# The Era of Opinion Without Facts

## When noise replaces truth and thinking becomes an act of resistance

In a world where opinion has replaced information, commentators have replaced journalists, and machines are beginning to decide for us, forming an opinion has become the most difficult and most urgent act of our time.

I confess: I find it increasingly difficult to form an opinion about anything.
Not because of a lack of information, but because of too much of it. Not because of a lack of voices, but because of too much noise. Not because of disinterest, but because of exhaustion in the face of a media ecosystem that has traded facts for performance, rigor for speed, and scrutiny for chatter.
And if this happens to me, someone who likes to think independently, who needs data to make decisions, who wants to form opinions based on what is true and not on what someone thinks, I can only imagine what happens to everyone else. Because in truth, we all need the same thing. We all need facts to decide. We all need truth to choose. Democracy, the economy, family life, health: everything depends on the quality of the information that reaches us. And that quality is deteriorating faster than we can keep up.

The triumph of commentary over facts

When Gallup began measuring Americans’ trust in the media in the 1970s, between 68% and 72% believed the press reported news fully, accurately, and fairly. In 2025, that number fell to 28%, the lowest ever recorded. About seven in ten Americans say they have little or no trust in the media. Among younger people, trust does not exceed 28%. Among those over 65, it rises to 43%, but even that would have been unthinkable two decades ago.
This is not an American phenomenon. It is global. The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025, covering 48 countries across six continents, shows global trust in news stagnating at 40% for the third consecutive year. And 58% of people say they feel insecure in their ability to distinguish truth from falsehood in online news. We are not talking about ignorant people. We are talking about most of us.
Portugal is no exception. It is a particularly revealing case. In the 2025 Digital News Report, trust in news stands at 54%, placing the country 7th among 48 markets. At first glance, it seems comfortable. But a closer reading reveals something else: this represents an eight-point drop and the lowest level since tracking began in 2015. Among Portuguese youth aged 18 to 24, trust in traditional media has fallen to 31%, with most preferring TikTok and Instagram as primary news sources. Platforms where commentary dominates facts and algorithms decide relevance.
Even countries with relatively high trust can slide into informational fatigue when the environment becomes saturated, conflict-driven, and structurally under-resourced in reporting.

The factory of opinions without raw material

Turn on Portuguese television any day. SIC Notícias, CNN Portugal, CMTV, the new RTP Notícias. Count the time. What you find is a format repeated to exhaustion: a journalist sitting with someone, a commentator, an “analyst,” an “expert,” discussing the topic of the day.
That someone, from nowhere in particular, opines on everything. Says what should have happened. Predicts what will happen. Explains what they think. Has their own segment. Gives ratings, as if governing were a school exam. Some even have segments about “who deserves and who doesn’t,” as if public power could be reduced to a star system.
The numbers confirm the perception. During coverage of the 2025 legislative elections, when regulation is tighter, political commentary accounted for 26% of airtime on SIC Notícias and 28% on CNN Portugal. Outside that period, the proportion is likely higher.
The regulator identified a structural pattern: pluralism is often confused with multiplying fixed commentators, where fewer than a hundred people dominate most commentary slots. Diversity of voices is not diversity of facts. It is diversity of opinions about the same facts, when facts exist.
There is also an economic reason. Producing one hour of investigative journalism costs about 22 times more than producing one hour of studio debate. Commentary is not just an editorial choice. It is a business model. When revenues fall and newsrooms shrink, commentary becomes the cheapest substitute for reporting. The problem is that one does not replace the other.
And no one goes back. No one asks: did the prediction come true? Were the numbers accurate? Was the proposed solution viable? Editorial scrutiny has been outsourced to those who never apply it to themselves.
The public wants investigation and depth. It gets opinions.

The courtroom without rules

Every night, commentators place decision-makers on an improvised defendant’s bench. Without rules, without serious debate, without respect for those who carry real consequences.
It is easy to comment. It is extraordinarily difficult to decide.
Decision-makers live with uncertainty, incomplete information, real consequences. Commentators live with hindsight, the luxury of knowing what “should have been.” Daniel Kahneman called it hindsight bias. Television turned it into a business model.
The asymmetry is brutal: those who act are judged by those who do not. Those who risk are evaluated by those who never risked. Those who err are judged by those who never had to decide.

The paralysis of those who need truth to think

This is not just a media problem. It is civilizational.
When 52% of Americans admit difficulty determining truth during elections, this is not an educational failure. It is systemic. Information has become cognitively expensive. Not because it does not exist, but because it is buried under layers of opinion, manipulation, and noise.
Across Europe, 66% have been exposed to disinformation weekly. Confidence in detecting it does not match actual ability. High confidence, uneven competence.
Exhaustion leads to disengagement. People stop verifying. One in three Europeans avoids news for mental health reasons.
This is not indifference. It is withdrawal.

The desert where no one reports reality

Journalism has been shrinking silently.
Newsroom jobs in the US fell 57% between 2008 and 2020. Thousands of layoffs followed. Investigative journalism now represents only 1–2% of total output and continues to decline.
In Portugal, regional news deserts are real. Entire districts lack consistent coverage. The vacuum is filled by unverified opinion on social platforms.
As factual production shrinks, low-cost interpretation fills the gap. Not a moral failure, but a structural substitution.

The machine that decides when humans give up

Into this vacuum, machines enter.
Automated systems now influence decisions in credit, employment, justice, healthcare. The EU AI Act recognizes these risks. In Portugal, AI is already being tested in judicial support.
The Spanish Viogén system shows risk scores unchanged in 95% of cases. When humans stop questioning, outputs become decisions.
The Boeing 737 MAX revealed the danger of poorly designed human-machine interaction.
AI does not replace human judgment. It amplifies it or degrades it depending on who uses it.
We are delegating decisions precisely when our critical thinking is weakest.

What we must do

This is not about simple solutions.
It is about naming the problem.
The future is not built on more opinions. It is built on better information, better scrutiny, and the courage to decide based on truth.
We must demand facts. Demand accountability. Demand investigation.
We must teach media literacy. Practice verification. Accept uncertainty.
AI is powerful when guided by thinking humans. Dangerous when used by those who stopped thinking.
The real threat is not the machine. It is our abandonment of judgment.
In a world of machines that calculate, we need humans who think.
In a world of endless noise, we need the silence of facts.
The question is no longer whether we can build the future with rigor and humanity.
It is whether we still want to.