“The History of Misinformation” is a 3-part opinion series inspired by The Age of Mistrust, a British Academy lecture held in February 2025. Each article reflects on a key speaker’s contribution, tracing how misinformation has shaped legal, political, and historical narratives from ancient Greece to modern times.

• Part 1 explores how gossip and subjective perception influenced justice in Ancient Greece through the trial of Phryne, as discussed by Professor Esther Eidinow.
• Part 2 delves into political propaganda and media manipulation, focusing on the Pigott forgeries targeting Irish leader Charles Stewart Parnell, presented by Professor Alvin Jackson.
• Part 3 highlights the distortion of historical narratives, particularly British versus Indian accounts of the 1857 Indian Rebellion, as examined by Professor Yasmin Khan.

Together, the series underscores how misinformation—driven by bias, media influence, and emotional allegiance—continues to shape public perception and historical truth. It calls for critical media literacy, balanced sourcing, and self-awareness in our consumption of information.

In the last article, we discussed submission from the first speaker, Professor Eidinow who introduced another recurring theme from this lecture series which is the link between political propaganda, the media and misinformation. Our second speaker, Professor Alvin Jackson FBA of the University of Edinburgh is a Professor of History whose work focuses largely on modern Irish and British political history. Professor Jackson described the infamous political scandal of the Pigott forgeries. 

In 1887, The Times newspaper published a series of letters entitled ‘’Parnellism and Crime’’ claiming to be the words of Charles Stewart Parnell the leader of the Irish parliamentary party and the Home Rule movement which advocated for self-governance for Ireland within the British empire. The letters appeared to suggest that Parnell had a hand in the murders of two British government officials. Professor Jackson explained that these letters appeared at a time when there was gross mistrust between British and Irish politicians over political reforms. If genuine the letters would incriminate Parnell, undermine the Home Rule movement and essentially ruin his political career entirely. 

Parnell denied its authenticity and a special commission was established to investigate. The investigation revealed inconsistencies in the letters; and under cross-examination, the Irish journalist Richard Pigott admitted to forging the letters. In response, The Times was forced to pay Parnell a significant compensation for libel. Although this was not a tort case but rather a government inquiry Parnell would have had sufficient grounds for a defamation and libel claim against the Times. 

Existing precedent of the time in cases such as Campbell v. Spottiswoode, Stockdale v. Hansard and King v. Cobbett suggests a publication is defamatory if the following is true; 

i). It causes serious harm to a person’s reputation in the eyes of the public

ii). It must be false. 

iii). The false statement must be circulated to a third party in this case the public. 

iv). The false statement must clearly identify the victim. 

v). The publisher may be liable if they acted with deliberate intent and or negligent failure to verify the information. 

vi). The statement must result in actual harm – given the political risk this element would have easily been satisfied as resulting in actual harm. 

Professor Jackson saw this as early evidence of how confirmation bias feeds into misinformation. The Times was known to be sympathetic towards the British Conservative Party who opposed Parnell’s Home Rule movement. The publication owed a moral and political duty to the public, and yet published the letters maliciously without validating them. In the words of Professor Jackson, ‘’Misinformation is gossip on a larger, more professional scale’’. In ancient times misinformation seems to have been more focused on socio-cultural bias, including gender or religious bias yet it very often had close connections with political figures. This thread woven through the fabric of human socio-political development highlights the toxic relationship between government, and the media. Professor Jackson went on to draw parallels with other well known political scandals such as the Dreyfus affair in France; the forged Hitler diaries; Profumo affair, Agram trial, and the Zanoviev letter. At the core of these scandals is the low acceptance threshold for information that confirms our bias and high threshold for information that is against our deep seated beliefs. 

The stark difference in the industry of misinformation today is the enormous reach that it has. In closing Professor Jackson noted that misinformation then was episodic and not algorithmic. Whereas they were eventually exposed and resolved, today even after being corrected misinformation will continue to spread making it more difficult to curtail. The fixed nature of the medium of print media made it easier to control misinformation. Today, mainstream media and social media amplify misinformation a.k.a ‘’fake news’’ to influence public opinion and deepen political polarisation. 

In the final part of the series, we shift focus from individual scandals and media bias to the broader consequences of historical misinformation. Professor Yasmin Khan explores how distorted narratives—particularly those surrounding colonial events like the Indian Rebellion of 1857—continue to shape national identity and public memory today. Through this lens, Part 3 examines the emotional power of historical storytelling, the silencing of voices, and the lingering effects of bias embedded in the way history is recorded and retold.