When Information Becomes Infinite, Trust Becomes Scarce

On Saturday February 28th 2026, Donald Trump declared that Khamenei had been killed in US-Israeli strikes. Think back to your reaction when you first heard the news. 

Were you sceptical?

Ordinarily, a claim of that geopolitical magnitude from the sitting US president would command provisional belief.

Why wouldn’t it?

Today, we seldom believe what we first read. To be clear, this is not a character assassination of Trump. It is a reflection of something wider: the collapse of trust in information.

The Reflex of Suspicion

My software developer friend argues that news beyond his immediate proximity is irrelevant. “Why consume chaos you can’t control?” he asked me. It is a rational position in an overly noisy world. Why fill your nervous system with distant disasters, political theatre and endless scandal?

To shrink the news to “keeping people updated” is reductionist. Most life-shaping decisions are made outside the line of sight: in parliament buildings, boardrooms, courts, regulators’ offices, war rooms, procurement meetings and central banks. The forces affecting ordinary life – taxation, housing, interest rates, war, energy costs, surveillance and infrastructure failure – do not stop at the edge of personal experience. 

Journalism makes those forces legible and translates distant power into public understanding. Without it, individuals can only see what directly touches their lives, and whilst this may feel psychologically efficient, it leaves power unscrutinised and systems unexamined.

The prestigious “fourth estate” acts as a civic safeguard against the abuse of power. Good journalism underpins democratic life by helping citizens understand the system that governs them. Without it, people are left with proximity, rumour and instinct. 

For a long time, the media’s authority rested on two assumptions: scarcity of information and a relative monopoly over verification. 

Both have collapsed.

Journalism’s Economic Collapse

Journalism’s crisis began long before AI. Fighting an economic battle for decades, advertising subsidised reporting and funded foreign bureaus, investigative desks, court reporting and long editorial cycles. 

When digital platforms captured both attention and advertising revenue, it cannibalised the financial base of journalism. Newsrooms responded by publishing faster, cheaper, and in greater volume. In a 30 year race for relevance, verification was sacrificed and speed superseded arduous authentication and editorial judgment. 

A profession already plagued with scepticism, the 2011 phone-hacking scandal deepened public suspicion of mainstream media in Britain. Often persecuted akin to paparazzi, journalists were perceived to be selling themselves to publications thriving on ignominy. 

Trapped in a market rewarding immediacy over accuracy and outrage over trust, journalism represented a larger structural shift; a never-ending race for clicks, eyeballs and allusive “online metrics”. Since then, advertisers and brands have fought for relevancy at the expense of the citizens’ right to accurate information.  

Social Media Removed the Gatekeeper

Social media dismantled the gatekeeping power of the press. Politicians no longer needed to cultivate journalists in order to reach the public; they could tweet directly, frame events on their own terms and speak to millions without challenge or context.

Celebrities no longer relied on tabloids for exposure when they could build their own audiences online. Brands became publishers. Influencers became micro-media companies, opinion collapsed into content, and content collapsed into performance.

The effect was not linear. Not only was there more information, but less mediation. The journalist’s traditional role as filter, interrogator and verifier weakened as platforms rewarded emotional immediacy, identity signalling and narrative control. Social media not only sped up the news cycle, but it also rewired who got to shape reality.

Swimming in infinite synthetic content, verification becomes a premium service that readers will soon be willing to pay for. Through powerful forensic tools, watermarking, and source authentication, a human can narrate our world with compassion, intelligence and truth. 

The Age of Infinite Plausibility

A consequence few predicted, AI destroys the value of content abundance and increases the value of trusted verification. Whilst the internet made publishing cheap and AI makes production almost frictionless, content itself loses value. 

Paradoxically, this may increase the value of journalism’s core function. The destabilisation impact of AI could springboard analysers, verifiers and meaning-makers who contextualise complicated global events. In a world that sometimes feels never-ending and doom-inspiring, calming humans could be the voice of reason. 

Local journalism and regional newsrooms previously hollowed out by collapsing revenues are witnessing a resurgence. Empowered by streamlined workflows, the burdens of council meetings, planning notices, court reports and routine civic scrutiny can now be automated with AI. By removing the administrative grind and deployed intelligently, it frees reporters to spend more time creating value: on the ground to collate stories, speaking to sources, and understanding communities – which no model could physically inhabit. 

As a result, AI systems are increasingly deriving authority from the very institutions they appear to threaten. When asked for facts, they tend to lean on established publications, official sources and high-authority domains rather than obscure blogs or anonymous message boards, which reveals something important: even machine-generated answers borrow their legitimacy from human reporting, institutional archives and editorial labour. 

In other words, AI may displace publishers at the interface while simultaneously depending on the journalism underneath the hood.

The New Role of Journalists

Existing inside an economy of interruption and constant bombardment of endless notifications, infinite scroll and permanent commentary, the result has not been greater clarity – but cognitive exhaustion. Our nervous systems are no longer interested in immediacy or infinity. Where we once wanted confirmation of our personal views, we now want meaning, depth and above all else: truth. 

Not all journalists will survive the shift. Those who evolve from narrators to trust architects may well become more powerful than ever. Possessing a trusted voice with enough credibility to cut through synthetic noise will be imperative. After all, we build relationships with people we trust – and the previously-esteemed publisher could well become the vehicle to access them.