What happens when Americans rely on an informed electorate to make critical decisions about who represents them in Congress? Who will serve as president? What vaccines will they take that could save their lives and prevent their children from contracting diseases that can leave them crippled or disfigured?
What happens when we lose faith in the science that has been the bedrock of American pride and innovation, and instead start to believe lies and conspiracy theories?
You may say that the vast majority of Americans still follow the science or are well enough informed to believe in conspiracy theories or fall for outright lies. But you would be wrong to have such misplaced faith in your fellow citizens to make informed decisions based on facts.
NewsGuard is a website employing professional journalists and editors to fact check information on the internet. It identifies false information so people can make critical decisions based on sound information.
It has nine tests for the information it assesses with a focus on transparency, fairness and accuracy, credible news sources, absence of political or social activism ties, an absence of rumors as sources, and if they make mistakes, they correct them publicly. They also spell out the difference between news and opinion.
It then scores the information on a 100-point scale, with 100 being the most trustworthy. NewsGuard’s study of news consumption between Jan. 1 and March 31 reveals increasing vulnerability to what is false.
“Nearly half of Americans (43%) believed one of the top three false claims spreading online during the first quarter of 2026,” Samantha Tanner writes of NewsGuard latest Reality Gap Index report. “In a period marked by the war in Iran, a politically charged Super Bowl halftime performance, and a wave of AI-manipulated imagery, the Index found a near doubling of the respondents falling for false claims since the last survey in December 2025.”
NewsGuard looked at CNN’s coverage of the Iran-U.S. ceasefire talks, Bad Bunny’s half-time show, and an artificial intelligence-edited image of an Iranian missile with what it said was a “provocative Farsi inscription.”
What is troubling is that the percentage of people believing the top false information stories on the internet jumped from 22% in December to 43% in its recent study
“Uncertainty also crept higher, as 76% of respondents were unsure of at least one claim — up slightly from 72% in December — and 93% of Americans believed or responded that they were unsure of at least one claim, rising from 84% in December,” it reported.
What this data appears to be showing is that it is getting easier to fool people as AI tools are employed to make their writing and imagery more believable. It will get worse for us and better for them as AI tools continue to get better at deceiving us.
According to NewsGuard, it was President Donald Trump’s claim, echoed by conservative news outlets, that CNN had fabricated news about Iranian leaders proposing a ceasefire.
“In fact, the Iranian statement that CNN reported was authentic, appearing on Iranian state media outlets,” NewsGuard reported. Its study shows that 53% of those who had seen the false information were unsure about whether or not CNN had fabricated the story. Another 24% believed it to be true. Only 23% recognized it as false. If you can get 77% of the public to either believe factual information is false or be uncertain about the truth, we are in trouble.
The false claim on the ceasefire talks “generated 35.1 million views online in 110,000 posts,” NewsGuard reported.
NewsGuard is apolitical. It reports on misinformation from both sides of the political spectrum, and from those who have no political affiliation but seek to make money off people who follow conspiracies.
NewsGuard reported as false the claim that the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was staged to create sympathy for Trump. That got one person on the site to call it a “MAGA newsletter.” It has also been called a tool of the left by Trump supporters. When both sides go after you, you are probably exposing falsehoods and pursuing truth.
What will happen when sources we trust as reliable start popping up in our social media and news feeds telling outright lies -when the very image of the person telling us the lie is a lie?
Chris Liepe is a vocal music teacher. He teaches online and in person. He recently found himself on the internet teaching vocal music – but it wasn’t really him.
“I was surprised and, honestly, a bit weirded out, after stumbling upon an AI version of myself online,” Liepe recently wrote. “I had nothing to do with its creation, and no permission was asked.”
The false Liepe asks viewers about their voice and carries on a conversation with them. “It then asks you questions and gives you answers that, in some cases, are pretty close to advice I’d give. And in other cases… it is just OFF enough to cause confusion and create false connections to different bits of information. Eeek!”
The avatar of Liepe will get better with fewer glitches that reveal it isn’t really him. Now imagine how pervasive these avatars of the people we know and trust will become with each passing day as AI’s programs refine themselves.
“Democracy requires a reliance on shared facts; instead, we’re being offered parallel but separate universes,” Eli Pariser writes in his book “The Filter Bubble.”
“Disinformation corrodes the values of civil society. I consider the act of spreading propaganda to be a form of corruption,” Steve Brill of NewsGuard writes.
The lies we tell ourselves are the most believable. They are tied to our self-esteem. They are linked to our core identity. To question what we agree with as possibly false, would shake the foundations of who we think we are and our position among those we seek to please. So we close our minds to what challenges our thinking – making us complicit in the spread of false information.
