Is trust in corporate communications getting worse?
One might think that following the flood of stories about corporate chicanery during the last few years -- and the efforts at corporate reform among many companies, albeit at
a glacial pace -- the media's negative perceptions about U.S. business might have bottomed out.
Guess again.
The 11th annual Euro RSCG Magnet Survey of the Media, conducted with Columbia University, which was released last week, shows that while 49% of
journalists have lost trust in corporations during the last year, 45% of journalists are less trusting of the professional behavior of their own colleagues -- up from 34% in 2003.
Neither the press has nor corporate America has a sterling reputation with the public, but now it seems as though they are battling each other out to determine who has a
better reputation than, say, used-car salesman.
The study, which surveyed 1,202 journalists throughout the world, questioned reporters, et al., on a wide array of topics, including ethics, credibility, blogs, and
what kind of impact the growing number of corporate and media scandals is having on news reporting. (A complete version of the report is available at http://www.eurorscg-magnet.com.) For senior PR executives, the erosion in media trust certainly is having a deleterious affect on
their ability to do their jobs effectively (see charts).
But rather than try to re-build their bridges, PR executives and journalists have been taking a more adversarial approach toward media relations.
"PR reps should not be gatekeepers but facilitators," says Paul Holmes, political and general news editor at Reuters (New York City) who last week took part in a
media-panel discussion about the survey. He adds that while PR reps' hands are sometime tied by the C-level, they can alternatively get buy-in from the top by "building confidence
to tell the company's story in such a way so the media will be fair in their coverage."
Steve Ross, a media professor at Columbia University and co-director at the Institute for Analytic Journalism (Santa Fe, N.M.), who conducted the study, says, in the
current climate, PR pros have "a little breathing room" to re-evaluate their PR policies as they relate to the media.
"CEOs are less God-like now because of the stock market and, when they're less God-like, they listen to PR people," he says. "PR people should demand that they sit with the
CEO and the board when decisions are being made."
Asked if PR pros might put their jobs in jeopardy by second-guessing a headstrong CEO, Ross says the "arrogance [among CEOs] is diminishing, but not as much as it should,"
adding the caveat, "but, it hasn't diminished toward the press."
Contacts: Paul Holmes, [email protected]; Steve Ross, [email protected]