A recent Gallup poll asked Americans whether they believed that mass media reports the news “fully, accurately and fairly.” Only 28% of Americans answered in the affirmative.1 Meanwhile, over a third of Americans get their news from podcasts2—you know, those long form social media posts which anyone can upload that are unshackled from the burdensome vetting processes of institutions. To be clear, I am not here trying to diagnose the cause of this now well known phenomenon. Instead, I would like to reflect on the effect the loss of such trust has on people’s perception of the news.
What is news? In the simplest terms, and when it is stripped of all analysis and opinion (a nearly impossible task), news is an historical fact. Think about it, news is simply the retelling of a factual event that occurred in the (recent) past—the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran. News can also include the retelling of a currently existing fact—Bill Clinton is named in the Epstein files. But both of these types of statements share a common problem: how do you know their veracity?
When it comes to an historical fact, there are only two ways to determine a statement’s veracity. First, one can collect all of the relevant circumstantial evidence and draw the most reasonable conclusion from that evidence. News agencies often do this when researching a story, but the average American can’t because we lack the necessary time and resources. Just try to find the time to read all of the Epstein files yourself, or even how to find them all! Instead, most people are forced to rely on the second standard for determining the veracity of an historical claim—the credibility of the person making the claim. When we have reason to believe that a person or an institution is credible, that provides us with a rational reason to believe the historical claims they make. Our court system almost exclusively relies on these two types of evidence for making the factual findings necessary to rule on a case.
For news that involves currently existing facts, the same two means of determining its veracity apply: the credibility of the speaker or the support of circumstantial evidence. Again, however, due to resource limitations, the average person is forced to rely on the former instead of the latter to determine the veracity of a particular news story.
There must, in turn, be some basis for finding a particular person credible. Someone is deemed credible when we have personal experience of their character (past honesty) or there is circumstantial evidence that confirms their claim. For example, we might have a reason to find someone credible when their story is corroborated by someone else or when a piece of evidence confirms a part of their story. Someone might be found less credible if they have an interest in the claim they are making—a criminal defendant who testifies that he was home alone on the night of the murder.
What happens then when, as appears to be the case today, people have largely lost any faith in the credibility of news institutions? Because we no longer live in embedded communities and the news involves events on a global scale, we do not personally know those who attempt to report the news. Our only contact with them is mediated by a screen. No matter how many hours of podcasts you may listen to, you don’t know Joe Rogan personally. This means that we don’t have past experiences of such people being honest—we don’t have personal experience of their character aside from the curated image presented on their platform of choice. Nor can we corroborate their story because we lack the resources to amass all the necessary circumstantial evidence. It was for those very reasons that institutions were necessary in the first place.3
Without trust that institutions will truthfully relay the facts, people are left without any standard outside the news story itself by which to measure the veracity of such stories. Some few fanatics may attempt to scrutinize the circumstantial evidence themselves, but for the rest of us poor blokes that are kept too busy by the mundanities of life, we must turn elsewhere to determine the truth of the matter asserted. Without any criterion to determine a news source’s credibility we are left with only the plausibility of the story itself. If people are presented with two potential stories without any other basis to determine their veracity, people will, naturally enough, weigh the plausibility of the two against each other and conclude that the more plausible story is true.4
There is nothing irrational about such an approach as far as it goes. However, the problem is people determine the plausibility of a potential factual scenario by reference to their preconceived beliefs regarding the subject matter at issue. For example, if someone believes that a convicted felon is likely to be a repeat offender, then, all things being equal, they will find a version of the story that implicates a convicted felon more plausible than one in which the convicted felon is innocent. From this example we can see that people find certain stories more plausible based on the version of events they want to be true. In fact, this is so well known that in the law we preclude any evidence of someone’s prior convictions from clouding the jury’s judgment.
When it comes to news, however, the story that people find more plausible is often the one which conforms with, or better supports, their ideology. If you think Trump is a fascist, then you will find plausible a story which claims ICE agents are patently ignoring due process and immigrants’ legal rights. If you think ICE is doing the honorable work of preserving the cohesion of American culture, then you will find plausible a story which claims ICE agents are enforcing American immigration law by lawful means. Either of these two stories could be true. The point is that we lack any criteria for determining their truth besides how plausible they appear to us.
Moreover, these are not mere matters of opinion, they are disagreements about factual claims. For that reason, this type of reasoning about the veracity of historical events compounds itself. Having taken the story about ICE agent’s abuse as “true” because it was more plausible, then the next, more extreme claim will appear all that much more plausible given what you already “know” about ICE’s past behavior. And the cycle continues.
The result is that, having lost trust in news institutions, people are left with nothing but the inherent (or subjective) plausibility of the story being presented to determine its veracity. And, while people’s common sense often has a nose for the truth, it is easily clouded by our pride. Without institutions with internal vetting processes or the close personal relationships from real embedded communities (or perhaps a shared set of social mores), the truth will remain a moving target which is determined solely by its correspondence to the reality we already believed was real.
Gallop, “Trust in Media at New Low of 28% in U.S.” (Oct. 2, 2025) https://news.gallup.com/poll/695762/trust-media-new-low.aspx
Pew Research Center, “Podcasts and News Fact Sheet” (Sept. 25, 2025) https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/podcasts-and-news-fact-sheet/?cb_viewport=desktop
This article is not intended as a defense of the particular journalist industry that existed in America between the 1980s and the 2010s. Rather, it is a reflection on the reasons why such institutions were necessary in the first place and the effects of losing trust in those institutions, i.e., when those institutions can no longer serve their function as institutions.
Obviously, the real world is not as clean cut as this. Rarely are people confronted with nothing but the plausibility of two alternative versions of events. People are often presented with some circumstantial evidence to support the story. Additionally, people can be influenced by personality or familiarity with the speaker which might include a time when external facts appeared to confirm that the speaker told the truth. I chose to ignore that complexity here for the sake of brevity but I do not believe that it undermines the central point regarding plausibility.
Great piece, Dario.
Do you think this is a trend that can be reversed? Was this inevitable once technology enabled news to be both global and instantaneous?
Great article, Dario!