It
feels like we’re constantly bombarded with information these days, and it’s hard to
know what’s true and what’s not. But guess what? This isn’t a new problem. Way
back in the 18th and 19th centuries, American newspapers were notorious for being
biased, full of rumors, personal attacks, and even outright lies. Even a big
name like Benjamin Franklin wasn’t above publishing hoaxes and propaganda. Then,
in the 1830s, the “penny press” came along, and their whole business model was
built on sensationalism—think clickbait, but before the internet! Even into the
20th century, powerful publishers like William Randolph Hearst used newspapers to
push their own political agendas, often without much concern for accuracy. It was
a wild west of information, much like how it can feel today.
However, something
shifted significantly in the 20th century. Journalism started to grow up,
becoming a real profession. Reporters and editors put in place some really
important practices to build trust with their readers. They created a clear
separation between news and opinion, committed to being objective, established
rules for anonymous sources, implemented editorial reviews, and introduced
things like correction policies and fact-checking. These measures weren’t
perfect, but they worked. Mainstream news outlets earned a level of public
trust that, for a good while, was solid. Remember Walter Cronkite? He was known
as “the most trusted man in America” because people truly believed in the news
he delivered. It was a golden age for credible reporting, where a strong foundation
of journalistic ethics helped people make sense of the world.
Sadly, that trust
has taken a huge hit over the last twenty years. Part of it is because we’ve
become so politically divided, but a huge factor is the explosion of new
technologies. First came the internet, then social media, then smartphones, and
now artificial intelligence (AI). Each of these has shaken up how we get and
share information. At first, some experts were excited, thinking these new tools
would make information more accessible to everyone. But with so much news,
information, and claims constantly flooding in, it’s become nearly impossible to
verify everything. It’s like trying to drink from a firehose! And in this chaotic
environment, it’s incredibly tough for serious, credible journalism to stand out
and grab our attention. We’re drowning in content, and it’s hard for the good
stuff to swim to the surface.
Among all these
disruptions, AI feels like the most unsettling, both because it can create so
much misinformation and because its deceptions can be so convincing. Imagine
this: one fake news operation, backed by Russia, used generative AI to pump out
2.4 times more articles every day, and they could cover a much wider range of
topics. It’s not just text either; AI can create incredibly realistic “deepfakes”
—fake audio and video clips that look and sound just like real people. And it
can unleash hordes of bots that mimic real human behavior, sometimes even
deliberately misspelling words to seem more authentic. AI is like a magician
creating illusions on an industrial scale, making it incredibly hard to tell
what’s genuine and what’s a sophisticated fabrication. It’s a game-changer in
the world of deception, raising the stakes for everyone trying to find truth.
But AI isn’t
working in a vacuum; it relies on all the infrastructure that came before it.
Social media platforms, for example, are the superhighways that allow false
content to spread incredibly fast and wide to millions of people simultaneously.
And here’s the kicker: the algorithms built into platforms like TikTok, YouTube,
and Instagram are constantly filtering what we see, often pushing us into
narrow cultural and ideological “echo chambers.” This makes it harder for us to
encounter information that might challenge what we already believe. If you
already dislike a politician, seeing a deepfake of them doing something awful
will be far more believable and impactful. So, AI creates incredibly potent new
content on a massive scale, but social media platforms are the delivery system,
and their algorithms precisely target us with content we’re least likely to
question. It’s a perfect storm where advanced deception meets personalized
delivery, making us incredibly vulnerable.
So, here we are, in a
time of deep skepticism and even disbelief. Almost everyone has paused recently
and thought, “Is that really true? Did that person actually say that?” While a
healthy dose of skepticism is good, we’re facing an epidemic of distrust that’s
eating away at our ability as a society to have meaningful conversations based
on shared facts. Everyone involved in informing the public—journalism, big tech
companies, universities, and the scientific community—has a massive amount of
work to do to earn back public trust. It’s a monumental challenge, a collective
responsibility to rebuild the foundations of shared understanding that are
critical for a functioning society. Without it, reasoned debate gives way to
constant suspicion and division, making it almost impossible to address the
complex issues we face.