The debate over how to fight disinformation in the digital age has divided leading experts and raised thorny questions about free speech and truth on the web.
Should Facebook ban political ads, as Twitter has done, or at least stop exempting politicians from its rules barring misinformation? Should social media platforms ban the "microtargeting" that allows politicians to hand pick narrow audiences while evading public scrutiny? Google recently took steps to limit microtargeting, but political players say that will just cut off small donors and hurt challengers.
Such dilemmas point to what may be the only real solution to the disinformation problem: Educating news consumers. The movement to revive civic learning has focused fresh attention on students' media literacy. But what about their parents and grandparents? Older Americans are even worse than students at distinguishing factual news from opinion news, studies have found, and are more likely to repost fraudulent stories. Yet adults have been largely left out of the push to tackle the "upstream" side of the misinformation explosion — the viewers and readers who make false stories "go viral."
That is starting to change. The News Literacy Project, whose digital Checkology curriculum now reaches educators in every state and in 110 countries, is rolling out today a new tool specifically aimed at both students and adults. The group's new mobile app, Informable, trains users how to sort truth from fiction with games that develop fact-checking and other news literacy skills. The app enables the group to expand "beyond the classroom" to reach the general public, NLP announced Monday.
"Unless we give the public the tools to be more discerning consumers and sharers of news and information, we're not going to be able to address the misinformation pandemic that threatens to undermine the country's civic life and our democracy," said NLP Founder and CEO Alan Miller.
Miller noted that all the tools that NLP offers students are also educational for adults. These include the virtual Checkology classroom; a weekly newsletter, The Sift, that turns the most recent viral rumors, hoaxes and conspiracy theories into timely lessons; and online "Get Smart About the News" quizzes and activities that aim to boost news literacy.
Media industry advocates tackling misinformation in politics, including election interference by Russia and other foreign adversaries, cite news consumers as a critical line of defense. PEN America, which champions freedom of expression for writers, has cautioned tech companies against limiting free expression — though the group opposesFacebook's laissez faire stance on political ads.
"Empowering corporations or government as the leaders in solving this problem risks making them the arbiters of truth," argues a March PEN America report titled "Truth on the Ballot." "Instead, that role must lie with the individual who will make the ultimate decision about what to believe or not believe, what to share or not to share."
PEN America's "News Consumers' Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" spells out obligations for the media industry, such as ethical guidelines and prompt corrections, but argues that viewers and readers have duties, too. These include seeking news from a variety of viewpoints, investigating the source and credibility of information, refraining from reposting or spreading false information, and reporting misinformation to platforms that carry it.
Mainstream news outlets can also help by giving readers a better sense of who they are and how they do their work, as The New York Times has done with its "Understanding the Times" series. Such explainers can help restore trust at a time when Americans are increasingly muddled by the growing gap between mainstream news coverage and the alternate reality occupied by conservative media.
Impeachment proceedings on Capitol Hill have underscored the parallel universe that divides mainstream news organizations and conservative media sites allied with President Trump. For Trump and his GOP defenders on Capitol Hill, muddying the waters and advancing debunked conspiracy theories has emerged as a key impeachment defense. One recent poll found that almost half (47 percent) of Americans say it's difficult to tell whether the information they hear is true or not.
The problem will only worsen as technology becomes more sophisticated, and artificial intelligence makes it increasingly difficult to distinguish real footage from doctored videos, experts predict. In the future, "it will be impossible to distinguish between real and false," warned Nicco Mele, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School, at a misinformation panel at the Annual Conference on Citizenship in October.
Attempts to tackle misinformation are quickly overwhelmed by the scope of the problem, said Mele, who previously headed the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. As quickly as policy makers and tech companies come up with solutions, digital innovations hand those peddling falsehoods new workarounds. Ultimately, defending the truth will be up to news consumers, said Mele. "It's the demand side that we have to address, rather than the supply side."
Carney is a contributing writer.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.