Every few weeks another public figure quietly admits that they were paid to say things they knew were not true. For example, the current deputy director of the FBI admitted to purposefully not telling the truth about January 6 during his days as a pundit. These admissions do not shock anyone who has watched the rise of outrage media, but they do illuminate a deeper truth about our current information landscape. We live in a moment where attention is often more lucrative than accuracy and where performance regularly outruns integrity. It is not just that people are confused or uninformed. It is that some individuals are willing to take money to promote what they know to be false, and they treat misinformation as a product they can manufacture and distribute at scale. When this becomes normal, the entire public sphere becomes harder to trust.

The people who participate in this ecosystem understand exactly what they are doing. They know their claims will spread quickly because anger travels farther than nuance and certainty feels safer than complexity. They recognize that many audiences are looking for immediate confirmation of what they believe and feel rather than clarity or truth. These purveyors notice that sensationalism produces engagement even when it fails to produce understanding. They operate in an environment where the reward structure pushes them toward extensive distortion because distortion is easier to digest than the truth. The problem is not simply that falsehoods are spoken. The problem is that they are spoken with full awareness and with the expectation of financial benefit.

These moments should not be viewed as isolated scandals or cultural curiosities. They are structural warnings about the environment we now occupy. They signal how easily credibility can be traded for visibility and how quickly trust can erode when truth becomes optional. Crises rarely begin with a single dramatic failure. They begin with small decisions to tolerate distortion because it feels manageable or for some advantageous. When those decisions accumulate, we eventually inherit consequences that are far more difficult to contain (e.g. authoritarianism and fascism).

Public trust does not disappear all at once. It erodes gradually as stakeholders notice inconsistencies between stated values and actual behavior in our public policy. Each tolerated distortion weakens confidence just a bit more. Over time, that erosion reaches a tipping point. At that moment, we find ourselves responding to outrage rather than governing with authority. If we truly seek to understand and address this pattern early, we are better positioned to prevent crisis rather than manage it.

The Incentive Structures Behind the Outrage Economy

The modern outrage economy is not chaotic or accidental. It is organized around incentives that consistently reward emotional intensity over factual accuracy. Content that provokes anger, fear, or false moral certainty spreads faster than content that requires patience or reflection. Algorithms elevate what captures attention rather than what deepens understanding. Financial returns follow engagement metrics, not truth claims. Over time, this logic reshapes behavior across public life.

These incentives do not stop at media platforms. They exert pressure on political institutions, educational systems, and civic organizations. We are encouraged in social media by algorithms to communicate in ways that mirror outrage dynamics. Complex realities are flattened into slogans and memes. Nuanced explanations are treated as weakness or evasion. Expertise struggles to compete with the virality of reels, and public discourse becomes increasingly brittle.

What makes this environment especially corrosive is how quickly ethical compromise becomes normalized. When social distortion produces results, it becomes tempting to treat truth as flexible rather than foundational. Small justifications give way to larger concessions. We may begin to believe that bending reality serves institutional interests. This gradual rationalization is how credibility erodes without triggering immediate alarm.

Those who thrive in this ecosystem are aware of its mechanics. They understand how repetition of falsity shapes belief and how outrage hardens positions. They recognize that confidence and feelings often matter more than evidence in capturing attention. They also understand that accountability weakens as influence grows. Our collective failure occurs when we underestimate how these dynamics undermine democratic governance if left unchallenged.

If we do not address these incentive structures, we eventually find ourselves governed by them. Decision making becomes reactive rather than principled. Communication shifts from clarity to containment. We spend more time managing perception than building trust. At that point, the cost of restoring credibility is significantly higher than the cost of protecting it earlier.

Leadership, Courage, and Stakeholder Responsibility

During my time serving as both a college dean and a provost, I learned that the most consequential leadership moments rarely occur in public or under spotlight. They happen quietly, early, and often uncomfortably, when warning signs appear but before a situation hardens into crisis, this was especially important during Covid-19. Institutions do not usually falter because leaders lack intelligence, credentials, or good intentions. They falter when leaders hesitate to act while they still have room to maneuver.

As a senior academic leader, I understood my responsibility as extending beyond any single constituency. Boards, donors, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and surrounding communities all hold legitimate, but often competing, expectations. The work of leadership is not choosing which group to appease, but being honest with all of them, even when that honesty introduces tension. I learned quickly that avoiding difficult conversations does not eliminate conflict. It simply postpones it, often at a much higher institutional cost.

In practice, this meant prioritizing long-term sustainability over short-term performative action. There were moments when naming uncomfortable truths risked immediate pushback or misunderstanding. But silence, I found, was far more damaging. When leaders delay action to preserve surface stability, they unintentionally trade trust for time, and time rarely remains neutral. I believed that stakeholders will eventually recognize when information is being withheld or standards are being applied unevenly.

One of the clearest lessons from my administrative roles was that crises almost never arrive without warning. I saw them emerge through patterns: selective enforcement of policy, reluctance to confront powerful actors, or the quiet assumption that past success insulates an institution from accountability. Over time, influence begins to feel like exemption. Standards soften. Governance weakens. When reality finally asserts itself, the disruption is far greater than if concerns had been addressed early and directly.

The courage required in these moments is not theatrical or confrontational. It is procedural, consistent, and often invisible to most outside the institution. It shows up in governance systems that apply standards evenly, regardless of status. It shows up in communication that respects stakeholders enough to be truthful. As a dean and provost, I saw firsthand that institutions are most resilient when they do not rely on denial or delay to function.

Stakeholder trust is not preserved through silence or ambiguity. It is preserved through transparency and follow-through. When leaders focus on engaging stakeholders honestly, especially during moments of uncertainty like Covid-19, they strengthen institutional legitimacy. When they do not, they create informational vacuums that are quickly filled by speculation and mistrust. From my experience, courage exercised early is not only an ethical obligation; it is one of the most effective forms of institutional risk management.

The Cost of Truth and the Cost of Avoidance

Telling the truth in a national political environment that rewards distortion carries real consequences. Pushback is inevitable and discomfort follows. Some opportunities may narrow and some audiences may disengage. These realities often tempt leaders to soften messages or delay decisions. Yet the cost of avoidance is consistently higher.

When misinformation circulates unchecked, polarization deecracy will struggle to function when shared facts disappear. Our politics becomes reactive rather than strategic. Communities fracture as suspicion replaces cooperation. These outcomes develop gradually, making them easy to underestimate until damage is severe. I often say in the absence of information arises conspiracy.

Avoiding truth also damages internal culture. Employees and stakeholders notice when an organization prioritizes image over integrity. Morale declines and cynicism grows. Over time, commitment weakens and performance suffers. Leaders then face challenges that appear sudden but have been developing quietly for years. Defending truth early requires courage and consistency. It also requires accepting short term discomfort in exchange for long term stability. Institutions that make this choice are better positioned to navigate uncertainty. Those that rely on delay and denial often encounter deeper crises later. Prevention remains less costly than repair.

Transparency and Truth in an Age of Incentivized Distortion

In an environment where misinformation is knowingly produced, monetized, and distributed at scale, transparency is no longer optional, it is a form of resistance. When political distortion is rewarded and outrage is profitable, silence does not preserve neutrality and it enables the incentive structure to continue operating unchecked. Transparency interrupts that cycle by making decisions visible, tradeoffs explicit, and standards consistent. It replaces speculation with explanation and deprives bad-faith actors of the ambiguity they exploit for profit and advancement. Trust does not erode because people lack information. It erodes when we allow falsehoods to circulate without challenge and leave stakeholders to fill the gaps themselves with limited truth.

Transparency also restores agency in moments of uncertainty. When leaders explain what they know, what they do not know, and how decisions are being made, they reestablish shared reality in a fractured public sphere. This clarity does not eliminate disagreement, but it prevents cynicism from becoming the default response. I blog because transparency still matters in public life. I blog because evidence-based analysis pushes back against a democracy built on distortion. And I blog because clarity is one of the few tools capable of rebuilding trust before outrage hardens into societal failure. In a time when truth is treated as negotiable and public lies profitable, transparency for communities remains one of the most consequential acts available.

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Julian Vasquez Heilig is a civil rights advocate, scholar, and internationally recognized keynote speaker. He has served as Education Chair for both the NAACP California State Conference and the NAACP Kentucky State Conference, advancing equity for students and communities. Over the past decade, he has delivered more than 150 talks across eight countries, seeking to inspire audiences from universities to national organizations with research, strategy, and lived experience that move people from comfort to conviction and into action.