In an Age of Misinformation, What Is the Responsibility of Corporate Communicators? By Kai Duggal, Exec Director EVCOM and Sam Wilson, Director Syntiro Associates
At this year’s EVCOM Clarion Awards, we celebrated some of the very best purpose-led work being produced across film, live events and communications.
But as an interlude at the awards, we spent time discussing something that sits at the heart of every successful campaign, film, event and communication strategy: trust.
Our panel asked a deceptively simple question:
Is misinformation and disinformation the biggest threat to purpose-led content? And what role should the corporate film and live events industries play in addressing it?
Hosted by Philippa Forrester, the discussion brought together Sian Hamlett of Hamlett Films, Urooj Kamran Azmi of Muse Studios, Dr Jason Lee of De Montfort University and Sam Wilson of Syntiro Associates and the EVCOM Board.
What quickly became apparent was that this is no longer simply a question for governments, regulators, social media platforms or journalists.
It is increasingly a question for communicators.
Purpose-led communication relies on trust
Every day, organisations ask audiences to believe something.
That might be a sustainability commitment, a diversity and inclusion programme, a behavioural change campaign, a health initiative, an employee engagement strategy or a charitable appeal.
Purpose-led communication only works when audiences trust the organisation behind it.
When trust is strong, people listen.
When trust weakens, even the most well-intentioned message can struggle to land.
That is why misinformation and disinformation matter to our industry. Not because we are political commentators or fact-checkers, but because our work depends on credibility.
The challenge is that we now operate in an environment where audiences are increasingly sceptical about what they see, hear and read.
The World Economic Forum’s 2026 Global Risks Report ranks misinformation and disinformation the second most severe risk facing the world over the next two years, and one of the few it rates as severe over the next decade too. Notably, the report describes it not as a standalone risk but as an accelerant that makes every other risk worse.
At the same time, advances in AI are making it easier than ever to create convincing content at scale, blurring the lines between what is real, what is manipulated and what is entirely fabricated.
For communicators, this creates a fundamental challenge.
How do we build trust when trust itself is under pressure?
The deeper danger isn’t that audiences believe something false. It is that they stop believing anything at all. Once people assume that any image, any claim, any statistic could be fabricated, doubt itself becomes a weapon, and genuine, well-evidenced work gets discounted alongside the fake. Reuters Institute research puts it starkly: 62% of people worldwide now say they worry about telling what is real from what is fake online, and the UK ranks among the five most anxious markets in the world. That scepticism does not arrive neatly targeted at bad actors. It lands on all of us.
This is not just a social issue. It’s a business issue.
One of the most interesting aspects of the panel discussion was the recognition that misinformation is no longer simply a societal concern.
It has become an economic one.
The Mayor of London recently announced a £7 million international tourism and investment campaign, launched in response to disinformation damaging London’s reputation overseas. Notably, the response was not about rebuttal exercise, the counter-measure was focusing on better communication. The concern was not simply political. It was about tourism, investment, business confidence and economic growth.
In other words, misinformation was being treated as a commercial challenge.
That should resonate with anyone working in communications.
False or misleading narratives can influence how people view organisations, products, employers, cities, sectors and institutions. They can affect purchasing decisions, recruitment, investment and reputation.
When trust declines, organisations pay a price.
That is why more public and private sector organisations are investing in initiatives that strengthen information integrity, combat false narratives and rebuild confidence with audiences.
And the inverse is the opportunity. Edelman’s 2026 Trust Barometer found that business is now the only institution the public regards as both competent and ethical, overtaking NGOs on ethics. Audiences are looking to organisations as trusted sources more than ever. That is an extraordinary position of privilege, but also a fragile one. In a market saturated with synthetic noise, being genuinely trustworthy isn’t just a hygiene factor, it’s becoming a premium product.
The issue is no longer whether misinformation exists.
The issue is what organisations choose to do about it.
Are communicators becoming custodians of credibility?
One of the questions I have continued to reflect on since the panel is whether our role as communicators is changing. The content we create reaches millions of people and we help shape conversations inside organisations and across society.
That responsibility cannot be ignored, but should this industry position itself as an arbiter of truth?
No, and we should be wary of anyone who claims that role. But there is a meaningful difference between arbitrating truth and taking responsibility for credibility. We are not fact-checkers. We are, however, the last line before something reaches an audience. If our craft is making things believable, then whether they are true is our business, not solely the client’s.
What can our industry do?
The panel didn’t claim to have all the answers. But three themes kept returning, and these can be used as a practical framework.
Internal governance: make credibility somebody’s job
The defence against misinformation is a governance problem before it is a technology problem. You can’t simply buy your way out of it with a detection tool. It means asking harder questions of a brief; where has this come from, can it be substantiated, what is the evidence behind this claim? It means a named person accountable for information integrity on a production, a substantiation trail for every claim made, and a checkpoint in sign-off where nothing ships until someone can answer “can we prove this?”. Under the Online Safety Act regime, Ofcom’s codes of practice expect platforms to name a senior individual accountable for compliance. It is a sound principle for any organisation producing content, whether the law requires it of you or not.
Trusted sources: anchor to something outside yourself
Assertion is no longer persuasive on its own. Credible communication anchors to authority beyond the organisation making the claim, choose primary sources over secondary, established evidence over internal confidence, and, where claims are regulated, the standards that already govern them. In the sustainability space, the Competition and Markets Authority’s Green Claims Code and the Advertising Standards Authority set a clear bar for what a substantiated claim looks like, and the enforcement record shows precisely which claims survive scrutiny and which do not. Just as importantly, we should treat the verifiers, fact-checkers, auditors, researchers, standards bodies, as allies rather than adversaries. They are the immune system of the information environment we all depend on.
Audience-facing: make your work checkable
Transparency is not a disclaimer at the end. It means giving audiences signals they can verify for themselves; disclosing when content has been generated, recreated or significantly altered, adopting provenance standards such as Content Credentials so work carries a verifiable origin, showing your working rather than asking to be taken on faith. We should not ask audiences to win an arms race we have handed them unarmed. The answer is better signals of trust, not more suspicion.
A challenge for our industry
The Clarion Awards celebrate communications that create positive impact. This year’s discussion was a reminder that impact alone is not enough. In a world where information is contested by default, trust may be the most valuable asset any organisation possesses, and the only one that cannot be bought at short notice.
So here is the challenge, and it is a real one.
Take one piece of work you produced this year and ask a single question: if someone claimed it was misleading or fabricated, could you prove otherwise, quickly, and with evidence?
If the answer is no, that is the work to be done now. Not a policy, not a statement of values. A named owner for information integrity. A substantiation trail. A disclosure standard for synthetic content. A line added tohttps://www.syntiroassociates.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Aniseed-Photo-Sam-at-EVCOM-with-creds-300×300.jpeg your sign-off process.
We cannot solve misinformation as an industry. But we can make ourselves checkable, and in an environment where anyone can fabricate anything, being checkable is fast becoming the whole game.
Not simply to create content that reaches people. To create communication that earns their trust, and can prove it deserves to.
If you think that this is important and want to involved, please contact Kai Duggal, Exec Director at EVCOM and if you would like further support, please contact Sam Wilson at Syntiro Associates..
Sources
World Economic Forum, The Global Risks Report 2026 (January 2026), weforum.org
Edelman, 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer (January 2026), edelman.com
Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Digital News Report 2026 (June 2026), reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk
Mayor of London / London & Partners, international tourism and investment campaign announcement (2026), london.gov.u
by | Jul 31, 2026