It is fiendishly difficult to ascertain if an event took place or not. Our perception of the truth is moulded by what we want to see or chose not to see, and it is formed by the intention of others – politicians vying for power and autocrats wishing to prolong their hold on power.

Rarely can we be eyewitnesses. We have to rely on others to tell the tale. We embrace hearsay, let friends vouch for their stories and prefer to believe than to check for ourselves. The internet, fed by our personal data and online behaviour, enables actors to approach us with made-to-measure storylines with the intention to mislead rather than providing any meaningful approximation of the truth.

Propaganda and influence peddling has achieved levels of perfection that the great dictators of the 20th century would have looked at with envy. If inventions of the truth are only repeated often enough, they will become knowledge of sorts. We look at billowing clouds of intentional obfuscation and say: No smoke without fire.

News outlets that still have the independence, the manpower and resources to check facts and to thoroughly research a chain of events are called “fake news” these days. Remember when Donald Trump’s press secretary at the time, Sean Spicer, rejoiced about “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration”, when photos of the National Mall in Washington DC showed quite clearly that the crowds of watchers gathered for the inauguration of Barack Obama eight years earlier was massively larger? Trump’s right-hand woman Kellyanne Conway pleaded, to high exhilaration, “alternative facts”, an expression that will forever define our age of confusion.

In Russia the overwhelming majority of the electorate firmly believes it was Ukrainian forces that shot down the Malaysian airliner MH17 en route to Kuala Lumpur. And this includes even fierce critics of Vladimir Putin. With all news outlets firmly under government control and a diligently controlled opposition, the truth will be forever elusive.

Sadly our democracies can only function if based on a well-in­formed populace. It is therefore painful that we will never learn who the beneficial owner of Egrant Inc was, now that our Prime Minister and his family were exonerated. Let alone the fact that our journalists are car-bombed, slain like investigative journalists in Russia, the Ukraine, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and most recently by Saudi Arabia.

The 15 henchmen started to dismember Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi while he was still alive, fingers first. While chopping him up into small parcels of meat under the ana­tomic instructions from a doctor present, the butchers listened to music from their headphones. It is unclear if Khashoggi died after two hours of unimaginable pain from the careful dissection of his body or from asphyxiation, as was claimed lately.

It is important to invest in good quality journalism, through paid subscriptions, donations and capital participation

This insanely cruel execution took place on October 2 in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, where he had hoped to pick up personal documents while his fiancée was waiting for him outside. The mob that tortured him gleefully to death was made up of Saudi officials flown in the day before in preparation for his appointment with the consulate.

This, of course, was not what the government of Saudi Arabia, crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and all his tightly controlled news outlets – including those of allied governments – tried to tell us.

The “worst cover-up ever” (Presi­dent Trump) first insisted that Khashoggi had left the compound as a free man and must have disappeared in the streets of Istanbul. Then we were made to believe that he had started a fist-fight with consular personnel and died from unfortunate man-handling. The last version claimed that the meat job was a rogue operation of intelligence officers who would have to face dire consequences for their unauthorised solo.

The astonishingly rapid metamorphosis of Saudi propaganda was induced by Turkish president Recep Erdogan, who drip-fed ever more details about the murder into the public domain. It was a remarkable spectacle of slowly torturing a cruel regime with the truth, wielded masterfully for political gain by an autocrat who himself has smothered to extinction the free press in his country.

It is estimated that a third of all journalists smouldering in jail worldwide are incarcerated in Turkey alone. Erdogan’s regime has overtaken countries like Egypt and China, known to be serial perpetrators of crimes against press freedom.

All over the world, brave re­porters defy death threats and serious security risks to provide us with glimpses of the truth. In absence of their bravery we can only resort to conspiracy theories or take refuge in echo chambers of equally ill-informed fellow citi­zens. We will become angry victims of expert-bashing populists over time, rendering democratic participation in the shaping of our societies impossible.

It is therefore important to in­vest in good quality journalism, through paid subscriptions, donations and capital participation. If news media like the BBC, the Financial Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Spiegel or our little Times of Malta are not given the financial life­blood to survive, we will all soon find ourselves on the irreversible road to serfdom. Our lives will then resemble synchronised socie­ties like China. The rule of law will be flaunted and elites will reign with impunity.

As retail investors we could do worse than investing, for in­stance, in The New York Times Company, one of the few quality papers still publicly listed. In times of increasingly volatile stock markets, the NYT has shown remarkable anti-cyclical propensities. When tech stocks were trembling last month, NYT shares steadily pulled forward. In times of upheavals we can expect reliable news to sell well.

Like all print publications, the paper was suffering from falling advertising revenue, as most corporations shifted their ad spending to online platforms, search engines and social media. With news feeds popping up on our smart phones free of charge, unsolicited and full of advertisements, the NYT, like most print media, had long struggled to persuade readers to pay for news content. Yet lately with growing success: it now boasts 2.6 million digital subscribers, bringing total subscriptions to four million. This created revenues of $ 1.7 billion in 2017, turning in a $ 24 million profit.

At $ 28.51 per share, with a price-earnings ratio of more than 29, the NYT is certainly not a cheap stock. And certainly not what we would call a growth stock: a 167-year-old newspaper can hardly promise to be at the vanguard of disruptive e-commerce like Google or Amazon. But it is a solid title with the future now looking much more secure. Shares have gained 58 per cent within the last year, better than many.

Ironically, a large junk of the NYT’s recent success may be due to the Trump administration’s scant respect for the truth and its often outrageous antics. A growing chorus of activist readers are happy to pay their subscription – for the sake of preserving responsible journalism, perhaps even for the sake of rescuing democracy. I can’t think of many better ways of putting my savings to work.

Andreas Weitzer is an independent journalist based in Malta. He reports on the economy, politics and finance. The purpose of his column is to broaden readers’ general financial knowledge and it should not be interpreted as presenting investment advice or advice on the buying and selling of financial products.

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