Ever since Kellyanne Conway uttered two impactful words on January 22, American journalism has been in a frenzy. These two words were alternative facts. Since “alternative facts” is a relatively new term, there isn’t an official definition from a reliable source out there yet. Wikipedia’s definition is: “a phrase used by U.S. Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway during a Meet the Press interview on January 22, 2017, in which she defended White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s false statement about the number of people in attendance at Donald Trump’s inauguration as President of the United States.” In other words, it’s a lie used to defend someone else’s false statement.

Some might say that Ms. Conway didn’t lie and that an alternative fact is a different/extra fact. However, what pro-Conway people might fail to understand is that the only reason people are arguing about this is because we have stopped fact-checking because we blindly trust our chosen candidates. If people would have fact-checked, they would have clearly saw the exaggeration of Donald Trump’s inauguration crowd size.

The term “alternative facts” is absurd – it’s just a nice way of saying “lying.” According to Chuck Todd from NBC’s Meet the Press, “alternative facts are not facts – they’re falsehoods.”

“Fact is merely what enough people believe and truth lies only in how fervently they believe it,” said Charles P. Pierce, in his 2009 book Idiot America. This is true about the term

alternative facts, people believed what was said because they don’t fact-check, and they refuse to believe anything else.

Hopefully one day America will get better at fact-checking so situations like this one won’t come up again.