In the Soviet Union, the two major government newspapers were the Pravda (“Truth”) and the Izvestia (“News”), giving rise to a dark joke: “There is no truth in News (Izvestia), and no news in Truth (Pravda).” While modern Western media is not state-controlled, trust in its objectivity has steadily declined. Increasingly, we face a similar challenge with many of our Western institutions — truth is elusive.

While reading The Guardian weeks ago, I came across a fundraising message by its editor in chief at the bottom of the article. Titled, “How the Guardian will stand up to four more years of Donald Trump,” the message accuses Trump of “authoritarianism” and of being “a genuine threat to Democracy,” and thus asks for monetary contributions so that The Guardian can “stand up to these threats.” Regardless of merits, the editor in chief sets the paper’s distinct goal as a political war against Trump. This message does not convey the pursuit of truth; rather it symbolizes the pursuit of political ends calling into question the paper’s journalistic objectivity.

In October 2024, The Washington Post had its own parade of bias. When the paper chose not to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election, diverging from a 48-year tradition of presidential endorsements, its staffers were furious. Two members of the editorial board resigned. Opinion columnist Karen Attiah said on X, “I didn’t sign up to be a journalist to be silent on what matters most,” a clear statement of her political intentions for the paper.

After several incidents, large swaths of the American public continue to lose faith in the authority of news organizations. To the media’s discredit, Hunter Biden’s laptop was actually a concern, COVID-19 may have been invented in a Chinese lab and Russian collusion in the 2016 election appear to have been exaggerated. Such debacles have resulted in record-low trust in the media; in a recent Gallup poll 64 percent of respondents reported having “not very much trust” in media such as newspapers, radio and television. 

Distrust is also brewing within another supposedly great American institution: the education system. The recent Claudine Gay debacle is a prime example. 

As the president of Harvard University, among the most elite and sought-after academic posts in the world, Gay was found to have plagiarized in her prior academic writing. When the leader of one of the world’s best universities is found guilty of plagiarism, it does not inspire faith in higher education. The distrust problem is also pervasive in the public school system as the culture war takes classrooms hostage. While districts in California and New Hampshire teach issues of race and gender, districts in Oklahoma and Kansas are now investing in biblical education. In every state, the debate about what is taught is fierce. Louisiana is attempting to require public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms while schools in Oregon and Washington are considering teaching progressive courses about “dismantling racism in mathematics.” As politics and religion have entered the classroom, growing distrust in teachers and the public school system drives increased private and charter school enrollment. This threatens funding for public education, which is tied to enrollment.  

Other government institutions have also come under scrutiny. The Centers for Disease Control, for instance, has received criticism for its lack of transparency during the COVID-19 pandemic. Claims circulated that the mask mandates were not scientifically backed, while the lab leak theory of COVID-19’s origin was quickly squashed for political reasons when it is still scientifically plausible today. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was shunned by the NIH, CDC and news media for recommending an ease to lock down conditions that he claimed hurt public health. He may have been right, and now — in some kind of cosmic justice — the disgraced Dr. Bhattacharya will serve as Trump’s NIH director. 

This distrust pervades the government. A study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found that just 50 percent of Americans have confidence in the judicial branch, down from 75 percent in 2000. The leaders we trust and elect are often no better than our institutions. Donald Trump notoriously spreads falsehoods and lies which millions of Americans believe. Kamala Harris and the rest of the Democratic establishment lied to the public by claiming Biden was fit to serve another four years. When their lie was uncovered at the June 2024 debate, they quickly backtracked. 

So I reach the central tension — America faces a culture steeped in distrust and misinformation, where dishonesty is often justified by appeals to ideology. This erosion of trust has weakened the authority of our central institutions. The path forward demands an answer to a profound challenge: how can we rebuild integrity and restore confidence?

I think back to two messages of the 2024 election cycle. At Kamala Harris’s last rally before election day, Oprah Winfrey remarked, “If we don’t show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to cast a ballot again,” parroting a Democratic talking point that Trump will end democracy. Some weeks before, Elon Musk tweeted something similar: “Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election.” Both Elon and Oprah employ existentialist rhetoric in support of their candidate. In doing so, they further the culture of polarization. 

For me, an ancient aphorism commonly attributed to the Greek playwright Aeschylus perfectly describes Winfrey’s and Musk’s statements. He says, “In war, truth is the first casualty.” When we create narratives that certain individuals or policies will destroy our country, it becomes easy to justify anything to stop them, even the limitation of truth. America is engaged in a partisan, political war where both sides believe their opponents will destroy everything. To save the country — or to achieve other important political goals — institutions and individuals bend the truth or embrace their biases. This is how we’ve ended up with newspapers that knowingly embrace their biases and school systems that are more focused on imbuing students with a particular political ideology than on teaching them to read and write. This kind of apocalyptic rhetoric transforms political differences into moral crusades. It’s a dangerous mindset, one that can motivate violence — as evidenced by last summer’s assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. 

I reject this framework, for political ends do not justify any means. I don’t believe either party will destroy America and I disagree with Musk and Winfrey. Western thought, governance and success are based on truth that must never be subverted for political ends. It is correct that truth is a natural casualty of war, so enough with the overblown, battle-for-the-soul-of-our-nation narrative. Let’s return to the truth and in the process save the great institutions of Western civilization.

JOSHUA DANZIGER is a first year in Trumbull College. He can be reached at joshua.danziger@yale.edu.