> This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in-person and around the globe
If "in-person" doesn't mean "physically at the inauguration" what does it mean then? It is not ambiguous.
Spicer made an unsubstantiated claim, and has since been defensively walking it back to the equally unsubstantiated second part of "around the globe."
"The media" is a very broad category, so I am not going to universally defend or attack them. But the Trump administration has simply been making things up and, as of yet, has not backed up any of these statements with evidence.
The media is a bit more hit or miss. It is true that some media outlets seem determined to make fun of Trump no matter what he does. That doesn't give Trump a free pass to make up shit. Obama had to deal with the same crap.
The phrase "alternative facts" too is ambiguous and, in the way it was used by Conway is classical doublethink. Doublethink involves two actions: a public lie and wilful self-delusion. One interpretation (without context) of the phrase "alternative facts" is that the facts are merely unknown and up for debate. But one merely needs to look at a photo of the inauguration to see that the facts are that Obama had higher attendance in 2009. [1] To claim otherwise is a lie.
Another is that the _true_ facts are known, but Conway is explicitly stating: these are the facts which I am telling you to believe. This is the wilful self-delusion.
From 1984:
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. "Reality control," they called it: in Newspeak, "doublethink."
The ambiguity isn't what "in-person" means, it's what "both in-person and around the globe" means. Does it mean "both 1) in person and 2) around the globe (each independently)" or does it mean "both (the total sum) in person and around the globe"?
Obviously the second is more strained, but it's not completely absurd, especially if you allow for the inelegant phrasing common in live briefings.
It's easy to find things like this if what you're really looking for is to start a fight.
On the other hand he spent the whole press conference talking about metro ridership, the national parks service, and the physical event, which leads me to think in context that they weren't talking about tv. Never even mentioned the word tv actually.
>If "in-person" doesn't mean "physically at the inauguration" what does it mean then? It is not ambiguous.
You're right, it's not ambiguous. "In-person and around the globe" is clearly means viewing on TV or online streaming.
You are deliberately ignoring the "around the globe" part to create "alternative facts" of your own.
Charitably, Conway might have meant that Trump's inauguration may have been the largest if TV viewers are counted. Unfortunately, that's not what she said. You can't be both unambiguous and wrong, repeatedly, in any human game (EDIT: and win).
In the original claim, Spicer explicitly claimed Trump's audience was the greatest both in-person and by remote media (and stated I. a way which clearly implied this was beyond debate and supported by incontrovertible evidence), and, in any case, the only metrics I've seen anyone bring out for the revised claim (for which, incidentally, the Administration provided no evidence) also are indicative of it being false (but not absolutely conclusive on that pointz as published metrics aren't available for all media channels, particularly many non-YouTube online channels.)
At best Spicer both seriously misspoke and referenced separate standards when he meant to reference an aggregate and, even so, presented rank hopeful speculation as certain fact.
But even that stretches plausibility considerably.
This is like the media equivalent of bike shedding. Other stuff is complicated so they latched on to that phrase...
If, instead, they'd just said n-thousand people attended, and made some comment about bad weather, the attention would have moved on to the next thing a lot sooner.
And people seem to be reading far to much into it in any case.
What better way to compare attendance of an outdoor event other than photos? There are also DC metro numbers, but they don't seem necessary as we have high-resolution images.
>And people seem to be reading far to much into it in any case.
Seems emblematic of bigger issues. Such as: unwillingness to correct previous mistakes, a penchant for conspiracy theories, ego disrupting day-to-day operations.
Someone posted a good list of possible ways this could be misleading yesterday: http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/there-are-l...
As far as reading too much into it, I meant that the election of the first black president was a much bigger deal then the 40 somethingth white old dude. I'd expect trumps turnout to be lower and I'm not sure why it would be news in the first place.
But that (and many of the questions in that link) are not relevant to the specific question of how many people were at the inauguration. Which is the topic at hand. Those questions would be more relevant in a discussion of drawing other conclusions from the attendance numbers
It's not that big of a deal, and doesn't mean much that there was less attendance. The weather was bad and it was not historically significant because he's not the first black (or anything significant) president ever. So why is he so blatantly lying? He could just move on and it would be no big deal... but instead he makes a very large deal about it, dedicating a special press briefing specifically to make up lies about to explain how the media got it wrong.
For the health of the republic, I'm keen to see the media become the adversary calling out lies, lies, and all damn lies. No matter what they are. Maybe then we can be free of all the lies.
Executive orders, cabinet appointments and apparently agency gag orders left right and centre with more, plus SCOTUS nominees, to come. But all my Facebook feed talks about is rain and lawn coverings.
I think people are taking this and running at breakneck speed without stopping to look at what they actually mean by this.
After watching the first few press conferences and Kelly Anne's interviews where she said that, it seems clear to me they weren't trying to say there were more people physically at the inauguration in their "alternative facts" but what they are referring to specifically is the viewership.
It's very possible they are correct in saying this and I guess their point is "well the media isn't reporting on these facts so we are going to present them ourselves".