I was brought up to believe that telling the truth was a fundamental ethic of being a good person. The nature of truth is a deep topic that has been debated for thousands of years, from Plato to Aristotle to Aquinas to Russell. The pragmatic theory I was taught was correspondence—the basic idea that what we believe or say is true if, and only if, it corresponds to the way things actually are—to the facts. But all these philosophers came before Photoshop and before facts were as fungible as they are today.

Growing up, it was natural that if I was pursuing the truth, I should revere the camera because the camera never lies.

My epistemology was fueled by Kodak, Nikon, Leica, and even Hasselblad. I pored over the works of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Steve McCurry, Cindy Sherman, Vivian Maier, and Martin Parr because they used their cameras to capture the truth of life.

However, even then, there were a few background murmurs about “the truth.” Was Robert Capa’s famous Spanish Civil War photograph staged? I considered that possibility, but I still trusted the Leica and the Hasselblad that took them.

Now technology has made it possible to alter the truth captured by the camera. (See: The hidden signs that can reveal a fake photo, BBC, June 2020.)

It is getting so hard to find trusted sources of real facts that can help you plan for what’s ahead. We have fake news, false flags, alternative facts, and all of these are leading to the notion of false truth.

This was brought home to me on Monday morning through a post on the BBC website reporting the news that the pregnant woman pictured being carried out on a stretcher after a hospital was bombed in Mariupol has unfortunately died along with her baby.

This in itself was deeply sorrowful at a human level and was compounded by the false assertion in some tweets (now removed) from the Russian embassy in London that the attack was faked, the hospital was not operational, and the injured women pictured at the scene were actors.

This is deeply, deeply disturbing. The notion that a camera “can lie” is now being used to present alternate versions of the truth, leaving one questioning the facts.

So, what do we do about this?

Companies must make sure they are monitoring a variety of news streams. You cannot see it from just one side. There will be news outlets you trust, but consciously exposing yourself to alternative points of view means you form your own picture.

The best truth you have is real people. And the most real people you know are the ones who work for you. Talk to them, add their stories to those from the media channels you follow, and use that to form your next story for your company.

One of the channels you might want to consult is the Geopolitics Hub from The Conference Board. After all, we stand for “trusted insights,” but we urge you to make up your own mind on how much of your trust we can earn.