, 2017. 
  34. ↑ a b 'Alternative Facts': The Media Finds a Meme for the 'Resistance' . In: Breitbart . January 23, 2017 ( Breitbart.com [accessed February 23, 2017]).
  35. ↑ Yes, there are 'alternative facts.' That's different from falsehoods. (Analysis article in The Washington Post , Jan. 31, 2017)
  36. ↑ Two Iraqi Nationals indicted on Federal Terrorism Charges in Kentucky , FBI report dated May 31st 2011, accessed on 7 February 2017th
  37. ↑ In Bowling Green 'Massacre,' FBI Agents Foiled an FBI Terror Plot , posted by Elizabeth Nolan Brown on February 3, 2017 on reason.com.
  38. ↑ Here's what actually happened in Bowling Green , CNN - February 3, 2017, accessed February 7, 2017.
  39. ^ Conway Massaker Fake News, on tagesschau.de, accessed on February 3, 2017.
  40. ↑ FAZ.net February 7, 2017: Trump accuses media of covering up terrorist attacks
  41. ↑ washingtonpost.com February 6, 2017: Kellyanne Conway's 'Bowling Green massacre' wasn't a slip of the tongue. She has said it before.
  42. ↑ Samantha Schmidt and Lindsay Bever: Kellyanne Conway cites 'Bowling Green massacre' that never happened to defend travel ban . In: Washington Post February 3, 2017, accessed February 7, 2017.
  43. ↑ Finn Rütten: "Bowling Green Massacre": Trump advisor invents massacre to defend entry freeze. Stern , February 3, 2017, accessed February 3, 2017 .
  44. ^ "Bowling Green Massacre": Trump adviser invents terrorist attack. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 3, 2017, accessed on February 3, 2017 .
  45. ↑ Philipp Löwe: Trump Adviser: The Massacre That Never Was. Der Spiegel , February 3, 2017, accessed on February 3, 2017 .
  46. ↑ Terrorism: Trump explains controversial Sweden statement. Die Zeit , February 20, 2017, accessed on February 20, 2017 .
  47. ↑ Trump invents incident: #LastNightInSweden. Tagesschau , February 19, 2017, accessed on February 20, 2017 .
  48. ↑ tagesspiegel.de , USA news blog for Friday , February 24, 2017, Max Kuball: Sweden counters Trump's statement on refugees with hard facts (February 26, 2017)
  49. ↑ HANNAH STEINHARTER : FAKE NEWS - PLAYING WITH REALITY In: ONLINEMAGAZIN FOR STUDENTS, January 24, 2017 obligedlektuere.com Playing with reality
  50. ↑ SPIEGEL ONLINE, Hamburg Germany: Operation in Lithuania: NATO suspects Russia behind the fake news campaign against the Bundeswehr - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Politics. Retrieved March 14, 2017 .
  51. ↑ "We're still pissing Trump off" . February 3, 2017 ( tagesspiegel.de [accessed April 7, 2017]).