We’ll explore why news literacy — the ability to tell what’s real, what’s misleading, and what’s manipulative — matters more now than ever.<br />
A few years back, a friend of mine came to visit me in Salt Lake City. She parked her car about half a block from my apartment and headed down the street. On her way, she met a woman who was distraught. She had no money, she said, and she was trying to get to another town. She needed a few dollars for the bus.
My friend — kind, trusting — gave her twenty dollars without hesitation.
When she got to my place, she told me about it. She described the woman, and when she finished, I nodded. I knew exactly who it was. I gently explained that she’d been scammed — the same woman had been working the neighborhood for a while — but my friend shook her head.
“No,” she said, “this woman was telling the truth. I could tell.”
I let it go. We went out for coffee. About fifteen minutes later, while we sat downtown, my friend spotted the woman again — using the same story on someone else. The look on my friend’s face was unforgettable. Fury, sure. But underneath it, hurt. Embarrassment. That small, sharp betrayal you feel when you realize your kindness has been taken advantage of.
I tried to calm her the best way I could: by telling her a story from my own life.
Years before, when I had first moved to New York City, I was trying to make it as an actor. Every morning on my way to the Actor’s Equity office, I stopped at the same bodega for coffee, a paper, and a bagel. And every morning, I passed a man asking for spare change.
He was different from most. Neatly dressed in a collared shirt and clean pants. Quiet. Polite. No hard sell — just a soft voice asking for help.
I started giving him a little change whenever I could. Sometimes a dollar. Sometimes more. It felt right. He seemed like someone who deserved a break.
This went on for eight months.
Then one evening, sitting in my neighborhood bar, I spotted him again — not outside on the sidewalk, but inside, dressed in a suit and tie, laughing and drinking scotch with friends. He caught my eye. After a moment, he made his way down the bar to where I sat.
“How do I know you?” he asked.
I told him — every morning, I saw you outside the bodega. I gave you change. I’m happy to see you doing well.
He smiled, thanked me, and returned to his group without offering an explanation.
That was it. No excuses. No apologies.
And that’s when I realized: I had been duped, too.
Because I wanted to believe I was helping. I wanted to believe he was telling me the truth with his open palm and his eyes of need and his timid voice barely hiding shame.
I wanted to believe.
Oddly enough, after that night at the bar, I still looked for him on my morning walks. Same route, same paper and bagel ritual. But he was never there. I should have been relieved. His absence should have meant he was doing well, no longer in need of handouts.
But instead, I missed him.
And over time, I realized why. His absence reminded me, day after day, that I had been conned. That I was just another snook off the bus. Another rube falling for the scam every New Yorker already knew. I imagined them watching — the locals who saw me drop a few bills into his hand each morning. I pictured them telling the story at work or over dinner: “There he is again. The guy giving money to the well-dressed ‘homeless’ guy.”
It wasn’t just about being tricked. It was about what that said about me. His absence became a quiet reminder that I was, for all my good intentions, still street illiterate.
And that feeling — of being tricked, of questioning your own instincts — it doesn’t just happen on the street. It happens everywhere now. Especially when we try to figure out what’s true, whom to trust, and what to believe.
In this piece, we’ll explore why news literacy — the ability to tell what’s real, what’s misleading, and what’s manipulative — matters more now than ever.
And more importantly, we’ll look at what brands need to learn from it if they want to earn trust in a world that no longer gives it away easily.
Trust Is the New Currency
Trust used to be simple. You either gave it or you didn’t. You trusted your mechanic because he didn’t overcharge you the last time. You trusted your neighbor to feed the cat. You trusted the news because it came from a face you saw every night on TV. Familiarity felt like reliability.
But in today’s landscape, trust doesn’t feel like a gut instinct anymore. It feels like currency.
People don’t hand it out freely. They spend it carefully. They evaluate risk, expect something in return, and keep track of how their trust is treated. And when it’s mishandled—when someone lies, stretches the truth, omits something important—it doesn’t just feel disappointing. It feels like theft.
Trust has become transactional. And fragile. Once broken, it doesn’t snap back into place. People may forgive, but they rarely forget. One bad experience can undo a hundred good impressions.
This shift isn’t just cognitive—it’s emotional. People remember when a brand made them feel smart, safe, or respected. They also remember when one made them feel foolish. Or used. Or like they were just part of some calculated marketing move.
That’s why news literacy matters. It’s not just about recognizing facts; it’s about guarding your beliefs. It’s about protecting the part of yourself that wants to trust, but has learned—sometimes the hard way—to be careful. People are spending their trust more wisely now. They’re measuring not just what they’re being told, but who’s doing the telling, and how consistent they’ve been over time.
For brands, that means trust isn’t something you’re automatically granted for showing up. It’s something you earn through clarity, consistency, and the ability to follow through. No matter how strong your story is, if people don’t trust the storyteller, they’ll stop listening.
Brand Literacy — The New Requirement for Brands
If people have become more news-literate—more skeptical, more cautious, more fluent in spotting manipulation—then brands need to become more literate, too. Not in the sense of knowing how to “read the room,” but in knowing how to read themselves.
Brand literacy starts with self-awareness. Not just the ability to tell your story, but the ability to recognize how that story sounds when it lands. And whether it holds up under scrutiny.
Many brands today speak in polished mission statements and curated values. They align with causes, take stands, post the right hashtags, and issue apologies when needed. But audiences aren’t just listening to the words. They’re watching the actions. They're watching who you hire, how you treat your employees, what your supply chain looks like, and what you do when no one is watching. And they’re comparing all of that to the version of yourself you’re promoting.
This is the literacy gap.
The space between the brand as it wants to be seen and the brand as it actually behaves.
It’s easy to ignore that gap when things are going well. When the marketing is clever and the numbers are up, it’s tempting to believe your brand is trusted because you’ve crafted it well. But in today’s climate, a brand’s trustworthiness isn’t measured by how good its message sounds—it’s measured by how little daylight exists between message and reality.
A brand-literate organization pays attention to that daylight. It doesn’t just ask, “What are we saying?” It asks, “Is it true? And if not, what do we need to change to make it true?”
This kind of literacy is hard. It demands internal alignment, not just external polish. It requires uncomfortable conversations, long-term consistency, and the willingness to admit when you’ve fallen short.
It also requires humility—because being brand-literate means recognizing that you’re not just competing for market share. You’re competing for belief. And in a world where belief is expensive, audiences aren’t buying the performance anymore. They’re looking for brands that show their work.
The brands that will earn trust in the years ahead won’t be the ones that say all the right things. They’ll be the ones that do the right things—quietly, consistently, and without expecting applause for it.
Practical Ways Brands Can Build Trust in a Skeptical World
Let’s be blunt: trust doesn’t care how clever your copy is. It doesn’t care about your font choice, your DEI statement, or your limited-edition packaging drop. It cares about whether what you do aligns with what you say—and whether you keep doing it long after the spotlight moves on.
In a world trained to second-guess everything, brands need more than a message. They need a pattern. A record. A trail of receipts.
So what does that actually look like? Here’s what building trust really requires now—not the version you put in a pitch deck, but the version people actually feel.
1. Tell the truth even when it’s inconvenient.
Your audience knows when you’re spinning. They can feel the difference between transparency and PR damage control. Tell the truth when it’s easy, yes—but also when it’s awkward. When it’s expensive. When it means owning up to a misstep before someone else catches it for you. If you want trust, honesty has to be a habit, not a reaction.
2. Show your math.
People don’t just want to hear what you believe. They want to see how you got there. If you say you value sustainability, prove it with supply chain audits, not beachy stock photos. If you say you believe in equity, let people see your hiring data. Transparency isn’t about telling people what you stand for. It’s about showing them how you arrived at it, and what you're doing to stay accountable.
3. Cut the performance.
Your audience is tired of brands that act like people but behave like corporations. They see through the polished social posts that only appear when a hashtag is trending. They know when your “support” is just theater. Stop asking for points just because you showed up. Do the work when no one’s clapping.
4. Speak in a human voice.
Corporate jargon is a trust killer. It sounds like you’re hiding. Or worse, that you’re trying to impress instead of connect. Speak plainly. Own your missteps. Give real answers. People don’t want to hear from a brand that sounds like it passed through legal ten times before speaking. They want to hear from someone who sounds like they mean it.
5. Stop confusing branding with belief.
It’s tempting to think that a new logo or campaign can fix a reputation problem. It can’t. Branding is not a mask—it’s a mirror. If the reflection is dishonest, the audience doesn’t blame the mirror. They blame you.
6. Follow through, especially after the moment passes.
The internet rewards fast reactions. But trust rewards follow-through. It’s easy to make a bold statement in the middle of a cultural flashpoint. It’s much harder to stick with the work six months later, when no one’s watching. Do that. That’s where credibility lives now.
Building trust today isn’t about pleasing everyone. It’s about being so consistent, so clear, and so willing to back up your words that the people who do believe you have no reason to stop. You don’t need to be perfect. But you do need to be aligned—internally, externally, and consistently. The brands that will rise now won’t be the loudest or the trendiest. They’ll be the ones who communicate clearly, act consistently, and face their audience without flinching. The ones who can say, plainly and without performance: this is who we are, this is what we’re doing, and here’s the proof.
Looking at this list, it strikes me that point five deserves more time. It’s not just another tactic. It’s the whole game. So let’s dig into it a little more.
Branding Is Not Belief
Too many brands still operate under the assumption that if the branding is polished, the belief will follow. If the story is strong, the audience won’t question the ending. If the tone is right, the substance underneath can be thin. But that assumption doesn’t hold up anymore, because people are no longer confusing branding with belief. They're separating the two, often painfully.
Branding is what you say. Belief is what people feel based on what they’ve seen you do. Branding is the costume. Belief is what remains when the costume slips. In the past, you could get away with a sharp campaign, a heartfelt mission statement, and a moment of carefully staged solidarity. But now? Audiences are watching the follow-through. They're measuring your marketing against your behavior, your messaging against your internal culture, your public voice against your private decisions.
This isn’t to say branding doesn’t matter—it does. But it’s no longer the final word. It’s the introduction. The real work comes afterward, in the space where consistency, accountability, and truth either reinforce your message or unravel it entirely.
Branding, at its best, reflects belief. But it can’t replace it.
A New Standard for Branding
Trust used to be a byproduct of branding. Do the messaging right, hit the right emotional notes, and people will believe you. But that equation no longer holds. In this climate, trust is not a side effect. It’s the product.
And that means branding itself needs a new standard—one built not on presentation, but on alignment.
A brand today isn’t judged by how compelling its story is, but by how consistently true that story proves to be over time. It’s measured by the distance between what’s said and what’s done. The smaller the gap, the stronger the brand.
In this environment, clarity matters more than charisma. Accountability matters more than aesthetics. Being right is less important than being honest. And polish without proof doesn’t inspire belief—it triggers suspicion.
This new standard isn’t about perfection. No brand gets everything right. The ones that earn trust aren’t flawless; they’re transparent. They take responsibility. They correct course in public. And they understand that trust isn’t a mood to be evoked. It’s a structure to be built—day by day, action by action.
It’s not easy. But it’s also not optional anymore. If your audience is becoming more literate—about news, about spin, about you—you can’t keep using the same language and expect a different result. You have to evolve, too.
The brands that understand this will look back one day and realize something:
They didn’t just survive a trust crisis.
They helped raise the standard for what trust looks like.
Open Question
If trust is now the most valuable thing a brand can offer, how do you make sure yours is built to last—and not just built to look good?
