Panel on Trust in the House of Lords

Trust in an era of ‘Alternative’ Facts

- is confidence in Governance and the Media retrievable?

- Panel Discussion, in London, UK, on July 17, 2017 -

“I don’t see how we can ever trust each other again.”

Jonathan Haidt NYU Social Psychologist

Trust—or, too often, the lack of it—is one of the central issues of our time. Without trust, institutions don’t work, societies falter and people lose faith in their leaders. The Edelman Trust Barometer has been tracking trust in institutions for the past 15 years, and the warning signs are now plain to see. For the first time since the Great Recession, half the countries surveyed have fallen into the “distruster” category (that is, their overall level of trust, among the informed public, is below 50%). This is directly linked to the failure of key institutions to provide answers or leadership in response to events such as the refugee crisis, data breaches, China’s stockmarket downturn, Ebola in west Africa, the invasion of Ukraine, the FIFA bribery scandal, VW’s manipulation of emissions data, massive corruption at Petrobras, and exchange-rate manipulation by the world’s largest banks.

  • What are the implications of the global trust crisis?
  • Can we 'break' this distrust cycle-how?
  • Can we increase public demand for quality media and empower citizens through media and information literacy?

The panel discussion was hosted by The Rt. Hon. The Lord Alderdice.
 

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This event commenced at 18.30 BST and was by invitation-only.

This event was hosted in the House of Lords and may be followed by one subsequent discussion in Autumn 2017.