‘1984 stuff’: Media rewrite history for new political narrative
Media outlets are altering previous news reports to support 2024 presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who has become the de facto Democratic nominee despite not having won the primary vote.
Immediately after Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the electoral race Sunday, Washington elites tapped Kamala Harris as his replacement. Within hours, the mainstream media corps — which has historically been underwhelmed by Harris — transformed into an unofficial arm of the Harris campaign.
Social media users began criticizing Harris, who has remained deeply unpopular with voters both as a presidential candidate in 2020 and as a vice president. Netizens specifically pointed out Harris’ failure to secure the country’s southern border, despite her appointment as border czar by Joe Biden in March 2021.
“I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border,” Biden said then.
Axios: Harris was never border czar
At the time, mainstream media outlets dubbed Harris the “border czar” and described her as being responsible for immigration at the southern border. This week, however, media outlets rushed to deny that Harris was ever the border czar.
“The Trump campaign and Republicans have tagged Harris repeatedly with the ‘border czar’ title — which she never actually had,” ran a headline from Axios.
A community note on X revealed that Axios itself had referred to Harris as a border czar: “The number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border has reached crisis levels. Harris, appointed by Biden as border czar, said she would be looking at the ‘root causes’ that drive migration,” wrote Shawma Chen in a 2021 article.
Rather than remove the recent article, Axios affixed an editor’s note to the 2021 article saying that it was incorrect to call Harris a border czar:
Editor's note: This article has been updated and clarified to note that Axios was among the news outlets that incorrectly labeled Harris a ‘border czar’ back in 2021.
TIME Magazine, USA Today, and The New York Times also ran similar stories denying that Harris was ever in charge of the country’s southern border.
GovTrack: We didn’t mean it
In another move being described as Orwellian, government tracking site GovTrack backpedaled previous claims it made that Harris was “the most liberal senator.”
A video circulating on social media has resurrected a 2020 interview between Harris and CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, who told Harris, “The nonpartisan GovTrack has rated you as the most liberal senator.” O’Donnell was referring to a 2019 analysis from GovTrack which ranked Harris as the “most politically left” member of the US Senate.
But after a clip of that interview went viral this week, GovTrack removed its 2019 article and pinned an editor’s note to a 2020 article about Harris being tapped as Biden’s running mate:
On July 23, 2024, this article was updated. The text ,“especially given our ranking her as the most left-leaning senator in 2019 based on cosponsorship. But looking at the legislation she’s introduced tells a different story — judge for yourself." was removed. Once the 2019--2020 session of Congress was complete, the statistics for the entire session and for Harris's entire tenure in the senate showed a different story.
However, the statistics for the entire 2019-2020 session did not show a different story. The only change was that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was ranked further left than Harris. As for her entire tenure, the full GovTrack report ranked a few senators to the left of Harris, though she was still placed among the extreme left.
‘1984 stuff’
Social media users made comparisons between the media’s backtracking and George Orwell’s novel 1984, where the government’s Ministry of Truth alters historical records to reflect new political developments.
“1984 stuff,” commented former special operations sniper Ryan Cleckner.
“In order to convince you that Kamala Harris is not the border czar, Axios went and edited an article they printed two years ago,” tweeted political influencer Insurrection Barbie. “You truly live in 1984.”
Other users cited a quote from Orwell’s novel: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
“For all those who have watched George Orwell 1984 one of the things they try to do to disrupt reality and the truth by forcing you to ignore your memory and the record. Axios once published that Biden chose Harris as the Border Czar. Now they want you to forget,” wrote another user.
