Pollak: The Atlantic Hit Piece Is a Hint of Democrats’ Orwellian Future

Joel B. Pollak 6 Sep 2020

The Atlantic hit piece on President Donald Trump last week used four anonymous sources to allege that he had disparaged dead World War I soldiers two years ago. Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin then claimed to have “confirmed” parts of the story — though not its main allegation — based on two anonymous sources. The entire story failed to meet basic journalistic standards. But it is a sign of things to come — particularly if Democrats win in November, which is the Atlantic‘s goal.  Two, or even four, anonymous sources can be used to claim absolutely anything. The Atlantic described them as “four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day.”

Notably, we are not told that they personally heard Trump say what the Atlantic alleges he said — they just have “knowledge of the discussion.” Someone who has “knowledge” of a discussion is a second-hand source, or worse. The point is there is no way to know if the sources are credible, or if the story is just made up. It turns out that we do actually have some very good historical sources that dispute the Atlantic story. These include the 11 eyewitnesses who have gone on the record to deny the president said what the Atlantic alleged, but they also include other sources..............

In 1942, George Orwell wrote:

Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’.

Orwell would later develop this insight in his novel 1984, where the ruling party rewrote history as needed for its interests. “Who controls the past controls the future,” he wrote..............More @ Breitbart News