Reality is simple. Something happened. Or nothing did.

But news rarely gives us reality. It gives us a story. And stories aren’t neutral - they spin, they speculate, and they leave things out.

For example: Charlie Kirk's assassination.

What actually happened, at first, was straightforward:

– A person was killed. – Police confirmed it was Charlie Kirk. – No motive was given. – No suspect had been identified.

But the headlines were:

“Assassination sparks fears of political extremism.” “Shooter linked to right-wing groups.” “The rise of campus violence continues.”

The facts were still there, but they became trapped inside the wrapper of story. The wrapper added spin (“sparks fears”), injected narrative (“linked to groups”), and left out what mattered most: no suspect had been named and no motive was confirmed.

Once the wrapper set in, people stopped asking what happened and started fighting over which story to believe. Stories became sides. Right vs left. Us vs them.

This happens every time. The shared ground of truth — what actually happened, what we can all agree on, what could bring us together — gets lost in the distortion of the better story.

I've come to believe that this distortion is dividing us and it's tearing society apart.

Stories are being weaponised by populists who thrive on fear and capitalists who benefit from monetising it. The best storytellers are winning attention and winning power and keeping their power by telling even better stories.

So here is my question.

Is there a way to recover a shared ground of truth? Or are stories too deeply ingrained in how humans process information?

Can we recover from where we are by rejecting news as stories and adopting a different form?