A Semblance of Truth
What Went Wrong with the Media and How We Can Fix It
Coming 2027 | Peter Prodromou
The country used to agree on what counted as a fact. Then that ended, and what comes next.
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Then
There was a standard, and it worked.
In 1984 the anchor chair carried real authority and the country argued about politics, not facts. What held it together was unglamorous: editorial hierarchies, newsroom rules, an obligation to report what was true whether you liked it or not.
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1987
The incentives changed, and the standard had nothing holding it up.
The Fairness Doctrine was repealed in 1987. Opinion radio, cable, then the internet—each paid better for conflict than accuracy. Nothing conspired. Profit and truth simply stopped pointing the same direction, and no structure existed to make them.
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Next
Standards are built, which means they can be built again.
Not a restoration, that model isn’t coming back. New standards, carried by the people with something to lose: platforms, regulators, schools, and the operators who have to be believed to do business at all.
About the author
Peter Prodromou sold his first story to the Associated Press for two hundred dollars. Newsrooms, then radio. Supreme Court rulings and the wars of the 1980s. Three decades in technology through the internet boom — Racepoint Global built, backed, and run as CEO across four continents. Counsel to governments on economic development and policy. He has stood at every point in the chain that used to carry the truth. Then he left. Four years out of the industry, watching it come apart and writing about why. A Semblance of Truth is what he came back with.
The book is a diagnosis.
We work to the standard.
The standards that told people what to believe are gone, and nobody is restoring them. They get rebuilt by the people who can’t operate without being believed, including you.