PRmoment attended the 25th Edelman Trust Barometer’s breakfast briefing on Tuesday 28 January, which featured talks from Edelman CEO’s Richard Edelman and Ruth Warder, alongside president, international Ed Williams and British historian, professor David Olusoga OBE. 

During his opening address, Edelman said that society was still feeling the impact of Covid, which has manifested itself as “specifically, a deterioration of belief in experts, a loss of confidence in the medical community, science and government" and identified three major findings from the report:

1. The loss of belief in leaders. “Top-down authority [has been] destroyed. [Examples include] the Iraq War, and anything from the Enron scandal and the financial crisis. We don't believe top-down information. We might believe it if it's peer-to-peer or horizontal. But, we don't believe in leaders.”

2. The mass class divider. “Mass class divide was a delayed reaction to the financial crisis. It didn't happen right away in 2009. It happened in 2012 and it happened in the U.S, the UK, and France in the elections. But it's become transversal, as in 28 countries, we studied it is more than 10 points between the top quartile and the bottom quartile and trust, for more than three quarters of them. Some surprising data is even countries that are doing well economically like Saudi Arabia, have 20 plus point differences between the top and the bottom quartiles. Of course the US, UK, France and Germany have substantial ones, but the mass class divide is now a global phenomenon.”

3. Single party states do better in trust than democracies. “It is a sad but true finding that single party states perform better economically. Which is somewhat down to trust, but it's also true that the government and media do much better in their scores in single party states than they do in democracies.”

4. The battle for truth is the battle for a civil society. “The battle for truth started out, perhaps innocently, in thought bubbles left and right. In my country, either you watch MSNBC on the left, or you watch Fox on the right. And people were entitled to their views, they were a red jersey, or a blue jersey and that kind of seemed like an okay thing. Well, that's now metastasized to the point where there are no agreed facts, Senator Moynihan, who was one of the Great American legislators said, ‘you can have your own opinions but you can't have your own facts’. But we have a world in which we're living with everyone, having his or her own facts, and literally people make it up as they go and it's assumed to be true and false news is spread ten times more than truth.”

The global report, Trust and the Crisis of Grievance has since been broken down into UK-specific figures, the findings of which are summarised below:

• 70% of UK respondents report moderate to high levels of grievance.

• Business remains the most trusted institution in the UK, holding steady at 51% trust.

• Those with heightened grievances view businesses as, 81 points less ethical and 37 points less competent
  

• 50% of UK respondents fear experiencing prejudice, discrimination, or racism (+11 points from last year).

• Only 17% of UK respondents believe life will improve for the next generation.

• The UK shows higher pessimism about the future compared to other developed nations.

• 1 in 3 UK respondents support hostile activism (e.g., online attacks, disinformation, property damage).

• 61% of those aged 18-34 approve of at least one form of hostile activism.