On a Saturday in Istanbul, far from the carefully choreographed handshakes and official cameras, two senior officials sat down to talk about something that affects nearly everyone on earth: how to tell the truth in a world increasingly flooded by lies. Mohammed Idris, Nigeria’s minister of information and national orientation, and Burhanettin Duran, the head of Turkey’s directorate of communications, met on the sidelines of the TRT World Forum, an annual gathering that draws journalists, policymakers, academics and media professionals from dozens of countries. The official agenda was media cooperation. But the conversation that unfolded went far deeper, touching on…

On the morning of 7 November, anyone scrolling through social media in Poland might have believed the constitutional order was ending. A video clip, shared thousands of times, appeared to show President Karol Nawrocki delivering a grim national address about the Supreme Court’s latest ruling. In another video, a female Constitutional Tribunal judge seemed so furious that she slammed a folder onto her desk, announced that she had lost all faith in the system, and walked out of the courtroom in tears. The only problem is that none of these moments ever happened. The faces were real; the words and…