A Prediction That Has Fully Arrived

In 2002, Baroness Onora O’Neill used the BBC Reith Lectures to predict a coming crisis of institutional trust. A decline, she argued, in belief in leaders, governments, businesses, media, and ultimately in each other.

A July 2026 article by Gavin Esler in The National argues the prediction has now fully arrived.

The Edelman Trust Barometer 2026, which Esler cites, found that seven in ten respondents globally report unwillingness or hesitance to trust someone with different values or backgrounds.

In Japan the figure is ninety percent. Germany, eighty-one. The UK, seventy-six. The US, seventy.

The Reuters Digital News Report 2026, also cited in the article, found that roughly forty percent of people now practise news avoidance.

Only thirty-nine percent get news from ideologically different sources at least weekly.

Aimee Rawlins read the article and found both statistics significant.

Fake News as a Feeling, Not Just a Fact

Aimee is a freelance editor and writer covering sustainability, land use, and climate for Time and The Guardian. Before that she was Senior Editor for the Impact section at Fast Company, managing a team covering climate, clean energy, and ESG. Her journalism career began at CNNMoney and CNN, covering finance, technology, and startups.

She brings a precise diagnostic to the trust problem. The issue is not simply that more false information is in circulation. It is that people now believe all information might be false.

Reuters found, she notes, that two thirds of respondents believe a foreign adversary could be inserting falsehoods into national media. Once distrust extends to the source rather than to specific claims, it becomes indiscriminate. A story that does not align with an existing worldview is assumed suspicious regardless of its accuracy.

“The challenge right now is that it’s not just that there is more fake news. It’s that people think news is fake.”

What Local News Deserts Actually Do

Aimee’s most structural observation connects the trust data to the decline of local journalism, particularly in the United States.

Research she references consistently finds that in communities that have lost local news sources, polarisation increases and social capital decreases.

Local journalism provides something national and partisan media cannot: a shared factual foundation for people who disagree about everything else.

A corrupt city council member. A planning decision. A business closing. These stories are not ideologically contentious. They give communities a common reference point.

When that disappears, the vacuum is filled elsewhere. “Instead of having a shared source, a shared truth of sorts, people look for it elsewhere, and that is not in a community-oriented place.”

What the Trust Crisis Means for Accountability

For sustainability journalism the implications are specific. Accountability reporting depends on readers who trust independent sources enough to engage with complexity and unwelcome findings.

A readership that practises news avoidance, that believes all media might be corrupted, that encounters only confirming information, is not a readership capable of distinguishing genuine transparency from sophisticated greenwashing.

The information environment in which sustainability claims are made and scrutinised is the same one in which trust is failing.

The accountability mechanism that gives responsible business its commercial value depends on an information ecosystem with enough trust in it to function.

Giving Enforcement Power to a Body That Currently Has None

Aimee’s magic wand would give the US National Labor Relations Board enforceable teeth: the legal authority to impose monetary penalties on companies for union busting and unfair labour practices, not merely order reinstatement or back pay.

“There’s zero incentive for companies not to engage in terrible practices, illegal practices.”

A Gallup survey found trust in unions currently stands at sixty-eight percent in the United States. The institution has public confidence. The regulatory body designed to support it cannot meaningfully act. The gap between the two is, in miniature, the same gap Esler’s article documents at civilisational scale: institutions that exist but cannot enforce create the appearance of accountability without its substance.

Esler closes his article with a line from O’Neill, drawn from Confucius. Three things are necessary for good government: weapons, food, and trust. If forced to choose what to relinquish, give up weapons and food first.

“Without trust we cannot stand.”