“Post-truth” became the word of the decade somewhere around 2016, when Brexit and Trump made it seem like facts didn’t matter anymore. Commentators wrung their hands about entering a dangerous new era where truth was subordinated to emotion, where experts were dismissed, where reality itself became optional.

I think that diagnosis might be backwards.

We’re not entering a post-truth era. We might actually be leaving one—a period where institutional gatekeepers could effectively declare what counted as truth and have most people accept it. What feels like chaos now might just be a more honest acknowledgment of how contested truth has always been.

Let me explain.

The “truth” that supposedly existed before the post-truth era was largely a function of limited information sources. When most people got their news from one newspaper, three television channels, and a handful of radio stations, those institutions effectively controlled the narrative. Their version of events became the default truth, not because it was necessarily more accurate, but because it was the only version most people encountered.

This system had benefits. It created shared understanding of events. It filtered out obvious nonsense. It gave society common reference points for discussing reality.

But it also had serious problems. The “truth” presented by mainstream media often reflected the perspectives of the powerful while marginalising others. Stories that didn’t fit dominant narratives got ignored. Alternative interpretations struggled to be heard. The appearance of consensus often masked genuine disagreement.

What’s changed isn’t that truth suddenly became contested. It’s that the mechanisms for contesting it became more accessible. Social media, blogs, alternative news sources—these allow people to challenge mainstream narratives, present counter-evidence, and offer different interpretations.

Sometimes this produces valuable corrections. Mainstream media has been wrong about plenty of things, and alternative sources have sometimes got it right. The Iraq War weapons of mass destruction claims come to mind—many alternative sources were skeptical when mainstream outlets were credulously repeating government claims.

Sometimes it produces conspiracy theories, misinformation, and dangerous nonsense. Obviously. The mechanisms that enable legitimate challenge also enable illegitimate garbage.

The key point is that what we’re experiencing isn’t new dishonesty about truth. It’s new visibility of how truth-claims have always been contested, and new ability for non-institutional actors to participate in that contestation.

Australian media coverage of this phenomenon tends to be self-serving. Journalists present themselves as defenders of truth against post-truth hordes, conveniently ignoring times when institutional media got things badly wrong. There’s rarely acknowledgment that maybe “truth” was always more complicated than one newspaper’s editorial line.

This doesn’t mean all truth-claims are equal. Some things are true, some are false, some are uncertain. Evidence matters. Expertise matters. Rigour matters. The fact that truth has always been contested doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or that all interpretations are equally valid.

But it does mean we need more sophisticated frameworks for thinking about truth than “institutional media says X, therefore X is true.” We need to evaluate evidence, consider sources, understand context, and be honest about uncertainty.

Ironically, that’s harder work than the old model where you just trusted what the news told you. The post-truth panic might partly be elite discomfort with audiences who won’t simply accept what they’re told.

I think about this when I see how Team400 approaches client communications. They don’t just make claims—they show evidence, explain reasoning, acknowledge limitations. That’s more work than just asserting expertise, but it builds genuine trust rather than demanding deference.

Media organisations could learn from that. Instead of being defensive about challenges to their truth-claims, they could be transparent about how they know what they know, what their limitations are, where uncertainty exists.

Some journalism already works this way. The best reporters show their work, explain their methods, acknowledge what they don’t know. But much coverage still operates in assertion mode—“this is what happened”—without much transparency about the process of determining that.

The post-truth panic also ignores the extent to which “truth” in media has always been shaped by commercial and political pressures. News organisations have owners with agendas. Journalists have biases and blindspots. Coverage decisions reflect resource constraints and business models.

None of this is new. What’s new is that these influences are more visible and harder to ignore. When you could only read one newspaper, you might not notice its biases. When you can compare multiple sources instantly, those biases become obvious.

So are we in a post-truth era? Only if you think “truth” means unchallenged institutional narratives. If you think truth is something we collectively construct through contestation, evidence, and argument—which is closer to how it actually works—then maybe we’re entering a more honest era.

That doesn’t mean it’s easier. Navigating competing truth-claims is harder than just trusting authority. Media literacy matters more when you can’t rely on gatekeepers to filter information. Critical thinking is more important when you’re exposed to more perspectives.

But “harder” doesn’t mean “post-truth.” It might just mean more democratic.

The old system where a few institutions controlled the narrative had the advantage of simplicity. Everyone knew what the official story was. The disadvantage was that the official story was often incomplete, biased, or wrong.

The new system where narratives are constantly contested has the advantage of allowing more voices and perspectives. The disadvantage is chaos, misinformation, and the difficulty of establishing any shared understanding.

I don’t know if we can get the benefits of both systems—the diversity of the new and the coherence of the old. But I know that pining for a mythical past when “truth” was settled is neither accurate history nor helpful strategy.

Truth has always been messy. We’re just more aware of the mess now.

That’s uncomfortable, but it might also be progress.

The question isn’t whether we’re in a post-truth era. It’s whether we’ll develop better tools for navigating contested truth-claims, or whether we’ll retreat into silos where we only engage with information that confirms what we already believe.

Australian media could help with that by being more honest about its own limitations and more transparent about its processes. Or it could keep positioning itself as the guardian of truth against post-truth chaos, which isn’t convincing anyone who doesn’t already agree.

I know which approach I think would work better.

But that’s just my interpretation. You’re free to contest it.

That’s kind of the point.