Truth management, persuasion schemes that tailor truth, confront us constantly, a disturbing aspect of modern life.

Once the province of politicians and totalitarian governments – the Soviet Union’s disinformation apparatus during the Cold War was a marvel – truth management has now infiltrated the sources we rely upon for information in America.

“Sound decision making relies on the ability of an individual to analyze the facts at hand and come to a rational conclusion about the best course of action based on those facts,” according to the American Security Project.

Where can you turn for accurate information?

“Local news media in the United States plays a particularly critical role in debunking misinformation and disinformation,” wrote Marina Dickson in her treatise entitled Disinformation in the United States.” Yet local media is in decline, decimated as more and more turn to social media for information.

“Facebook is fine for keeping up with friends and neighbors,” wrote newspaper publisher Wyatt Emmerich. “It has a role in communicating local news. But a Facebook post is not the same as a genuine local article written by a properly trained professional journalist.” In journalism school students are taught to verify the facts, he said. The problem, he notes, is the United States has lost half its journalists, most of them local journalists. “Ironically, the more viral and fake the news, the more eyeballs click on it.”

“Disinformation often spreads rapidly and with deeper penetration than true information,” agreed the American Security Project.

“Online disinformation is particularly insidious because of its immediacy, its capacity to deceive and its ability to reach its target,” wrote legal analyst Barbara McQuade in her 2024 book “Attack from Within.”

Generative artificial intelligence will only make matters worse. It’s already “boosting the spread of disinformation and propaganda,” according to an MIT Technology Review article.

One way to see through disinformation has been to go direct to data for information. The U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for Health Statistics, National Agricultural Statistics Service, and other agencies publish readily accessible and statistically reliable data.

Well, maybe.

Inside Higher Education reported the Trump administration has begun purging federal demographic data “on a wide range of topics, including public health, education and climate” from government websites. Politico reported Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has upended efforts to collect some health data. And USDA officials delayed and redacted a farm trade report that forecast a trade deficit contrary to Trump’s rhetoric.

Reliable local news “it’s dying, and this is a threat to our democracy,” said Emmerich.

It appears truth management is here to stay.

Crawford is the author of “A Republican’s Lament: Mississippi Needs Good Government Conservatives.”