In 1921, C. P. Scott, the legendary editor of The Manchester Guardian, wrote the words that still appear on The Guardian’s masthead:

“Comment is free, but facts are sacred.”

A century later, the paper that once saw itself as the custodian of that distinction seems unsure what either word means.

Last week’s Guardian piece — “‘Enforced veganism’: Ofcom lets GB News flout accuracy rules, say climate campaigners” (25 Oct 2025) — is a perfect example. The story attacked Ofcom for refusing to censure GB News after a presenter described the government’s climate agenda as a “scam.” Campaigners cried “misinformation.” Ofcom said “opinion.”

For once, the regulator was right.

This isn’t about whether you believe in man-made climate change. It’s about truth — and who gets to own it. Because when journalism forgets the difference between fact and conviction, it stops being journalism. It becomes dogma.

What a fact actually is

A fact is something you can test. Measure. Falsify. The thermometer reading. The CO₂ concentration. The number of votes cast.

A moral or political judgement — words like crisis, justice, identity, scam — is different. It’s an interpretation. It tells us what we think those facts mean.

The Guardian used to know that. Now it blurs the line because moral clarity sells better than intellectual honesty. “Climate crisis” isn’t a measurement; it’s a moral position. “Trans women are women” isn’t a dataset; it’s a social creed. Both may be passionately held beliefs. Neither is a fact.

The climate example

Yes, the climate is changing. Yes, human activity contributes. Those are facts.

But to call the situation a “crisis” adds a moral claim — that the scale and urgency demand drastic change. That’s not science; it’s politics.

GB News calling it a “scam” may be melodramatic, even absurd. But it’s no less subjective than calling it a “crisis.” Both are interpretations of the same data. One side’s virtue word is the other’s insult.

The problem begins when only one of those interpretations is permitted. When regulators start deciding which adjectives are true, we’ve left journalism and entered theology.

The identity example

The same confusion runs through our conversations about gender. “Trans women are women” is treated as an objective fact, a line you must repeat to prove decency. But its truth depends on definitions — what we mean by woman, by sex, by identity. To point out that this is a matter of language and philosophy, not lab work, isn’t cruelty. It’s clarity. Biology describes; society interprets. And if we can’t say that out loud, then we’re no longer reasoning — we’re reciting.

When belief becomes fact

People crave certainty. It feels safer to declare moral agreement than to live with tension. But when beliefs are treated as facts, disagreement looks like deceit. Regulators step in not to protect truth, but to enforce comfort. That’s what the Ofcom episode exposed. Campaigners weren’t defending accuracy; they were defending orthodoxy. They wanted their beliefs to carry the force of facts.

Recovering the humility of truth

When Scott said “facts are sacred,” he didn’t mean they were holy. He meant they were humble — things to be handled with care, separated from our opinions about them. We’ve lost that humility. We moralise first and verify later. We replace “What’s true?” with “Whose side are you on?”. But truth doesn’t belong to sides. It belongs to the slow, uncomfortable process of testing claims — even the ones we’d rather not hear.

If The Guardian still believes facts are sacred, it needs to rediscover the courage to tell the difference between fact and faith, evidence and emotion, truth and tribalism.

Otherwise, “facts are sacred” will become just another slogan — repeated loudly, believed deeply, and understood by no one.