The Information Revolution: Are We Better Informed or Just Faster at Being Misinformed?

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A Crisis of Trust

Nearly seven in ten people around the world believe government officials, business leaders, and journalists are deliberately misleading them. Global trust in the news has fallen to its lowest point since 2015 — just 37% of people say they trust the news most of the time, and in the United States, that figure drops to 25%.

For Dr. Thoại Ngô, that erosion of trust isn't only a media story. It's a public health story. How people understand science, whether they follow public health guidance, and how they make decisions about their own care all depend on whether they trust the sources delivering that information in the first place. That was the starting point for his conversation with Jason Lemon, who manages Newsweek's U.S. digital news team and spends his days navigating exactly this landscape.

Lemon doesn't romanticize the media environment that came before. "There's always been problems with media," he said. "There's always been bias, fake news, conspiracy theories. I think the difference now is just it's spreading quicker — and there's so many more avenues for it to spread around the world within seconds." The problem, in his view, isn't that misinformation is new. It's that the speed and scale of its spread have changed the stakes entirely.

Key Takeaways

• Trust in news is at a record low. Global trust in the news has hit its lowest point since 2015, with just 25% of Americans saying they trust the news most of the time — a problem Dr. Ngô connects directly to public health communication.

• The information landscape hasn't gotten more biased, just faster. Lemon argues that bias and misinformation aren't new; what's changed is how quickly false information can spread worldwide.

• Younger audiences are informed differently, not necessarily worse. More than half of 18- to 24-year-olds now get news primarily from social media, video platforms, and AI chatbots rather than legacy outlets.

• Accessibility and accuracy are both possible, but the balance is hard. With roughly half of American adults reading below a sixth-grade level, both journalists and academics face the same challenge: simplifying without distorting.

• AI is a useful tool, not a replacement for reporting. AI chatbots can speed up access to information, but they're only as reliable as the underlying reporting — and they can still get things wrong.

• The core advice for navigating it all: cross-reference everything. Don't rely on a single source, whether it's a legacy outlet, a creator, or an AI chatbot — check it against something else.

• Journalism can still change real outcomes. Lemon's own reporting from the 2020 BLM protests led directly to a police officer's indictment, a reminder of the tangible impact credible journalism can have.

How a Generation Learns

Much of Dr. Ngô's research focuses on adolescents and young adults, and he brought that lens directly into the conversation. More than half of people aged 18 to 24 now say social media, video platforms, and AI chatbots — not television or news websites — are their primary way of getting news.

Lemon sees this less as a decline and more as an adaptation that legacy media has had to catch up to. Newsrooms, including his own, are increasingly meeting audiences where they already are, producing video content for TikTok and Instagram alongside traditional reporting. "You're not just competing with the New York Times or the Washington Post," he said. "You're competing with every influencer on TikTok now."

Asked whether younger generations are better informed, worse informed, or simply informed differently, Lemon pushed back on the premise that earlier generations had it figured out. Bias, spin, and misinformation have always been part of the media landscape — his own father got his news from hours of conservative talk radio each day. What's different now, Lemon argued, is reach and velocity, not the fundamental presence of bias itself.

Reaching Audiences Without Losing Accuracy

The conversation turned to a challenge Dr. Ngô sees as central to his own field: roughly half of American adults read below a sixth-grade level, which means the way most scientific and policy information is written simply isn't reaching the people who need it. He was candid about where he thinks academics fall short. "One of the flaws I would say about academics is that we communicate to our peers," he said, "and we need to do a better job at communicating to the public."

Lemon pointed to Newsweek's decision to remain accessible rather than moving behind a paywall as part of the same challenge — making complicated stories understandable without oversimplifying them into something inaccurate. Both agreed there's no easy formula, but that the responsibility to close that gap sits with scientists, public health professionals, and journalists alike, not just with audiences.

AI, Speed, and the Search for Credible Information

One in ten people now use AI chatbots for news, up from seven percent just a year ago — and among people under 35, that figure is already at sixteen percent. Dr. Ngô was candid about using AI tools himself, calling them a faster way to access knowledge, while also raising the tension at the heart of the technology: the same tool that can expand access to information can also generate convincing falsehoods at scale.

Lemon's take was measured. AI, he explained, is only as good as the reporting it draws from — when it works well, it's collating information that already exists rather than generating something new. But it can also hallucinate, surface outdated information, or state things with unearned confidence. His advice mirrors the same principle that ran through the entire conversation: don't rely on any single source, AI included. Check it against another AI, a newsletter, or a human reporter, and see whether the answers align.

Journalism's Real-World Power

Toward the end of the conversation, Lemon shared a story from his own reporting career that illustrated why he stays committed to the work. During the 2020 BLM protests in New York, he happened to film a police officer assaulting a demonstrator — footage he posted almost as an afterthought. It went viral within minutes, was picked up by news outlets nationwide, and directly led to the officer's indictment and a settlement, part of which the officer paid himself.

"If I wasn't there, if I didn't do it, none of this would have probably happened at all," Lemon reflected. For him, it was a concrete reminder that journalism's influence isn't always abstract — sometimes it changes the outcome of a single, specific case.

PopTalks is a podcast from Dr. Thoại Ngô and Columbia's Department of Population and Family Health. New episodes release every two weeks.

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