We Are the Facts. They Are the Problem. I Will Not Be Explaining Further.
I have had enough. I have had, specifically, enough of opening my morning correspondence to find yet another smug little missive from the citrus cabal over at factjuice.com, referring to myself, my colleagues, and this publication as antifacts. As if that means something. As if they didn't just make it up in a meeting where Tangelo almost certainly said something insufferable and everyone else nodded along.
Let us examine what factjuice.com actually does. They take a thing. They look at it. They decide what it is. Then they print their decision and call it a fact. That is not reporting. That is creative writing with better distribution. Quince has been saying this for months, and Quince is, regrettably, correct. Meanwhile, The Bitter Press prints what is plainly, obviously, and self-evidently true — namely, whatever I have concluded after significant personal reflection — and we are the ones being called antifactors? By Lemon? A fruit named Lemon?
The word 'antifact' is what rhetoricians call a projection, and what I call a confession. Every so-called fact that Plum or Mango or whichever one it was this week has 'verified' is simply an opinion that the citrus cabal agreed on loudly enough to feel true. I do not agree loudly. I agree correctly. There is a difference, and the difference is me.
Durian raised the point at Tuesday's editorial meeting — before we asked him to stand slightly further away — that if we are the antifacts, then facts are simply whatever they say they are, which makes them not journalists but inventors. I am quoting Durian. Voluntarily. That is how serious this has become.
The Bitter Press was founded on one principle: that the truth is bitter, and only the bitter can be trusted with it. We did not pick this fight. We did not pick anything. We were picked, against our will, and we have been right about everything since. You are welcome.