ALTERNATIVE FACTS

Kellyanne Conway isn’t the first person in the history of the world to try to make something sound better than it is. We’ve all been there at some point in our lives – posting shiny, happy, filtered photos of our shiny, happy, filtered lives on Instagram; making ‘yum yum’ noises at our friends’ cooking, whilst hoping they haven’t noticed us scraping it into the nearest plant pot; telling your crush how much you really loved that playlist they made for you full of panpipe classics…. No really… it was… uh... interesting….

Depending on your level of interest in American politics, you may or may not know who Kellyanne Conway is. Previously Trump’s campaign manager, she is currently serving in the role of Counselor to the President – although, given the Byzantine and ever-fluctuating nature of the Trump administration, by the time you read this, she may have joined the 20+ people already sacked by Trump since he took office in 2017.

Kellyanne Conway, it’s fair to say, has a difficult job. On the 22nd January 2017, she was doing an interview with the press, where she had to defend a blatant lie put forward by Sean Spicer (another of Trump’s since-fired cronies), about the number of people who turned up to watch Donald Trump become officially inaugurated as the 45th President of the USA. Sean Spicer had claimed that Trump had drawn “the largest audience to ever witness” a president being sworn in. When a journalist asked her why Spicer had lied – it’s proven that Barack Obama had a much bigger crowd – Kellyanne Conway replied with a phrase that has gone down in history.

“Sean Spicer, our Press Secretary, gave alternative facts.”

And there you have it. Not lies. Not blatant falsehoods. Not insulting the intelligence of the American people with demonstrable untruths.

Alternative facts.

If you’re wondering what the big deal is, put it this way. The spokesperson for Trump, and therefore the spokesperson for America in many situations, told a bare-faced lie. Kellyanne Conway then defended this in a spectacular display of Orwellian rhetoric. (In case you don’t know, Orwell was a guy who lived a while ago and wrote a load of terrifying books about what a dreadful dystopian future would look like. Spolier alert: it looks a lot like ours.)

“So what,” I hear you say. “A politician uses some slippery words. Woo hoo. The fact that senior members of the White House team lied and defended that lie with more lies isn’t going to affect my life.”

Except it will, and it has.

You see, the ‘alternative facts’ phrase struck such a chord with people is because it links in with the ‘post-truth’ society in which we find ourselves living today. In a post-truth society, the facts are secondary, if important at all. What matters in a post-truth society is appealing to people’s emotions, and manipulating people to make them feel a certain way. It’s the trend for post-truth politics that (in part) led to the UK going to war in Iraq; that has made countries like Australia and the USA cancel their policies on protecting the environment; that allows hoax articles and fake news to spread unquestioned on the internet.

If you still don’t think any of this matters, you’re probably someone who’ll fall for the lies, deception and spin that the establishment are relying on you to fall for. And you’ll no doubt have a blissfully happy life, wallowing contentedly in ignorance, believing that everything the media tell you is true.

Or is that an alternative fact?

Challenging 1. Name FOUR FACTS which you learn about the Trump administration from the second paragraph of this information sheet.

2. Name ONE example of an alternative fact listed in this article.

3. What does ‘post-truth’ mean?

4. Highlight all the adjectives in this article.

5. Name TWO roles that have been carried out by Kellyanne Conway as mentioned in the article.

6. Write out the phrase which contains a rule of three.

7. List THREE features of this text that prove that its purpose is to inform the reader.

8. Highlight all the adverbs in this article.

Mega Challenging 1. Name FOUR things that you have inferred about alternative facts from the first paragraph of this information sheet.

2. What kind of tone is established in this article? Provide examples. Why do you think the writer chose to adapt this tone?

3. What do we mean by ‘dystopian’ and why would the writer use it to describe a post-truth society?

4. Highlight all the abstract nouns in this article.