It is an honor to stand before a group of students and professionals determined to provide high quality information to the public each day. The mission of the Annenberg School to train young journalists and communicators has never been more important. The work of the school as educator, media watchdog, thought leader and champion of ethics has never mattered more.
A confluence of events has brought to the world a Battle for Truth, in which we no longer share common facts and are unable to have rational debate. In that context, decisions will be made based on fears and emotions, in the interest of short-term personal benefit rather than long-term societal improvement. At this moment, silence is a tax on truth.
Nations become vulnerable to populism and volatility when the media’s role as the guardian of community values and watchdog over the powerful is weakened. Hannah Arendt’s classic study of the Third Reich, “The Origins of Totalitarianism” notes that “the result of a constant and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will be accepted as truth — and that truth will be defamed as a lie — but the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world … is being destroyed.”
Events in the last decade have weakened trust in the core institutions of business, government, media and civil society. The first wave of the trust tsunami was the onset of globalization in the 90s, which took jobs overseas and led to de-industrialization. The second wave was the Great Recession, as 13 million Americans lost their homes and countless others their place in the American Dream. The third wave is the growing fear of immigrants, as wars and political instability prompt mass migration. The fourth wave, subtle and steady, is automation, responsible for four of five jobs lost in America. And the Age of Disinformation, the fifth wave, is the most insidious of all, undermining our capacity to distinguish between truth and lie.
The media is enduring a serious crisis over its business model. The number of jobs in the newsroom has been culled by half, leaving important beats uncovered. Digital advertising is flat-lining while print advertising declines 15 percent a year. Conferences and native advertising are small offsets. Broadcast behemoths such as ESPN are being hit by cord-cutting, with double-digit drops in viewership. The average age of broadcast evening news watchers is 67, for cable news it is 68. The best news is the bump in digital circulation and viewership caused by today’s political upheaval. But the existential challenge is the loss of trust in our traditional sources of information. In short: the platform is burning.
Here are some important findings from the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer that should give every citizen pause:
- Media is now the least-trusted institution in global governance for the first time. It has particularly low trust in Western democracies. Trust in media is high only in Asia, in countries such as China where government and media are closely aligned.
- Media is seen as politicized, elitist, biased, chasing clicks, ignoring average people and too depressing to read. As a result, 50 percent globally and 55 percent in the US have opted to not use mainstream media at all in any given week.
- There is a massive trust gap developing between social media and mainstream platforms. The problems of fake news and Russian interference in social media have prompted a collapse of trust, leaving social platforms 40 points below mainstream media.
- Six in 10 of those we surveyed said that they cannot distinguish between real news and fake news, and seven in 10 are worried about fake news being used as a weapon. As a result, 60 percent say they cannot judge the performance of public officials or even which brands to use.
We have relied to date upon media to be our primary information channel and source of truth. In a world of weakened media, we must now recognize our new role as principal, not agent. We must provide high quality information direct to end-user. This is a responsibility that we should welcome, accepting the necessity of accuracy and accountability. We want to educate to enable better decisions. Our aim is to supplement mainstream journalism, which should still be the primary means of objective fact-gathering and dissemination.
Every company should become its own media company, what we at Edelman call Collaborative Journalism. It should be a news operation that speaks directly to end-user of information through its corporate channels and through social media. Our tone should be natural and authentic, our format both long-form for substance and short-form with visuals for sharing. And employees should be the primary targets.
But for this to succeed, we need a high and publicly stated ethical standard. As my father said in a speech a decade ago, “All of us in PR must bring to the office the sense of morality and live by it every day.” In the wake of the Bell Pottinger scandal, in which fake Twitter identities helped to stir racial tensions in South Africa, we can afford no less. Here are four practical steps:
Accuracy — We must provide factually rigorous, journalistic-quality information. We should move from advocacy to education, to provide both sides of an issue.
Transparency — We must be accountable for what we promote, the strategies we use and the information we share. It is not only what we do but how we do it that should be visible to the public.
Open Exchange — As part of the company platform, there should be a place for running commentary by employees and customers, a transparent effort to surface issues and a timeline for solutions.
Online Ethics Training — Everyone must learn best practices and have promotions or bonuses tied to successful completion of the course.
But there is more to be done. Business has emerged as the most-trusted institution in global governance, having recovered from its precipitous fall from grace in the Great Recession. Business is expected to be the agile and inventive player, filling a void left by a paralyzed or ineffectual government. CEOs are speaking up, becoming public advocates on issues relevant to their employees, such as gender in the workplace or immigration reform. Why? Because the most-trusted institution in global governance is now “my employer,” at 79 percent in the U.S.
As we consider the immense challenges of sustainability, unequal division of wealth, populist tendencies in the West and rapid technological change, the new role for the corporation demands a bigger responsibility for the chief communications officer. Corey du Browa, CCO of Salesforce, suggested recently a modification of the title to Chief Conscience Officer. I believe that he is on the right path in suggesting a moral framework for our task. His idea properly casts business as having a deep ethical responsibility, as envisaged a century ago by company founders such as William Lever or William Henry Kellogg.
The CCO must establish the social contract for the corporation. For Elliot Schrage, CCO of Facebook, there will need to be a new operating framework on data portability, an opt-out option and transparency on use of data. The 3 million truck drivers in the U.S., many of who are employed by FedEx and UPS, are imperiled by the impending introduction of autonomous vehicles. It is for the CCO of those companies to work with the HR department and labor unions to find a way forward for the next decade.
We are observing the move of CCO to a broader role as advocate for change, the Chief Change Officer. Sue Garrard, CCO of Unilever, is now also responsible for the sustainability strategy for the company. David Kamenetsky of AB InBev oversees corporate strategy and sustainability. Andy Pharoah, CCO of Mars, has sustainability and supply chain. This is moving the function to evolving how business is done.
I am also recommending a significant evolution of the communications firm. The financial results of the top 10 firms for 2017 could charitably be called weak, with only two showing growth, ourselves eking out 2 percent growth. We are feeling the effects of cutbacks in CPG spend, a trend toward insourcing to save costs and a squeeze on corporate communications budgets. If our remit is media relations, then such cutbacks are justified in the face of a winnowed mainstream media. The reaction by two of the holding companies has been to combine its PR operations under advertising, making it again a line extension of paid creative, hardly a stirring endorsement of our future prospects.
The real job of the communications firm must be to bring ideas to clients that are consistent with the new aspirations of business. We should be the ones with the creative spark that starts movements, to bring purpose to each brand and to solve big problems in society. At Edelman, we have hired 600 creatives, planners and paid media people to make this a reality. We have built an 800-person social digital firm that creates communities of interest, offers valuable content and listens to consumers for insights. We have recast our work as communications marketing, setting equal stake in reputation and brand as inextricably linked. Our work in crisis for United Airlines, in brand marketing for Dove, helping CVS to withdraw from sale of cigarette products, and employee engagement with REI shows the results of this investment. We are now competing directly with digital firms and ad agencies for budgets, believing that we have solutions that work in earned, owned and paid. In the end, there will be multiple options for clients who will make the choice.
We are at a time of deep discontent, despite the strength of the global economy with record stock prices and low unemployment. Fears of the pace of innovation, of downward economic mobility, of possible loss of job to machine or overseas worker, and of loss of social status in an unfamiliar cultural context all play into an inchoate demand for change. Given its new status as the most-trusted institution, business is now in the best position to move society in a constructive direction. To earn this broader mandate, business must act in a new way, recognizing its responsibilities, operating in an accountable and transparent manner. This requires a more powerful role for the CCO as Chief Change Officer, to establish the context in which the enterprise can succeed. From counsel and conscience to actor and creator; from what we say to what we do, the CCO is the invaluable bridge to the future for the corporation.