Content questions: a crisis of trust

We’ve been talking about content, about who gets to decide what is and isn’t appropriate, and especially about what happens to the content you publish.

A lot of it comes down to trust. Can we trust the content we encounter? How do we know? And, of course, how can we create content that people will recognize as trustworthy?

Meet the Edelman Trust Barometer. Published by the Edelman research firm, the barometer is an international study that focuses on the degree to which people trust “institutions” — defined by Edelman as government, business, media, and NGOs.

Richard Edelman (screen shot from The Battle for Truth)

I don’t think I’m off base if I interchange the term content providers for institutions. After all, the content we consume — the content on which we base our opinions and our worldview — comes predominantly from government, business, media, and NGOs. And the content you create probably falls into one of those categories.

The newest Trust Barometer finds that people’s trust in institutions — or content providers — is dropping precipitously, especially in the U.S.

In the words of CEO Richard Edelman, “the United States is enduring an unprecedented crisis of trust.” Edelman even posted a short video, titled The Battle for Truth, in which he said (emphasis mine):

• “We don’t have shared facts. Therefore, we lack rational discourse.”
• “Silence is a tax on truth, and we have to speak up.”

By speaking up, Edelman means that it’s incumbent on every institution — every content provider — to “fill the void for quality information.” Trustworthy information.

I don’t disagree with him. But I doubt that every content provider is willing or able.

What do you and I, as consumers of content, do then?

Content questions: is the human element worth a try?

At a time when the news media is under intense scrutiny, when people struggle to distinguish reliable information from “fake news” from merely biased news, how will we decide — and who will decide:

• When is content inappropriate?
• Who controls the content?
• What if content is used to deceive?

I posed these questions last week, with emphasis on the information, or the content, that we create. And I asked how we — the content creators — will shape the answers.

Answering the content conundrum

Steven Brill, interviewed on CNN on March 4, 2018

Here’s one answer, from Steven Brill, whose Wikipedia page calls him a “journalist-entrepreneur.” Brill’s new project is called NewsGuard.

NewsGuard, whose launch date has not been announced, will try to “help consumers distinguish between sites that are trying to get it right and sites that are trying to trick people.” Those are the words of Brian Stelter, who interviewed Brill for CNN’s “Reliable Sources” earlier this month.