I look at the news and I see almost ubiquitous low-grade dishonesty. It's not that the people writing it were deliberately trying to lie, for the most part; it'

I look at the news and I see almost ubiquitous low-grade dishonesty. It's not that the people writing it were deliberately trying to lie, for the most part; it's that they wanted to persuade, or just push a worldview, and very few people really care all that much about being honest except in the abstract. From left to center to right, and to all corners of whatever political compass you favor, the people writing the news are usually spinning things in order to manipulate you. Fact checking probably helps, but it's easy enough to deceive without literal lies if you have any skill with words. Institutional reputability may help for a while, but any institution with a reputation for truth has an incentive to slowly burn that reputation by bending the truth just a little bit, and then a bit more, and so on. And of course every side angrily accuses every other side of being dishonest, and they're all technically right. I can't resist quoting Lord Vetinari from Discworld: ---- “I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people,” said the man. “You’re wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.” He waved his thin hand toward the city and walked over to the window. “A great rolling sea of evil,” he said, almost proprietorially. “Shallower in some places, of course, but deeper, oh, so much deeper in others. But people like you put together little rafts of rules and vaguely good intentions and say, this is the opposite, this will triumph in the end. Amazing!” He slapped Vimes good-naturedly on the back. “Down there,” he said, “are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don’t say no."