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The perils of seeking the truth in a sea of misinformation

Charmain Naidoo
By Charmain Naidoo
30 Mar 2025
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Scientific consensus no longer divides fact from opinion. Now, if you believe it, and have a community to back you, you can demand to be respected.

We are halfway through Lent, the 40-day period of prayer, fasting and doing good deeds in the Catholic Church that prepares the faithful for that holiest of observances, Easter.

Easter, a central tenet of Christianity that commemorates Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead (signifying the triumph of life over death and the promise of everlasting life), celebrates renewal and rebirth.

As a practising Catholic, the Paschal mystery has brought to my mind a passage in the Bible, John 14:6, in which Jesus says: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

In this way, Jesus tells his flock that He is the path to God – the embodiment of truth, and the source of life. It’s the core belief on which I was raised, not without some kicking and screaming about having to give up my Sunday mornings to catechism.

It started when I was five and getting ready for my first Holy Communion, which marked the most significant event in my Catholic life – the introduction to receiving the holy Eucharist (bread believed to be the body of Christ) for the first time.

On Sunday mornings in the icy stone hall adjoining Ladysmith’s Regina Pacis Church, Sister Annunciata drummed doctrine into us (bribing us with scones so hard they chipped teeth): Easter is about truth – the Truth. Not my truth, or truth adjacent or a version of truth. Just the Truth.

Yes, it is a concept enshrined in religion, but one that holds universal sanctity. Whether in churches, mosques or temples, the keepers of the faith teach the value of truth.

The unvarnished truth 


I’m still trying to figure out when truth lost its meaning. The term “truth” is no longer objective; opinion is now the foundation of our subjective truths.

Lies, or unsubstantiated concepts or ideas, are bandied about as truth. Sadly, there is little that the gold standard of days gone by – fact-checking or information confirmation – can do to make a difference or change people’s worldview.

So, what is real?

Writing in an Addis Ababa newspaper, Geabral Ashenafi best described our world: so bombarded with information that the concept of truth has crumbled.

It took me back to that Bible verse when the tenets of religion, along with carefully assembled philosophical precepts that combined with actual history, helped to shape the idea of truth.

This new subjective truth is one in which individuals build their truth on their very specific view of the world. During the pandemic, many Americans living in Florida rebelled against the idea of being vaccinated and continued to live life as normal – shopping without masks, sending their children to school, gathering at each other’s homes…

Their truth was that the coronavirus was not as dangerous as everyone was led to believe. The deep state (a body of people, typically influential members of government agencies or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation of government policy) created the level of danger as a scare tactic.

No amount of scientific evidence swayed their beliefs. Their view was specific and clear: this is how I see the world; this is my truth, respect it.

That seems to be the new doctrine, one that does not give credence to things that are underpinned by an understanding of the past, history or experience.

And this dangerous lapse into the world of the indiscriminate dissemination of information has seen the dramatic expansion of the conspiracy theory.

Warped facts


“Crackpot theories,” my lovely headmaster dad used to call them – my father was a stickler for empirical evidence, for things that could be observed and were rooted in scientific evidence.

I remember 20 July 1969, aged 11, lying curled up on the rug next to my parents’ bed, my mom and dad surrounded by my siblings listening on the radio as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human beings to walk on the moon’s surface.

“One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.” We, well most of us, felt a sense of communal pride in our human endeavour, a sense of accomplishment that somehow made anything possible.

But not Uncle Raj – a man not related by blood, but a neighbourhood curmudgeon we called uncle out of respect for our elders. It was my first encounter with a conspiracy theory. He came to return or borrow something, and was standing next to my mother’s winter-pruned roses, his body bent like a parenthesis, his winter breath visible as he lectured my patient father.

There was no moon landing, he said. It was a hoax dreamed up by Nasa, only he called it Nasta. It was an American attempt at world domination. Next thing, he said, they’ll be charging us more taxes to pay for it. The logic of that beggared belief.

My lovely dad patiently shook his head as my incredulous mother opened her mouth to speak. At the dinner table that night he said it was weary-making and never worth the effort to try to talk people out of their tightly held beliefs, no matter how crackpot they were.

Sadly, as a journalist, I have not been able to follow this advice, and have been honour-bound to debunk these theories.

Impossible to debunk


Some of the most confounding theories in recent memory emerged during the pandemic when misinformation spread as quickly as the virus.

I was told by a psychologist friend that conspiracy theorists rely on “experts and trusted sources” who perpetuate theories that resonate with their own beliefs.

This was often aligned with a deep mistrust of institutions or those seen as “the ruling class” or the government.

If you think the world is a dangerous place where you are under threat, and believe that everyone is lying to you, it’s a comfortable way to retreat from it into a world where your beliefs are supported by a like-minded community.

And the rise of social media has made it easy to connect with these people online.

Everything feels a little precarious, like we’re likely to fall into the abyss at any moment.

Is there a cure for conspiracy theorists? Would it help if you could disprove their hypotheses?

Speaking on the excellent podcast This American Life, reporter Zach Mack talks about how he undertook a year-long experiment with his conspiracy theorist dad to debunk the myths he held dear – and failed.

It took the form of a $10,000 bet, one in which a series of his dad’s predictions would be time tested, and if they did not materialise, he would acknowledge that they had been imagined scenarios – myths.

Even though the evidence was irrefutable, Zack’s dad reformed his premises and continued to believe in his version of the truth.

I suppose that, as a journalist, my hope is that people will rely on indubitable facts. If we don’t, we will land up with a world where the power belongs to the pedlars of adjacent truths and have the likes of the American leader and his South African-born handlanger (henchman) perpetuating untruths that convince people they are surrounded by danger from which only they can save us. A dark world. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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