NEW YORK — As world leaders gathered in New York for the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly, another conversation was unfolding just beyond the formal halls of diplomacy: Why is trust eroding so rapidly—in governments, international institutions, the media, technology, and even between citizens themselves?
The Journalists and Writers Foundation (JWF) brought together 56 global partners from 30 countries for three days of events from September 21 to 23 on the sidelines of UNGA81. Diplomats, lawmakers, journalists, human rights advocates, academics, faith leaders, and young professionals examined issues ranging from artificial intelligence and political polarization to multilateralism and press freedom.
Although the subjects appeared different, a common theme emerged: a global crisis of trust.
Diplomacy Beyond Governments
The program began on September 21 with JWF’s High-Level Reception at Penthouse45, bringing together participants from 27 countries.
JWF President Dr. Mehmet Kilic highlighted the UNGA81 theme, “Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation: A United Nations That Delivers for All,” while Australian author and broadcaster Shanelle Franklin emphasized cultural diplomacy and direct human connection as tools for addressing contemporary challenges.
The larger message extended beyond traditional diplomacy. Trust is no longer merely a question between states. It is increasingly a problem between citizens and governments, voters and political institutions, audiences and media organizations—and between people living within the same societies.
AI Is Becoming a Human Rights Issue
The September 22 SDGs Roundtable Discussion at John Jay College of Criminal Justice brought the debate directly into the age of artificial intelligence.
Human rights attorney Ana Ursachi argued that technological change is transforming not only economies but also the mechanics of repression.
Facial recognition, scraped social-media profiles, surveillance technologies and shared databases can make transnational repression faster, cheaper and more difficult to detect. AI, she argued, cannot simply be regarded as neutral technology; its consequences depend on the values and accountability mechanisms surrounding those who design and deploy it.
Ursachi pointed to emerging protections including the European Union’s AI Act and the Council of Europe’s AI treaty, while stressing that legal protections matter only if they can actually be enforced.
That raises a question likely to become increasingly important:
The central issue is no longer simply what artificial intelligence can do, but who controls it and under what rules.
Moldovan journalist and entrepreneur Diana Scorpan approached the problem from another direction. She described how coordinated online accounts, algorithmic manipulation and AI-generated content can manufacture the appearance of public consensus.
Political influence no longer needs to arrive in the recognizable form of propaganda. It can be embedded in an ordinary social-media feed, competing with entertainment, personal updates and everyday conversation.
The result is potentially more profound than misinformation alone: the manipulation of how citizens perceive reality itself.
Can Institutions Built for the Old World Govern the New One?
The debate broadened during the 11th Annual SDGs Conference on September 23.
Former South Australian Premier Reverend Dr. Lynn Arnold argued that governments cannot address migration and displacement simply by managing their consequences. Border controls may regulate migration, but they cannot eliminate poverty, insecurity and environmental pressures that drive people from their homes.
Lithuanian parliamentarian Dalia Asanavičiūtė-Gružauskienė focused on another dimension of the same problem: the credibility of international institutions.
She argued that the United Nations must demonstrate its relevance through consistent protection of international rules and human rights rather than adapting those principles according to the power of the states involved.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council Michelle Taylor identified four major pressures confronting multilateralism: impunity, weakening international coalitions, institutions that no longer fully reflect geopolitical realities, and rapidly developing technologies such as AI.
Polish international relations expert Małgorzata Bonikowska placed the problem in a broader historical context. The international system was largely constructed for the world that emerged from the Second World War. It subsequently passed through the bipolar order of the Cold War and a period of dominant American power.
China’s rise and deepening global economic interdependence have changed that environment again.
Yet many international institutions continue to operate according to assumptions inherited from an earlier age.
The question confronting multilateralism, therefore, may be larger than institutional reform.
Can institutions created for the political realities of the twentieth century adapt quickly enough to the technological and geopolitical realities of the twenty-first?
The Hidden Dimension of Polarization
One of the conference’s most striking discussions approached political polarization from a different direction.
Harvard Weatherhead Center conflict-resolution specialist Dr. Donna Hicks drew on decades of work in regions including the Middle East, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka and Colombia to argue that political conflicts often involve something deeper than disagreements over policy.
They involve dignity.
People who believe they have been ignored, humiliated or denied recognition may experience political disagreement as something intensely personal.
Dr. Scott Alexander added a social-psychological dimension: human beings instinctively categorize people into “us” and “them.”
The danger begins when a person standing before us is no longer perceived as an individual but primarily as a representative of a political, religious or social group.
Alexander emphasized “individuation” seeing the person before seeing the label.
Brazilian scholar Esther Solano connected that tendency to the architecture of digital platforms. Algorithms can intensify outrage and division, while short-form political content can reduce complicated questions to emotionally powerful fragments.
Politics then risks becoming less about persuading another citizen and more about defeating another identity.
Why Journalism May Matter More in the AI Age
The conference’s final discussions turned directly to press freedom and independent journalism.
Zimbabwe’s Minister of Youth Empowerment, Development and Vocational Training, Tino Machakaire, argued that technological access alone cannot empower young people. They also need the ability to verify sources, recognize manipulated images and videos, evaluate evidence and distinguish journalism from propaganda.
Nigerian journalist Femi Adesina reduced the challenge to one of journalism’s oldest principles:
Check—and check again.
The principle may sound traditional, but AI gives it new urgency. As the cost of producing convincing false information falls, the value of professional verification increases.
Australian journalist Karen Percy, meanwhile, highlighted another dimension of the information crisis: threats against women journalists, ranging from sexualized online harassment to physical violence and AI-enabled abuse.
A Warning from Turkey
For Turkey, one of the most relevant interventions came from journalist and media executive Abdulhamit Bilici.
Bilici connected press freedom directly to people’s quality of life, arguing that independent journalism allows societies to expose corruption and hold political and economic power accountable.
He drew on his own experience after the Turkish newspaper Zaman, where he served as editor-in-chief, was seized by the authorities and subsequently shut down.
His broader argument was that journalists cannot defend press freedom alone.
When independent media disappear, journalists are not the only people who lose something. Citizens lose one of the institutions through which power can be scrutinized.
Yet Bilici also emphasized that press freedom cannot be separated from journalistic responsibility. He recalled irresponsible traditional reporting that once risked worsening tensions between Turkey and Greece, underscoring that ethical failures are hardly unique to social media.
The goal, therefore, cannot simply be a free press.
It must be a press that is free, independent and accountable.
The Real Crisis Is Trust
Put the three days of discussions together and a striking pattern emerges.
Artificial intelligence is ultimately becoming a question of trust.
Journalism is a question of trust.
Political polarization is a crisis of trust.
And the future of the United Nations and the international system increasingly depends on trust.
Humanity is entering an era in which information is becoming abundant while certainty about its authenticity is becoming scarce.
People increasingly have to ask whether an image is real, whether a video was generated by AI, whether an online account represents a human being, whether a news story is journalism or propaganda, and whether institutions apply the principles they proclaim consistently.
That may make trust one of the most valuable and contested forms of capital in twenty-first-century politics.
The deeper lesson from the three days of discussions in New York was therefore not that trust can simply be demanded from citizens.
Trust has to be earned.
And in an age of artificial intelligence, political polarization and weakening institutions, it may only be rebuilt through transparency, accountability, respect for human dignity and an uncompromising commitment to verifiable truth.
