Truth For Sale

We live in a peculiar moment in history. Never before have we had such immediate access to so much information so readily, and never before has the truth felt so slippery. When the BBC's director-general and head of news resign over a misleading edit of a politician’s dubious speech, when AI-generated Amazon reviews outnumber genuine ones, when politicians across the spectrum face accusations of corruption and foreign interference, we're forced to confront an uncomfortable question: can we trust anything anymore? And perhaps more fundamentally: does objective truth even exist, or are we all just narrating and viewing our own versions of reality?

The Crumbling Pillars

For generations, certain institutions served as pillars of trust. The BBC, with its reputation as "Auntie Beeb", was synonymous with impartial reporting. I for one naturally tend to trust it and its news coverage. Yet in November 2025, the broadcaster found itself embroiled in a scandal that led to the resignation of its top leadership. A Panorama documentary had spliced together parts of Donald Trump's January 6th speech that were delivered nearly an hour apart, creating the misleading impression that he directly called for violent action. The edit wasn't caught until a former editorial adviser's internal memo was leaked to The Daily Telegraph.

What made this particularly damaging wasn't just the error itself, but what it represented. Here was one of the world's most trusted news organisations, making an edit that fundamentally altered the meaning of a speech, broadcast just before a presidential election. Trump has now initiated a billion-dollar lawsuit, claiming the BBC had tried to interfere in the election (because the American public are obviously hugely influenced by the BBC!). Whether or not the edit was intentional, the damage to credibility was immediate and severe.

But the BBC's troubles go deeper. The leaked memo also raised concerns about BBC Arabic requiring over 200 corrections following complaints, and alleged that producers of historical programs preferred non-expert academics who provided quotable soundbites on racism and prejudice: seemingly chasing headlines rather than a balanced story. The picture that emerges is of an institution struggling under the weight of political pressure, financial constraints, and the impossibly high standards expected of it.

The Political Minefield

If traditional media struggles with truth, politics has become a hall of mirrors. Consider the recent case of Nathan Gill, former leader of Reform UK in Wales. In November 2025, Gill was sentenced to ten and a half years in prison for accepting bribes from a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician to promote pro-Russian views in the European Parliament. Police discovered his scheme when they stopped him at Manchester Airport attempting to board a flight to Russia, finding cash and incriminating messages discussing "Xmas gifts" and "postcards": code for payments.

This wasn't just your everyday corruption either. Gill appeared on a now-banned Ukrainian TV channel with pro-Russian leanings, criticising investigations into a Kremlin ally, and helped organise a Strasbourg event promoting a so-called peace plan for Donbas, one which Putin himself praised on Russian television the following day. Here was a British politician, democratically elected, actively working to undermine his own country's interests while receiving foreign payments. Not a good look and one which makes one wonder how much deeper such corruption goes.

Reform UK has faced other credibility issues too. James McMurdock, elected as a Reform MP in 2024, failed to disclose before his election that he had been convicted of assaulting his ex-girlfriend in 2006, having kicked her four times outside a nightclub. When The Times later revealed that McMurdock had claimed £70,000 in Bounce Back business loans during COVID through companies with negligible assets, he suspended himself from the party and eventually left to sit as an independent.

These aren't isolated incidents. They're symptoms of a broader erosion of accountability and trust in political institutions. And yet Reform UK is riding high in the polls and being talked about as the only credible alternative to the Labour government.

The Bot Invasion

While traditional media and politics wrestle with credibility, online spaces have become something else entirely: a battleground where distinguishing human from machine, real from fake, has become nearly impossible.

Take Amazon reviews. Most of us consult them before making a purchase, trusting the collective wisdom of previous buyers. Personally, unless the average score is getting to 4+ stars I am deeply sceptical of the product. Over 4 stars however and I am interested enough to take a closer look. But that trust is increasingly misplaced. Amazon itself blocked over 200 million suspected fake reviews in 2022, yet third-party research found that 61% of electronics reviews, 63% of beauty reviews, and 64% of supplement reviews showed signs of being fake or unreliable in 2025. Some estimates suggest roughly 30% of all online reviews globally are fake.

The economics make this problem inevitable. Research shows companies investing $250,000 in fake reviews generated sales exceeding $5 million, a staggering return on investment. During the pandemic, as many as 4.5 million retailers purchased fake reviews through Facebook groups. AI has made the problem exponentially worse; large language models can now generate reviews that mimic human writing styles, include plausible details, and even sprinkle in mild criticism to avoid detection. 

And this isn't limited to products. The same technology that generates fake Amazon reviews can flood social media with bot accounts pushing political narratives, amplifying division, and drowning out genuine human conversation. When you argue with someone online, can you be certain you're arguing with a person?

The Need for a Story vs. The Truth

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of our current crisis isn't deliberate deception, but rather our psychological need for narrative coherence, our tendency to shape information into stories, even when reality is messy and ambiguous.

The BBC Panorama edit is instructive here. It's entirely possible that no malicious intent existed, that an editor, working under deadline pressure and trying to create a compelling documentary, made cuts that "streamlined" Trump's speech into something more dramatically satisfying and carried the overall meaning correctly. The problem is that dramatic satisfaction and factual accuracy don't always align. Trump's actual speech was rambling and contradictory, as his speeches often are, and the soundbite world of news simply can’t cover all of it. The edit made it clearer, but in doing so, it fundamentally misrepresented what he said. Editing and context can be everything.

This isn't unique to the BBC. Every news organization faces the same tension between telling a compelling story and reflecting messy reality, as well of course of trying to attract eyeballs or sell newspapers. Journalists are trained to find the narrative arc, to identify heroes and villains, to create coherence from chaos, ultimately to grab our intertest. But what if reality doesn't have a neat narrative? What if the truth is boring, contradictory, or unsatisfying or simply too long for the TikTok generation to pay attention?

Does Truth Even Exist?

This brings us to the philosophical heart of the matter. When we talk about "truth," what do we even mean? There's a fashionable postmodern position that truth is entirely subjective, that we all construct our own realities through the lens of our experiences, biases, and identities. A believer sees the burning bush as a sign from God, an atheist sees an act of arson or a wildfire about to consume the heathland.

The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa explored this problem brilliantly in his 1950 film Rashomon. Four witnesses to a samurai's death each tell completely different versions of what happened, not because they're intentionally lying (though some might be), but because their perspectives, motivations, and self-interest fundamentally shape what they saw and how they remember it. The bandit paints himself as a heroic lover, the wife as a victim seeking justice, the dead samurai (speaking through a medium) as an honourable suicide. Even the supposedly neutral woodcutter who discovered the body has his own agenda. By the film's end, we're left uncertain what actually happened, but certain that something did.

This is the Rashomon effect: the same event, filtered through different consciousnesses, becomes multiple incompatible truths. It's not that objective reality doesn't exist, the samurai is definitely dead. But our access to that reality is so mediated by perspective that we can never fully escape our own viewpoint. A Conservative voter and a Labour voter watching the same Prime Minister's speech will genuinely perceive different things, filtered through their pre-existing beliefs.

But pushed to its extreme, this view becomes paralysing. If all interpretations are equally valid, then there's no basis for preferring BBC News over Russian state media, no reason to trust scientific studies over anecdotes, no grounds for calling anything a lie. Most of us instinctively reject this radical relativism, we know that some statements are simply false, that some sources are more reliable than others, that expertise matters. And even further, is it right to give equal airtime and potential credence to positions that are patently untrue: think Brexit here and the respect shown to the Brexiteer claims stuck on the side of a bus which of course have never materialised. Whilst at the same time Michael Gove commented that the public were fed up with experts.

A more nuanced view recognizes both objective facts and interpretive layers. There are facts: Trump did give a speech on January 6, 2021. The BBC did edit that speech. Gill did receive payments from a foreign actor. But layered on top of those facts are interpretations: What did Trump mean? Was the BBC edit a mistake or deliberate? What were Gill's true motivations? These interpretations are where our biases and prejudices inevitably creep in.

The challenge is holding both truths simultaneously: that objective reality exists, but that our access to it is always filtered and partial. 

Who Can We Trust?

So where does this leave us? If the BBC can mislead, if politicians can be bought, if half of online reviews are fake, if our own cognitive biases distort everything we perceive and the internet reinforces our views rather than challenging them, who can we trust?

The uncomfortable answer is: no one completely, and everyone partially.

Traditional news outlets, despite their flaws, still employ fact-checkers, editors, and legal teams that create at least some accountability. The BBC's scandal is actually evidence the system works: an internal adviser raised concerns, they leaked, leadership resigned. That's accountability, even if it comes after the fact and too late. But consume multiple sources, especially those with different political leanings. The truth often emerges in the gaps between competing narratives.

Original sources matter. When possible, access primary documents, full speeches, complete studies. The BBC's edit problem arose because people couldn't easily compare the documentary's version with Trump's actual speech. When you can review original sources, you're less vulnerable to editorial manipulation. The question however is whether our short term attention spans will do this or take the lazy way out.

Follow the money. Gill's corruption became clear when investigators examined his finances. Amazon's fake review problem exists because of economic incentives. Understanding who profits from a particular narrative often reveals its reliability.

Cultivate epistemic humility. Recognise that you might be wrong. The smartest people hold their beliefs provisionally, always willing to update based on new evidence. This is often portrayed as weakness, but surely it is strength. When new facts arise, review your position. Certainty is seductive but dangerous, it makes you a perfect target for confirmation bias.

Look for expertise, but verify. Experts are generally more reliable than laypeople, but expertise can be weaponized. The BBC memo alleged that producers sometimes preferred non-expert academics who provided quotable soundbites rather than genuine experts with more nuanced views. Real experts acknowledge uncertainty and complexity; charlatans offer simple answers.

Escaping the Echo Chamber

Perhaps the most pernicious feature of our information landscape is algorithmic curation. Social media platforms, news aggregators, and even search engines show us content based on what we've previously engaged with. The result is a feedback loop: we see content that confirms our existing beliefs, which strengthens those beliefs, which leads the algorithm to show us more confirming content. 

Breaking out requires conscious effort:

Actively seek out viewpoints you disagree with. Not to hate-read or find ammunition, but to genuinely understand. Subscribe to publications across the political spectrum. If you're left-leaning, occasionally read The Telegraph. If you're right-leaning, read The Guardian. Listen to podcasts hosted by people you disagree with. I did this recently when The Telegraph offered a cheap online subscription.  Mainly it was the cheap access to news that attracted me, but I also realised it was a good way to “know your enemy”. It wasn’t all bad, and gave me a chance to shake up the comments sections every so often.  

Use different platforms and tools. Don't rely solely on social media for news. Visit news websites directly rather than clicking through algorithm-curated feeds. Use private browsing or different search engines occasionally to see what results appear when they're not personalized to your history.

Engage with long-form content. Books, long articles, and documentaries (even flawed ones like Panorama) force you to engage with complexity in ways that tweets and headlines don't. Algorithmic curation particularly favours short, emotionally charged content. Longer formats resist this and give a depth and nuance that is important.

Talk to actual humans with different views. Not online arguments, actual conversations with friends, family, colleagues who see the world differently. It's harder to caricature someone when you know them personally. Although do be careful about creating a family feud!

Question your own reasoning. When you encounter information that confirms what you already believed, be extra sceptical. Our minds are quick to accept confirming evidence and slow to accept challenging evidence. Reverse this bias.

Living With Uncertainty

Perhaps the hardest lesson is accepting that we must make decisions despite incomplete information and irreducible uncertainty. We can't wait for perfect clarity, it isn't coming. The BBC will continue making mistakes. Politicians will continue being corrupt. Bots will keep flooding the internet. Our own biases will keep distorting our perception. It’s a jungle out there and in here….you have to accept that.

But democracy, science, and human progress all depend on our ability to navigate this uncertainty without succumbing either to paralysis or to false certainty. We must trust provisionally, verify constantly, and remain humble about our own limitations. The more you know etc etc….

Truth exists, not as something we can fully grasp, but as something we can approximate ever more closely through honest inquiry, open debate, and willingness to be wrong. In an age of deepfakes and bot armies, that commitment to truth-seeking, however imperfect, is more precious than ever. And approximate truth may be the best we can attain given we have no source of absolute truth.

So, the question isn't whether we can trust any single source. The question is whether we can build systems, in media, in politics, in our own thinking, that inch us closer to truth over time, despite all the forces pushing us toward deception. The answer, history suggests, depends on whether enough of us are willing to do the hard, unglamorous work of checking sources, admitting mistakes, and engaging across divides. And, of course thinking and questioning.

That work and that scepticism has never been more important than today.

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Steve Robson is a lapsed academic, sometime transaction banker and existential son who spends his time between Liverpool Street banking, arthouse cinemas and French cafes. A true believer that the unexamined life is not worth living and living proof that there is never an angst too far, he somehow manages to believe in nothing aside from a Camus inspired philosophy of human salvation and love, his hero’s passion for the beauty of an indifferent earth and more personally the élan and elegance of the Roger Federer backhand