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Trustworthy Supply of Information

Posted on 08/04/25 in Computing/Internet, Politics, Trust

In an extract from my forthcoming book Blockchain Politics, I describe the characteristics of a trustworthy supplier of information or news. These characteristics don’t seem too difficult to navigate. The problem may well be that demand for misinformation is actually stronger than supply.

How can information suppliers be as trustworthy as possible to the widest range of people? Trustworthy information suppliers go beyond their commitment to the truth. A conspiracy theorist who believes that the world is being run by shape-shifting lizards is no doubt sincere, and wishes to persuade others from the best of motives, but – since the world is patently not so run – she is hardly a trustworthy source. A rough set of guidelines setting out the commitments an information provider should make to a wide audience should include:

(i) Provide information even if it might be disappointing or disillusioning to the supplier, and encouraging to opponents.

(ii) Search for reliable evidence from dependable sources, and, where a source is not known to be trustworthy, test its claims.

(iii) Be sceptical (i.e. not automatically trusting) of all information, even that which it favours.

(iv) Be properly respectful, if not deferential, to relevant acknowledged expertise.

(v) Try to avoid vocabulary or presentational effects that might sway the reader, or provoke particular positive or negative reactions, without a justification in terms of content.

(vi) Be respectful of the possibility of alternative views, without necessarily giving them credence.

(vii) Do not try to micromanage the reader’s response.

(viii) Nurture and protect a reputation across partisan divides for trustworthy reporting, based on the highest standards of public and collective epistemology.

(ix) Be prepared to acknowledge fallibility, by following up criticisms, publishing admissions of error, or explaining conclusions in more detail, where feasible and reasonable.

These nine measures would have to be supported by a business model (and compete with all sorts of clickbait), but in aggregate they set out an ideal of trustworthiness. They also demand managerial intervention – they are not amenable to automation, so that the human editor cannot be disintermediated.

If the provider is subsidised by the state, it may be hard for it to resist a political steer. If it is independently-financed, then it is likely that providers for business consumers will be the most trustworthy, since investors risk losing money if they are misinformed. They care! Providers for the general public may have to compete with other forms of diversion, and so may be more likely to judge information on its entertainment value. Ideologically-slanted providers may provide biased news, as readers/viewers are not materially affected by false or misleading stories. But even where the provider is biased because funded by the state or ideologically partisan, it can still be trustworthy according to principles i-ix.

Trustworthy providers will sustain and signal trustworthiness to a wide audience, rather than a narrow, partisan group, but the trustworthiness principles neither assume a neutral or disinterested view, nor preclude attempting to persuade the reader of the merits of a particular view. Nothing about the nine commitments rules out a partisan channel. There is a difference between those who wish to persuade readers using reason and argument, and those who wish to provoke readers using the techniques of advertising, cognitive psychology, public relations, rhetoric, sophistry, manipulation, and at worst misinformation.

The situation certainly shouldn’t be exaggerated to support censorship or regulation of news media. For example, many, especially the young, seem to trust information from social media almost as much as they do professional news organisations. This is an attitude that they need to grow out of, and probably will, but it may not matter very much if they don’t. It may be that those who now get their news from a cartoon fish on TikTok got no news at all when it had to be sought out in newspapers or at set times on broadcast TV. Was that better or worse than our current situation? Probably worse.

Returning to the pre-Internet days is not a runner, but the partisanship, mistrust and Manichaeanism of politics, journalism and academia is the part of the current malaise that can probably be most easily jettisoned by audiences, if not by successfully managing our anger, by rediscovering the value provided by information intermediaries. This may already be happening – as social media companies have pivoted to entertainment, the proportion of people who read news on them has been falling in the mid-2020s. Many users are migrating from open networks with their clickbait to closed groups on messaging apps such as Telegram and WhatsApp. These are unmoderated, but at least the presentation of news need not be influenced by sensationalism.

We generally respond to crises in trust neither by carrying on as usual, nor by ceasing to trust, but by reorientating to new circumstances, and positing (however hopefully) a new, stable normal. It is quite possible that as awareness of misinformation spreads, this is happening in the information space.

Certainly, since the demand for misinformation exceeds supply, attempting to cut off supply won’t work, for exactly the same reason that the War on Drugs has failed. Tackling demand, including via the provision of trustworthy information, is surely the way to go.