Pratap Ravindran

Trust levels in business, government and media are much lower

Pune , March 12

It was the US global justice activist Mr Patrick Reinsborough, who first commented on the "terrifyingly widespread conceit among professional `campaigners' that social change is a highly specialised profession best left to experienced strategists, negotiators and policy wonks" and defined NGOism as the "conceit that paid staff will be enough to save the world."

Those irked by NGOism for the above reason as also the attempt by NGOs to replace the standard mechanisms of parliamentary democracy will be appalled to learn that, according to the new Edelman Trust Barometer survey carried out for the World Economic Forum, NGOs are now the most trusted institutions worldwide.

Edelman, which describes itself as "the largest independent PR firm" in the world, has been polling over 2,000 opinion leaders annually over the last seven years about their take on the state of trust in four sectors — business, government, media and NGOs.

In its last survey, Edelman polled 1,950 opinion leaders from 11 countries on their views regarding the current state of trust in these four sectors and threw up the finding that although trust in corporations is relatively strong in the US, the UK, Canada and Japan, the relative levels of trust have stagnated since 2001.

However, trust in NGOs is growing...

The trust factor

By way of illustration, trust in NGOs in the US has gone up by 13 percentage points in the past five years, while trust in business has increased only by five points in the same period.

The low figures for business have been attributed to a rash of corporate governance scandals that broke out in the US recently.

In Europe, trust in business has actually declined by three percentage points since 2002, according to the Edelman survey, while trust in NGOs across Europe has gone up by one point from 2004 to 2005.

A study of the Edelman Barometer across the years of its existence suggests that Europe has a consistently strong confidence in NGOs.

Media losing credibility

Significantly, trust in the media has dropped both in the US and Europe.

This is not a surprising finding with regard to the US where the press has lost credibility in the wake of scandals such as the one involving Jayson Blair at the New York Times as also accusations of rampant corruption in the Republican media.

As for Europe, it is believed that the low level of trust in the media may be at least partially due to the emphasis in the press on celebrity gossip.

Even though the European press has been adopting increasingly aggressive strategies to bump up the circulation of newspapers, newspapers are selling 3-5 per cent fewer copies every year in the UK.

But why are civil society groups enjoying such high levels of trust? According to Edelman representatives quoted in sections of the media, Internet accessibility has had a significant role to play in boosting public trust in NGOs with companies now coming under compulsion to track public opinion closely, especially with regard to their social responsibility.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu Business Line