Don´t Trust The Storyteller
For example, one scenario depicted Barack Obama shaking hands with the Iranian president, while another showed George W. Bush vacationing with a famous baseball player during Hurricane Katrina. Republicans were more likely to believe the Obama story, while Democrats found the Bush narrative more plausible. Participants from both groups even claimed to have seen these fictional stories in official media reports.
Our Gullibility Knows No Bounds
Given this, the critical examination of a specific film genre that has gained momentum in recent years is warranted—namely: documentaries, semi-documentaries and so-called biopics. Film critic Susan Vahabzadeh highlights the dangers of this narrative style in her review of the movie Vice (2018), Adam McKay's biographical film about U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. Vahabzadeh warns how easily such films influence our opinions about real people. Biopics typically adhere to the general historical timeline, depicting events with partial accuracy. However, to make the story coherent, fictional gaps are filled in. And this is where the problem starts: the audience cannot discern where truth ends and fiction begins.As viewers, we often judge a character—and the real person behind it—based on a blend of fact and fiction. This amalgamation hardens into an indistinguishable, perceived truth that lingers in our minds.
What Do We Really Know About Mata Hari?
But Vahabzadeh is also forgiving cinema in this regard: "Whenever cinema takes inspiration from reality, which it often does, someone will inevitably point out inaccuracies. (…) Filling in missing pieces for a portrait is entirely normal—every feature film based on true events must do so because not every moment of a life is verifiably documented. (…) Anyone who watches Greta Garbo in Mata Hari (1931) and then believes they know everything about the femail spy whose life this story loosely portrays, is to blame for their own ignorance. So also Vice is not a documentary," Vahabzadeh asserts.
Still, a bitter aftertaste remains, one tied to the times we live in. Vahabzadeh continues: "Moviegoers are no longer as comfortable with imprecise portrayals as they once were. (…) In the past, debates about cinema often focused on the effects of stories on people. The fiercest debates erupted around the turn of the millennium when a series of murders seemed inspired by films, with perpetrators citing movies as their blueprint. There was a ‘Natural Born Killers’ couple, a ‘Scream’ copycat, and a man who stabbed someone and blamed American Psycho, as if art could be held responsible for his actions."
Today, however, the concern is not about such extreme acts. It’s the smaller inaccuracies that make us uneasy.
The Power of a Million Tiny Lies
Debates about fake news and deepfakes have not spared the film industry or any storyteller—whether in entertainment, journalism, marketing, or corporate communication. Fake news operates in a uniquely insidious way.Katarina Bader, a professor of Online Journalism at the Stuttgart Media University, argues (in an interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung) that we give falsehoods too much attention. The battle against fake news isn’t about debunking obvious lies and absurdities. Fake news doesn't function in isolation but exerts its power through a series of small lies that reinforce a narrative.
To understand why blatant falsehoods can shape public opinion, it’s insufficient to simply analyze and fact-check them. The assumption that a naïve Instagram or TikTok user stumbles upon a fabricated story, mistakenly believes it, shares it, and thereby shifts public opinion is far from reality.
The real danger lies not in grand lies but in the "many small lies that gradually distort our perception of reality. (…) These lies establish a narrative that becomes instantly activatable when events arise that seem to confirm it," Bader explains.
Bader identifies three dominant narratives shaped by this dynamic:
- The threat narrative, suggesting that citizens are endangered by criminal foreigners in their daily lives.
- The cover-up narrative, claiming that the political elite colludes with so-called mainstream media to protect criminal migrants.
- The discrimination narrative, asserting that “normal people” and those with right-wing views are marginalized and silenced.
Need for a Counter-Narrative
Bader believes that everyone has a responsibility to reflect on this patterns and to develop counter-measures. However, merely confronting them with facts and figures is insufficient. Instead, Bader argues, we must craft a compelling and credible counter-narrative.Bernhard Pörksen, German professor of media studies at the University of Tübingen, confirms, that the right narrative will makes all the difference: “Stories are the myths of everyday life, the medium of our intellectual existence, frameworks for making sense of reality. They lend meaning, transforming the fragments of life into coherent, causally linked sequences that we retell until we believe them with absolute certainty.”
Power and Danger of Storytelling
But, Pörksen cautions that the power of narrative carries inherent risks. He aligns with Vahabzadeh on this point: “In today’s climate of pervasive uncertainty and frantic meaning-seeking amid an information deluge, we are witnessing the rise of instrumental storytellers. To them, the world exists as will and representation, bending to fit a predetermined plot long before they engage with reality.”But does the solution lie in abandoning storytelling, as purists of objectivity demand? Certainly not. Pörksen emphasizes: “Banning stories as tools for explaining the world is as realistic as asking people to breathe less to conserve oxygen. Humans are, as literary scholar Jonathan Gottschall puts it, The Storytelling Animal—creatures who weave tales. (…) Stories are also authentic documents of lived morality and concrete utopias. They capture personal transformations, successful therapies, private breakthroughs, and societal revolutions.”
Ultimately, Pörksen, along with Vahabzadeh, Bader, and many others, call for something nearly impossible from both audiences and storytellers: “We must raise awareness of the widespread abuse of humanity’s susceptibility to fascination. For one thing is certain: you cannot tell stories without constructing. But when does this inevitable construction cross into manipulative staging? When does a subjective scene or atmospheric detail become evidence of bias? When does the pull of a story—perhaps initially unintentional, not even malicious—lead to deception, first of oneself and then of the audience? This is the key question on the path to renewed openness and genuine curiosity.”
Storytellers: Stay Vigilant
Well, that´s difficult—but vital. We must not surrender uncritically to storytelling, nor immerse ourselves unreservedly in its fiction and escapism. Instead, we must remain vigilant, using the power of stories responsibly, especially where they intersect with reality. It’s exhausting but essential work.
Book tip: David Gallagher and Johne O´Brien: Truth be Told. 2021
Interested in more around Storytelling? Follow me on LinkedIn, have a look into my trainings on LinkedIn Learning or visit my website.
Content creation (text & image) entirely by a human. Translation assisted by AI.
