The hidden price of manufactured reality
Thomas Nkhoma | Thursday July 16, 2026 09:55
The headlines that stirred your emotions, viral videos that confirmed your suspicions, social media posts that fuelled your outrage and even conversations dominating your timelines were carefully designed by people whose greatest weapon was not a gun or a ballot paper but a story.
It sounds like the plot of a political thriller. Yet it is increasingly becoming the reality of our digital age. Recently, Forbidden Stories published an investigation in which a former propagandist in the Central African Republic described the inner workings of organised disinformation campaigns. The revelations were unsettling, not because propaganda is new but because they exposed how sophisticated, systematic and industrialised the business of influencing public opinion has become.
The story, however, is bigger than the Central African Republic. It is not even fundamentally about Russia. It is about us. It is about the fragile relationship between truth, journalism, democracy and technology in an era where reality itself has become contested. For centuries, nations fought wars over territory. Today, increasingly, they compete for attention. The battlefield has shifted from borders to minds. Victory is no longer measured only by captured land but by captured narratives.
Perhaps, that explains why misinformation has become one of the defining challenges of the 21st Century. Information has always been a source of power. What has changed is the speed with which it travels, the scale at which it can be manipulated and the precision with which it can target human emotions. Artificial intelligence (AI) has accelerated this transformation. A convincing photograph no longer guarantees authenticity. A video is no longer indisputable evidence. A familiar voice may not belong to the person speaking. Technology has democratised creativity but it has also democratised deception.
This presents journalism with one of the greatest ethical dilemmas in its history. For generations, journalists were trained to verify before they published. Today, society often shares before it verifies. Speed has become a competitive advantage while accuracy has become an afterthought. The economics of the digital age reward visibility rather than credibility. Algorithms do not ask whether something is true. They ask whether people are likely to engage with it.
In many ways, we have built an information ecosystem that rewards outrage more generously than reflection. German-American political philosopher, Hannah Arendt, warned decades ago that the greatest danger was not necessarily convincing people to believe lies. Rather, it was creating a society where people no longer believed anything at all. Once citizens lose confidence in every institution, every journalist, every academic and every public official, truth itself becomes irrelevant. Everything becomes merely another opinion. Looking around today, her warning appears remarkably prophetic. The challenge is equally philosophical. Socrates urged humanity to live an examined life. In today’s world, perhaps we should also speak of examining the information we consume. Critical thinking is no longer simply an academic exercise reserved for university classrooms. It has become an essential civic responsibility. Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, argued that education should develop critical consciousness - the ability to question the world rather than passively accept it.
That lesson has never been more relevant than now. A society capable of asking difficult questions is far less vulnerable to manipulation than one that merely consumes information.
Botswana is not immune to these global realities. Our public discourse has increasingly been shaped by anonymous social media accounts, online influencers and digital communities whose reach sometimes exceeds that of traditional news organisations. Public debates frequently erupt around allegations of fake accounts, coordinated online campaigns and the growing influence of anonymous voices in shaping national conversations. Whether these activities arise from political interests, commercial incentives or the pursuit of online attention, they point to a deeper challenge confronting every democracy. Who is shaping the national conversation? More importantly, who should?
Such questions become even more urgent as traditional journalism faces unprecedented economic pressures. Botswana is experiencing similar pressures. Media sustainability is no longer merely an industry concern. It is a democratic concern. Without sustainable journalism, societies risk becoming information-rich but knowledge-poor. Professional journalism performs a function that anonymous online content rarely does. It verifies. It contextualises. It challenges. It accepts legal and ethical responsibility for what it publishes. It is not perfect but it remains one of democracy’s most important institutions.
When professional journalism weakens, the vacuum seldom remains empty. It is quickly occupied by speculation, propaganda, misinformation and algorithmically amplified outrage. That is why media sustainability deserves to be discussed alongside national development, governance and even national security. A financially fragile newsroom is not simply a struggling business. It is a weakened democratic institution. The irony of our age is striking. Humanity has never enjoyed greater access to information. Yet certainty has never been more elusive. AI will undoubtedly transform journalism in remarkable ways. It will assist investigations, improve data analysis, automate repetitive tasks and make information more accessible than ever before. Used responsibly, it has the potential to strengthen journalism rather than undermine it.
But technology alone cannot protect truth. Truth ultimately depends on values. It depends on ethical journalism, transparent institutions, independent universities, responsible technology companies and, perhaps most importantly, citizens willing to pause before pressing the share button. Consequently, the confession of a former propagandist in the Central African Republic should, therefore, not be dismissed as a distant geopolitical story. It is a mirror reflecting the challenges confronting every democracy connected to the internet.
The question is no longer whether propaganda exists. It always has. The real question is whether we still possess the patience to seek truth before embracing convenience, verify before amplifying and think before reacting. Because when journalism becomes someone else’s script, society slowly loses the ability to distinguish between reporting and performance, between information and manipulation, between truth and theatre. Perhaps that is the real price of manufactured reality. Not the lies themselves but the trust we lose in the process.
*Thomas Thos Nkhoma is MISA-Botswana chairperson
The confession of a former propagandist in the Central African Republic is more than an exposé of Russian influence. It is a warning about what happens when journalism abandons truth for patronage, when technology accelerates deception and when citizens lose the ability to distinguish information from manipulation. Consequently, the greatest threat to democracy may no longer be censorship but the industrial production of believable lies. Writes THOMAS THOS NKHOMA*