ty that recalls the world of that cult film. How can we, the citizens, unplug ourselves and fight it? Take three of the main media stories of the last week. It turns out that we went to war with Saddam Hussein on the basis of Anglo-American intelligence reports that were, at best, politically misrepresented, or, at worst, falsified. The world leaders' summit in Evian produces stage-managed photo-opportunity smiles between President Bush and Chancellor Schröder that reflect the precise opposite of the truth about their relations. The British rightwing press paints a picture of a steamroller European federal superstate that stands to the reality of what is happening in the constitutional convention in Brussels as a Salvador Dali sculpture does to a plain metal saucepan.

This systematic attempt to fool most of the people most of the time is the work of some of the most intelligent, best-informed and highly paid men and women in western societies: spin-doctors, PR consultants, hacks and spooks. Like the Inner Party member, O'Brien, in George Orwell's 1984, they know better. They have seen the photograph, tape or transcript that shows the public claim is wrong, but then, like O'Brien, they have dropped it down the memory hole: " 'Ashes,' he said, 'Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed.' "

In Orwell's centenary year, the "war against terrorism" takes us to an Orwellian world in a quite unexpected way. We are told that Oceania (America, Britain and Australia) must go to war against Iraq, or, as it might be, Orwell's Eastasia or Eurasia, on the basis of reports from secret intelligence sources. One of the strongest passages in Tony Blair's powerful speech to the House of Commons justifying the war was his rhetorical reiteration "I know ... I know ...", followed by claims about dictatorships being "a short time away from having a serviceable nuclear weapon" that the ordinary citizen has no way of checking.

I do not believe that the British secret services, or their coordinators and interpreters in the joint intelligence committee, knowingly passed false intelligence to the prime minister. Their job was to warn, which, especially in the case of the real threat of dictators or terrorists trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction, means warning of worst-case scenarios even on the basis of a single source.

How well they did that job a special inquiry must now investigate. Nor do I believe that Tony Blair said things he himself thought to be untrue. I can not say the same about the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and Office of Strategic Influence; nor about the spin doctors who produced the second Downing Street dossier; nor about some of the hacks who peddled this dope.

The broader point is that 21st-century democratic politics operates in a media world of virtual reality, in which appearance is more important than reality. The genre of modern politics is neither fact nor fiction, but faction. It's a 24/7 dramadocumentary. This is the world not of Newspeak but of Newscorp. It's shaped not by a single totalitarian bureaucracy, but by an intimate, habitual interplay between politicians, spin doctors, PR consultants and journalists working for media corporations, whether in London, Berlin, Paris or Washington. Visit www.newscorp.com the website of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, and you'll find there its mission statement: "Just as our assets span the world, our vision spans art and humor, audacity and compassion, information and innovation. Every day, hundreds of millions of people are entertained and enlightened by the authors and actors, printers and producers, reporters and directors who fulfill [sic] our mission." Enlightened, indeed.

Thus the original nugget of intelligence, itself often just a guess or hint, passes from a lonely secretary in a Baghdad office to the Pentagon, the CIA or MI6, where it is aggregated and talked up a little (no intelligence service wants it said that it did not warn), to the spin doctors at the White House or No 10, where it is hyped up a lot, and thence, via background briefings that add more hype, to the sensationalist, often factitious front page of the Sun or the New York Post. By the time it reaches the end of the food chain, the original nugget is unrecognisable. Fact has become faction.

What can we do against this real-life Matrix? Find the facts, and report them. "Facts are subversive," said the great American journalist IF Stone. A friend and I have long had a fantasy of starting a newspaper called, simply, The Facts. Not The Truth: that is so difficult to find, and so much a matter of interpretation. Just the facts. For those of us who believe this, the American quality press remains a beacon in the darkness. That is why the revelations of reporters inventing stories on the New York Times - for my money, still the best newspaper in the world - have been so shocking.

Anyone who heard the BBC's John Humphrys on yesterday's Today programme facing up to the wildly spinning chairman of the Labour party, John Reid, on the subject of the intelligence reports, knows that the BBC generally stands up for the facts too. Against Newspeak and Newscorp, we still have Newsnight. Across the world, there are quality papers - including, one hopes, the Guardian and its much-visited website - and individual journalists that hold out.

Yet the trend, in journalism as in politics, and probably now in the political use of intelligence, is away from the facts and towards a neo-Orwellian world of manufactured reality. This is something slightly different from (though close to) straight lies.

At the Evian summit, for example, Chancellor Schröder came out on to the terrace of the hotel as Bush and Chirac were chatting awkwardly. Schr& #246;der was talking on his mobile phone. Schröder thrust the mobile phone into Chirac's hand, indicating this was an important call; Chirac stepped aside to take it. Bush was left with no alternative but to be seen chatting amicably with Schröder, whose forced guffaw could be heard many metres away. Schr& #246;der had his "Germany and the US kiss and make up" photo for the next day's German papers. Later it emerged that the caller with a message of world political urgency for Chirac was ... Schröder's wife Doris. Entirely stage-managed. Meanwhile, according to those in a position to know, the truth behind the picture is that Bush will never forgive Schröder for what he sees as his flagrant breach of a private promise over Iraq.

"Two million jobs in peril", trumpeted the Sun on Tuesday May 27. "EU to hijack our economy." This "news" story began: "Two million jobs will be lost if Tony Blair signs the new EU treaty, it was feared last night." On an inside page it emerged that this 2 million figure was just a guess of one Eurosceptic economist, Patrick Minford. Welcome to another corner of the Matrix.

And so it goes on. The best place to start combating neo-Orwellianism is at the end of the food chain, in the media. So if you want to fight the Matrix, become a journalist. Find the facts and report them. Like Orwell.

timothy.garton.ash@guardian.co.uk

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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