Why 2025 was the year trust died

The real threat to public trust isn’t fake news scandals, but the spread of low-grade misinformation, says Kenny Campbell. And once people stop caring what’s true, trust becomes almost impossible to rebuild

“Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies,” sang Fleetwood Mac in yet another anthem to love and denial. Little did they know they were also foretelling the mantra of mid-21st-century communications.

I’m talking about trust here. And the real threat to trust right now isn’t the blockbuster fake-news scandal. It isn’t the spectacular deepfake or the headline-grabbing conspiracy. It’s the sweet little lies – the low-grade, low-stakes nonsense that spreads quietly, constantly and all too often without challenge.

You’d be right to think that 2025 is the year public trust in the media finally snapped. Not with a bang, but with a thousand tiny cracks.

We all know fake news exists – we’ve spent a decade or more talking about it.

The real threat to trust isn’t fake news, it’s the information that spreads without challenge (Alamy/PA)

But something has shifted. The information environment is no longer shaped by isolated disinformation events. Instead, it is dominated by what can only be described as ambient disinformation: a permanent haze of bogus claims, fake images, exaggerated rumours and AI-generated rubbish permeating daily life.

Fake NHS memos. Invented supermarket rules. AI weather-apocalypse maps. Viral clips claiming brand-new policies nobody has actually announced.

None of these is world-ending on its own. That’s precisely the danger. Individually, they look harmless; collectively, they are exhausting.

The data backs this up. 2025 kicked off with us already in a bad place, and the Edelman Trust Barometer found seven in 10 people believe governments, business and journalists deliberately misled them. In the months since, aided and abetted by the sheer volume of AI-generated content swamping our digital worlds, the situation has worsened.

That isn’t simply a society being deceived – it’s a society being worn down, relentlessly and rapidly.

From a communications point of view, this is catastrophic. When audiences feel permanently unsure, they stop interrogating individual claims and start doubting everything instead.

The result isn’t outrage. It’s withdrawal and cynicism against a background hum of “who knows what’s real anyway?”

Worse still, constant exposure to misinformation is now making people doubt true stories. Research suggests audiences are increasingly likely to disbelieve genuine news if it looks too extraordinary, after years of being trained to expect fakery.

Constant exposure to misinformation is making people doubt true stories (PA Wire)

The fog of nonsense doesn’t just mislead; it strips away innocence.

Of course, big fake stories still matter and deserve scrutiny. But they’re not what’s reshaping everyday behaviour.

Their damage is dramatic but, ultimately, superficial. The damage from low-grade fakery, however, is structural.

This is soil erosion, not an earthquake.

Each episode of fakery nudges trust down another notch. Each one teaches audiences not simply that something is false, but that sorting truth from nonsense isn’t worth the effort anymore.

That is the real communications crisis facing us as 2026 gets up to speed.

Brands feel it when genuine announcements are met with cynicism. Journalists feel it when verified reporting is dismissed as just more spin. Public bodies feel it when even basic guidance is greeted with suspicion.

Inevitably, everyone starts shouting louder to be heard through the static. But louder isn’t clearer – and clarity is disappearing along with trust.

If 2025 is the year trust finally snapped, then 2026 has to become the year communications hits back. This stuff damages us all. And yet … how easy it is to type that, and how very, very difficult it is to see a realistic way this actually happens in the next 12 months.

Trust won’t return with one heroic correction. It may – may – come back slowly, as particular outlets, platforms and, yes, communications agencies build reputations for trustworthy output.

But the real tragedy of the fog of nonsense isn’t that people believe lies. It’s that they’re too tired to care whether something is true.

This isn’t a crisis of deception any more. It’s a crisis of stamina. And until we start treating trust as something that has to be actively rebuilt, not passively assumed, those sweet little lies will keep doing their quiet, corrosive work.