The conversation on racism isn’t anywhere close to being finished. In fact, the real conversation on racism is just getting started. Our new Trust Barometer data puts a finer point on that reality, highlighting a divide that continues in America.

As an industry, the time is now to come together, to build a roadmap for trust and resilience, to make a meaningful difference. Not just for the people who buy your products, eat your food, use your services but for your employees, your partners and the food system at large.

The 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer finds a new era of information bankruptcy and a trust ecosystem unable to confront it. The pandemic and infodemic are two strands of a Rambo DNA, inextricably linked in their destructive force. Government and media, the usual sources of quality information in a crisis, have both failed to meet the test.

We enter 2021 with a huge hill to climb. Even as new vaccines developed in record time promise an eventual end to the Covid-19 pandemic and a path to economic recovery, the virus rages on, causing illness, death and economic desolation around the globe.

Circumstances have thrown CEOs into new and uncharted waters. This is underscored in the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer, which reveals that business is the institution most trusted (61 percent) to lead on a range of vexing issues.

Amidst the challenges of the past twelve months, Lisa Ross, U.S. COO, says one thing has never been clearer: This is a moment for business—an institution that inherently serves a bipartisan constituency—to offer competence and solutions.

The findings of this year’s 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer underline how a longstanding scepticism of media has metastasized into a broader distrust of nearly all institutions and spokespeople. Trust in all media—traditional, social and search and owned media—is at record lows.

For the first time, China ceded the top Trust spot to India, and now ranks second of 28 markets, according to the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer

Latest Trust data finds us in the midst of an “infodemic”—a point at which institutions must essentially declare information bankruptcy and find a way to rebuild from this nadir of trust. In a seemingly post-truth world, who is best positioned to lead this rebuild? The employer.

Today, we’re releasing data specific to the U.S. What we found? A country riven by divergent and hyper-partisan perspectives, rising inequities and a fragile state of trust in our institutions.