Political language, said George Orwell, is designed to make lies sound truthful. From false election promises to self-serving untruths, from Donald Trump’s inauguration crowds to Bill Clinton’s sexual relations, from Hillary’s emails to Tony Blair misleading parliament about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, untruths are what we have come to expect from our political representatives. In IPSO Mori’s Veracity Index (2019), British politicians score the lowest of all professions, with a meagre 14% trusting them to generally tell the truth.
Snapping at the heels of our elected representatives, journalists get an IPSO Mori veracity score of only 26%, a scathing indictment of the media. We get our news from people we do not trust to tell the truth. A survey by European Broadcasting Union found the British written press to be the most untrusted in Europe, with a Net Trust index of -51. At the other end of the spectrum, the EBU found that Scandinavian news outlets enjoyed positive net scores of up to +40 (Scandinavian countries are generally characterized by high levels of trust). In the US, only 32% trust the media (according to Gallup), down from more than half two decades ago. Unsurprisingly, with a heavily left -leaning media, Republicans are the least trusting, with a dismal 14% admitting to a great deal/ fair amount of trust. Sadly, the mistrust is well founded. Take the recent US election campaign, where the Democrat backing media buried the Hunter Biden story, refusing to report on news which could hurt their favoured candidate. Famously, Twitter even barred users from retweeting a NY Post article, in an obvious censorious move. Outlets like CNN and MSNBC preposterously claim to be objective but make no further attempt to hide their left-leaning political biases, comfortably substituting tears, laughter and indignant rage for balanced reporting. In the UK, the BBC and Channel4, who as public broadcasters have an obligation to be neutral, also often stand accused of not living up to standards of objective reporting.
This is all regrettable. Politics and the media are two of the most important institutions in our democracies. But what about our most powerful institutions, the central banks? The Federal Reserve continues to deny that its aggressive monetary expansion is connected to growing inequality despite its policies being behind a decade-long bull market in equity markets, housing and other assets, all largely owned by the already wealthy. There is little doubt that central bankers know the damage they are inflicting on the economy but they still claim that there are few negative consequences of their policies. And in the opaque world of central banking, there is little pressure from an ignorant public to change course. Most of us simply do not understand central banking so leave them to get on with the job. That doesn’t mean we can’t sense that there’s something wrong. According to an Axios/Ipsos poll, only 34% say they have a fair amount or a great deal of trust in the Fed.
We live in an age of lies and deceit. But at least we know it. Lies are of course most dangerous when they are told by people we expect to tell the truth. But that lies have become the norm should of course worry us all, not least the liars at the heart of the ‘establishment’. A society cannot survive such profound mistrust in its institutions in the long run. And it is those at the top who stand to lose the most if it tumbles.