Truth In The Age Of Disinformation: A Candid Conversation With Richard Stengel

Here’s the thing about disinformation: It’s winning.

That sobering reality set the stage at a New York City event featuring Richard Stengel, former Time magazine editor and Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy. Stengel, whose friendship with Nelson Mandela I can only describe as “mind-bogglingly brilliant,” joined Gen Z journalist Kanika Mehra for an intergenerational dialogue that cut through the noise.

So, why host this conversation now? Because we’re living in what Stengel bluntly called a “post-truth environment” — and the implications for democracy couldn’t be more severe.

From State Actors to Everyone’s Problem

When Stengel first encountered Russian disinformation at the State Department around 2014, it was still primarily the domain of state actors — Russia’s Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, with its poorly executed English and clumsy American idioms.

Fast-forward to today, and the landscape has fundamentally shifted. “The biggest change is the democratization of disinformation,” Stengel explained. “Everybody is a vector of some conspiracy theory or false fact.” We’ve created what he called a “disinformation industrial complex” — a vertically integrated system moving false narratives from fringe platforms right up to mainstream media and political power.

And here’s the truly terrifying part: AI has supercharged this machine. Those Russian trolls who once struggled with American vernacular? Today they could simply prompt AI to create the perfect persona — “a 43-year-old female lawyer with two kids in St. Louis concerned about the price of eggs” — and boom, instant credibility.

It’s Not a Supply Problem. It’s a Demand Problem.

The most provocative insight? People want disinformation. Stengel compared it to “truth fentanyl” — and when there’s demand, there will always be supply.

This hunger for convenient falsehoods grows during periods of uncertainty when people feel insecure and excluded. Conspiracy theories offer a seductive alternative — the feeling that you’re an insider who truly understands how the world works.

I can’t help but think about what this means for our media ecosystem. When Mehra asked about journalism’s role in this environment, Stengel pushed back on the simplistic villain narrative around algorithms. “Algorithms are about addiction,” he noted, drawing a parallel to traditional media’s historical goal of building habitual audiences.

The issue isn’t the algorithms themselves — they’re morally neutral, according to Stengel. The problem is that they optimize for engagement, for thrill-seeking, for the tawdry. And our current business models reward exactly this behavior.

This was one moment when generational perspectives collided productively. Mehra strongly disagreed with Stengel’s neutral stance on algorithms, particularly regarding TikTok, which she called “in a league of its own — incredibly damaging and pernicious.” She described TikTok’s algorithm as distinctively harmful, combining psychological manipulation with business incentives in ways that fundamentally oppose journalistic values. “Journalism is about hearing things you don’t want to hear, about being challenged. How do you reconcile that with algorithms that facilitate pandering?” she asked.

The tension in their viewpoints highlighted the different ways boomers and Gen Z-ers experience technology’s impact.

The Death of Context and Expertise

One casualty in this landscape is context. Our news cycles have succumbed to what Ezra Klein calls “relentless presentism” — moving stories forward incrementally without providing the historical framing that would help readers understand what’s really happening.

“If I ran a news organization,” Stengel mused, “I’d say ‘We’re not covering this crazy thing with Greenland. We’re focusing on this one issue for weeks to get to the bottom of it.’” But the algorithm demands novelty, and President Trump intuitively understands this dynamic.

The other alarming trend is what many participants identified as “the death of expertise.” Social media has elevated “authenticity” over accuracy, giving equal weight to expert analysis and random neighborhood opinions. As one attendee bluntly put it, “Bob in the bar has as much credibility as a Ph.D.”

The Government Reform Conundrum

Another fascinating tension emerged around how to approach government reform. Stengel, who entered government from journalism, admitted that “government is too big, too bloated, too bureaucratic” — a reaction he said everyone has when making that transition. Yet he’s become a defender of that same bureaucracy because of the “radical anti-democratic efforts of the current administration.”

Mehra pushed back, suggesting this defensive posture might be a strategic mistake. “We need a healthy debate where there are legitimate reasons to criticize government bloat,” she argued. “If you don’t see Democrats criticizing bloat, you might acquiesce to the ‘move fast and break things’ brand.” Her challenge was pointed: How do we simultaneously criticize the government and defend it?

Stengel conceded her point, acknowledging that “Democrats haven’t listened to those frustrations” with government inefficiency. But he maintained that the problem isn’t with the mission of government agencies focused on equity and fairness — it’s with the execution of the message.

So What the Hell Do We Do Now?

For all the grim diagnoses, there were flickers of hope in the conversation.

Stengel found inspiration in Nelson Mandela’s approach to polarization. Mandela made a deliberate effort to understand the opposition, learn their language, and find common ground. In today’s fractured landscape, this means consuming media we disagree with and seeking genuine understanding rather than merely dismissing opposing views.

There’s also something oddly comforting in recognizing that we’ve faced versions of this crisis before. Stengel is currently researching a First Amendment case from 1804 when Thomas Jefferson sued a young newspaper publisher for seditious libel. The pendulum has swung back and forth throughout our history.

The most powerful solution may lie outside political or regulatory frameworks entirely. As Mehra observed, there’s a spiritual dimension to our current crisis — a growing recognition that constant digital connection and algorithmic feeding aren’t creating the lives we want. Grassroots movements fighting for real human connection might ultimately prove more powerful than any policy intervention.

The Long Game

What this conversation reinforced is that the challenges we face are inherently intergenerational. And there’s no quick fix, only the slow, essential work of rebuilding the infrastructure of fact and expertise.

We need to reclaim the value of truth in public discourse. We need to reestablish trust in institutions and expertise. We need to create business models that reward accuracy rather than engagement at any cost.

And perhaps most immediately, we need to do what one attendee called “going on the offensive for democracy”: not merely reacting to disinformation, but proactively building networks and communities that can amplify truth in accessible ways.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. As Stengel reminded us, democracies exist because of the consent of the governed, obtained through true information. Without that foundation, the entire system crumbles.

Let’s not let that happen on our watch.

You can watch the whole conversation here.