Lying is evil. But there is an 'obvious' way that lying is pragmatically evil; and this should not be confused with an 'absolute' way that lying is spiritually evil.
First of all - in 'lying' is included all forms of dishonesty, untruthfulness and misleading - for example misleading by partial, selective, distorted facts; and by saying something factually accurate but with the intent that it be misunderstood as meaning something else (this is SOP in legal situations and bureaucracies).
All are evil - and the indirect and devious evils may well be the worst.
Lies are (nearly always) expedient: i.e. beneficial to the liar in the short term - which is why they happen.
But lying is pragmatically evil in human society in a strategic, long-term sense; because lies are dysfunctional in any social system.
This ought to be obvious, it ought not to need explaining - but modern people cannot think more than one step ahead to consider the consequences; therefore even such simple logic is beyond the contemporary 'mind'.
If you need the help of a thought experiment; consider trying to do an engineering project - something like designing, building and operating a bridge, or an airliner - when the participants are lying to each other. Or the fact that what was 'science' is dead - because it is no longer truth-seeking and truth-speaking (as it was until just a couple of generations ago).
So a society where truth-telling is not encouraged and enforced but instead punished; where lying is encouraged, subsidized, and celebrated; is a society at best inefficient and ineffective - and ultimately (because lies feed on lies) will collapse.
Lying will extract a price; and the more lying the greater the price; until it is socially lethal.
But that is not evil as such. So why is lying evil as such?
Lying is evil because it is a denial of truth, which is reality; and reality is God's creation. That is why lying is intrinsically evil.
If you do not believe in God's creation, then lying is not intrinsically evil; and if you do not take the side of God and divine creation - you will not regard lying as intrinsically evil.
Thus, the reason that there is so much, and ever-more, lying in 2021 is that few people believe in God's creation and many people are opposed to God and divine creation.
Either they regard everything as just pragmatics, and favour their own short-term expedience over long term functionality; or else they positively want to destroy whatever is true, real and Good: i.e. whatever is God's creation.
Liars are troops on the front line of Satan's army; and that it true whether the liar is a politician or journalist, a philanthropist or a Christian church leader. And whatever the kind of lie: whether endorsing one of the Big Lies like the birdemic, climate change or antiracism; or one of the carefully-misleading managerial misrepresentations in public relations, mission statements and bureaucracy. And whether you are lying to 'the public', employees, employers - or to your-self.
Note added. The reason it is important to emphasize the evilness of lying, is that people will often state some version of "there is no point in me/us being truthful"; because "me/us being truthful about this one specific things will not make any difference to what happens".
They fail to recognize that the lie is itself evil - no matter what the probable consequences of truth-telling may - or may not - turn out be.
Indeed; truthfulness - starting with our-selves - is perhaps the single most important act of Good an individual can accomplish in these ever-more-evil End Times (where recovery is unlikely, and all pragmatics lead to ruin); valuable in itself and in its potential spiritual consequences.
