  The increasing pervasiveness of fruitless disagreement poses a considerable
risk to social cohesion and constructive public discourse. While polarised
discussions can exhibit significant distrust in the news, it is still largely
unclear whether disagreement is somehow linked to misinformation. In this work,
we exploit the results of `Cartesio', an online experiment to rate the
trustworthiness of Italian news articles annotated for reliability by expert
evaluators. We developed a metric for disagreement that allows for correct
comparisons between news with different mean trust values. Our findings
indicate that, though misinformation receives lower trust ratings than accurate
information, it does not appear to be more controversial. Additionally, we
examined the relationship between these findings and Facebook user engagement
with news articles. Our results show that disagreement correlates with an
increased likelihood of commenting, probably linked to inconclusive and long
discussions. The emerging scenario is one in which fighting disinformation
seems ineffective in countering polarisation. Disagreement focuses more on the
divergence of opinions, trust, and their effects on social cohesion. This study
offers a foundation for unsupervised news item analysis independent of expert
annotation. Incorporating similar principles into the design of news
distribution platforms and social media systems can enhance online interactions
and foster the development of a less divisive news ecosystem.
