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Spicer at the press briefing "Alternative facts" was a phrase used by U.S. Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway during a Meet the Press interview on January 22, 2017, in which she defended White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's false statement about the attendance numbers at Donald Trump's first inauguration as President of the United States.
It meant buying into “alternative facts” — a phrase that spurred sales of George Orwell’s dystopian book “1984” when it was coined by a Trump aide. He hailed make-believe economic numbers.
However, reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject. Common sources of bias include political, financial, religious, philosophical, or other beliefs.
When Gawker is the only source for a piece of information, the information would likely constitute undue weight, especially when the subject is a living person. When another reliable source quotes information from Gawker, it is preferable to cite that source instead. In the 2019 RfC, there was no consensus on whether Gawker should be deprecated.
There are many other sources of historical information, but their authority varies. A recent trend is a proliferation of specialized encyclopedias on historical topics. These are edited by experts who commission scholars to write the articles, and then review each article for quality control. They can be considered authoritative for Wikipedia.
The main driver for new ideas is the opening of new primary sources, such as archives. Also new historiographical models come into use. They are usually added to old models, but sometimes older models are rejected or abandoned. For example, scholarship before 1990 will not include post-modern or narrativist methodologies.
For example, a top newspaper is typically unable to match the expertise of a medical journal or computer-technology magazine, but news reports are the most likely to have recent information, for major facts (but not for precise technical details, which are sometimes mistaken in general news reports).
The best sources in basic science are peer reviewed research articles in reputable journals i.e. primary sources by the WP's definition. The basic science equivalent to secondary sources, i.e. reviews of a developing research field, often just contain a brief summary of the primary research and can be colored by the authors' own view point.