It wasn’t 1984, it was 2016, for which evidence continues to grow on a daily basis. Orwell had the concepts, though — “Double-Speak” — where the “Ministry of Truth” was actually the office of lies and propaganda — and so forth.
In the executive branch of our federal government, we have a racist attorney general who lied about a crime wave, the director of the Environmental Protection Agency who is a climate change denier, an education secretary known for her ignorance and a president who has told more than 2,000 lies in his first year in office.
Against this assault on reality, truth and, ultimately, our democratic institutions, our newspapers have had to step up and take the lead.