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    Facts for everyone

    Facts for everyone: Explainers people enjoy, every claim sourced, and you decide.

    Only 25% of Americans say they trust the news most of the time, and the most common complaint is news pushing an agenda rather than presenting evidence in a balanced way. This chapter is about public education that earns trust: every claim sourced, the strongest case on each side, and the viewer left to decide.

    Try it in the sliderTalk to Ryan

    Ryan K. Hertel · heyitskenton

    The problem

    What we're up against.

    • Trust is low.

      Only 33% of American adults have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in the media, up from a record low of 28%.

    • Many people look away.

      42% of people around the world sometimes or often avoid the news, and the people who avoid it most consistently tend to have low interest and less education.

    • News from feeds and creators.

      59% of American adults get news from social media at least sometimes, and 37% of young adults regularly get news from influencers.

    • Hard to tell what's what.

      In a national test of 3,446 high school students, two-thirds couldn't tell news stories from ads.

    • What people say they want.

      The top complaint about news is that it pushes an agenda rather than presenting evidence in a balanced way.

    What works

    Proven, and ready to grow.

    • Learning the tricks before you meet them.

      Short videos that explain common manipulation tricks raised people's ability to spot them by about 5% on average, and on YouTube they were shown to about 5.4 million people.

    • Checking what others say about a source.

      After a few lessons in looking up what other sites say about a website, high school students were twice as likely to spot questionable ones.

    • Media literacy works.

      Across many experiments, media literacy lessons generally made people more resilient to misinformation.

    • Fact-checks help.

      In experiments across several countries, fact-checks reduced belief in false claims.

    • Hearing the best of each side.

      When voters spent a weekend with briefings presenting the strongest evidence-based arguments for and against each proposal, people from both parties moved closer on 22 of 26 proposals.

    • Seeing each other clearly.

      A large test of ideas found that many of them reduced animosity between people on opposite political sides.

    What a family could fund

    Where the money goes furthest.

    • A short video, seen by millions.

      A prebunking video ad cost about 5 cents a view.

    • Free lessons, and teachers trained to use them.

      The Civic Online Reasoning curriculum is free; an initiative could pay for the training and time teachers spend on it.

    • Explainers made to be enjoyed.

      Entertaining shows on issues like overfishing, where the facts can be two true things at once: only 62.4% of assessed fish stocks were biologically sustainable, yet 72.6% of the fish landed came from sustainable stocks.

    • Show the weight of the evidence.

      Where the science is settled, an explainer shows how many experts agree, not one voice per side, since dueling experts distort what people think experts believe.

    Honest limits

    What money can't promise.

    • The effect fades.

      Protection from inoculation decayed over a couple of months without reminders, though booster reminders can help it last.

    • Measured within a day.

      The YouTube study couldn't measure how long the effect lasted.

    • Balance can mislead.

      Presenting two sides as equal on a settled question distorts how people see expert opinion, even when they're told the real numbers.

    • The hardest to reach.

      The people who avoid news most consistently are the least interested in it, and the people who need these explainers most may never seek them out.

    Hard questions

    Asked and answered.

    1. You might ask

      Who decides what's a fact?

      Ryan

      No one gets the last word. Every claim links to its source, and on settled science the explainer shows the weight of evidence, because two dueling voices can mislead.

    2. You might ask

      Won't presenting both sides spread falsehoods?

      Ryan

      It can on settled questions, so both sides are for questions of values, and evidence settles questions of fact. And corrections rarely backfire: across more than 10,100 people and 52 issues, none did.

    3. You might ask

      Will the people who need this ever watch?

      Ryan

      Many avoid the news, which is why the videos run as short ads where people already are: one campaign reached about 5.4 million people.

    4. You might ask

      Does it last?

      Ryan

      For weeks, not forever: the effect faded within months, and reminders help it hold.

    In the slider

    See what your fortune could do here.

    Facts for everyone

    The slider prices this cause with these numbers:

    • About 5 cents a view paid for short YouTube videos that taught people the tricks of manipulation.
    • The yardstick here is every adult in America, about 270 million.
    • A view isn't always a different person, the price is from one campaign, and the effect was measured within a day.
    Try it in the sliderTalk to Ryan

    More of the Blueprint

    Keep reading.

    Back to Keep 100

    Sources

    Every number in this chapter, and where it came from.

    1. Source 1: Overview and key findings of the 2026 Digital News Report (opens in a new tab)

      Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 16 June 2026. Checked 23 October 2026.

    2. Source 2: Overview and key findings of the 2025 Digital News Report (opens in a new tab)

      Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 17 June 2025. Checked 23 October 2026.

    3. Source 3: U.S. Media Trust: Edges Up From Record Low (opens in a new tab)

      Gallup, 29 September 2026. Checked 23 October 2026.

    4. Source 4: Social Media and News Fact Sheet (opens in a new tab)

      Pew Research Center, 19 October 2026. Checked 23 October 2026.

    5. Source 5: America's News Influencers (opens in a new tab)

      Pew Research Center, 18 November 2024. Checked 23 October 2026.

    6. Source 6: Students' Civic Online Reasoning: A National Portrait (opens in a new tab)

      Stanford History Education Group, 8 April 2021. Checked 23 October 2026.

    7. Source 7: Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media (Roozenbeek and others) (opens in a new tab)

      Science Advances, 24 August 2022. Checked 23 October 2026.

      Prices from a campaign in 2022; a paid view isn't always a different person.

    8. Source 8: It doesn't take long to learn how to spot misinformation online, Stanford study finds (opens in a new tab)

      Stanford Graduate School of Education, 19 April 2022. Checked 23 October 2026.

    9. Source 9: Media literacy interventions improve resilience to misinformation: A meta-analytic investigation of overall effect and moderating factors (Huang, Jia and Yu) (opens in a new tab)

      Communication Research, 4 October 2024. Checked 23 October 2026.

    10. Source 10: The global effectiveness of fact-checking: Evidence from simultaneous experiments in Argentina, Nigeria, South Africa, and the United Kingdom (Porter and Wood) (opens in a new tab)

      Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1 September 2021. Checked 23 October 2026.

    11. Source 11: Is Deliberation an Antidote to Extreme Partisan Polarization? Reflections on America in One Room (Fishkin and others) (opens in a new tab)

      American Political Science Review, 27 July 2021. Checked 23 October 2026.

    12. Source 12: Megastudy testing 25 treatments to reduce antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity (Voelkel and others) (opens in a new tab)

      Science, 18 October 2024. Checked 23 October 2026.

    13. Source 13: Civic Online Reasoning (opens in a new tab)

      Digital Inquiry Group. Checked 23 October 2026.

    14. Source 14: The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2026: the status of fishery resources (opens in a new tab)

      Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 16 June 2026. Checked 23 October 2026.

    15. Source 15: SOFIA 2026: Global fisheries and aquaculture production reaches new highs (opens in a new tab)

      Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 16 June 2026. Checked 23 October 2026.

    16. Source 16: Can journalistic false balance distort public perception of consensus in expert opinion? (Koehler) (opens in a new tab)

      Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 11 January 2016. Checked 23 October 2026.

    17. Source 17: Long-term effectiveness of inoculation against misinformation: Three longitudinal experiments (Maertens and others) (opens in a new tab)

      Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 5 October 2020. Checked 23 October 2026.

    18. Source 18: Psychological booster shots targeting memory increase long-term resistance against misinformation (Maertens and others) (opens in a new tab)

      Nature Communications, 11 March 2025. Checked 23 October 2026.

    19. Source 19: The Elusive Backfire Effect: Mass Attitudes' Steadfast Factual Adherence (Wood and Porter) (opens in a new tab)

      Political Behavior, 16 January 2018. Checked 23 October 2026.

    20. Source 20: National population by single year of age and sex, July 1, 2025 (Vintage 2025) (opens in a new tab)

      US Census Bureau. Checked 16 October 2026.

      A data file. The count of children under five adds its rows for ages zero to four, both sexes, as of July 1, 2025.