Trust in government. Live coverage here on cspan2. Okay. Good morning. This is fred kempe from the Atlantic Council, and thank you for tuning in to this timely, unfortunate timely conversation on Public Trust Institutions and the corona virus epidemic. First of all i want to thank our speakers who are here today and itll just joined us online for being responsive to the call for social distancing. We actually dont think that social distancing contradicts common cause and thats the way were going to run the Atlantic Council during this period of time. We see this moment as a challenge. Went to keep ourselves safe. We as Atlantic Council have to keep our staff safe, arcing or be safe at the same time we have to rally our community globally, transit medically at the town to take on the challenge of the sort that none of us have seen in our lifetimes. The we do not have you in the room, we encourage you to engage in our discussion. Please use the hashtag ac coronavirus, ac coronavirus. Throughout this event to comment and ask questions. Our team is going to be monitoring your questions and passing them to the moderators so we can do this as much as possible as an interactive, very interactive manner. You will get more of the sort of thing from the Atlantic Council. Were going to be even more tested taken on this challenge and we should be under our mission of working together with her friends and partners to shape the future. Panel of experts was called together through the Atlantic Council programs, the Scowcroft Center for strategy and security, the Rockefeller Foundation resilience center. Atlantic council are working rapidly to respond to provide all of you with as much of us it is a can in real time but at the same time to provide policy ideas, ideas of how we can collaborate better across the world and across the atlantic. We find ourselves bracing for major geopolitical and you Economic Impact as covid19 spreads, is causing chaos, confusion around the globe. Also the beginnings of common cause. What we know already is the coronavirus has reached some 130 countries, latest count is 1000 circuit 169,700 cases, and in the United States it could be as many as 80 deaths now. The website has 81 and 3782 cases. What we know is that information including this information and misinformation about the Novel Coronavirus is spreading faster than the pandemic itself. While navigating what the World Health Organization refers to as an infodemic in the midst of the global spread of a Novel Coronavirus, we must all turn to fax first. As always the words we use matter. The w. H. O. Updated their assessment of covid19 to a pandemic. The president of the United States call for national emergency. There is reason the term viral applies to both. The spread of false information about pandemic threat is reading confusion and panic, and making it harder to mount a Public Health response. Where International Experts are necessary for overall understanding of the coronavirus, this moment also underscores the importance and current degeneration of hyper local information virus, whether friends and neighbors or local officials and the media which people turn to when trying to decide whether it is safe to walk down the street or go to the grocery store. This weekend anthony pouch of the director the National Institute of allergy and Infectious Diseases said with a pick such this tony fauci whenever are what we think we are. Were assuming the numbers today and the spread thats already happen today we wont even know about until 60 days from now and thats the kind of process we must face. When it was going to see a spread, or also going to see a spread that is already taken place but we are just catching up with this because of the spread now of some more testing kits so we know the numbers. As he said if you think you in line, if you think youre in line with the outbreak, you already three weeks i did. Youve got to be almost overreacting a bit to keep up with it and thats why we expect more announcements in the coming hours, precautions that people will be instructed to take in the United States, and elsewhere. What we are learning in real time is a proactive, this is a really important line, directive countries, societies, and individuals do best. They are performing better than reactive ones. Governments who engage in truth telling are heading of danger faster than those that obfuscate or those that delay. And as the number of confirmed cases rises, individuals and communities are increasingly required to make judgments about the trustworthiness of institutions and information. In the face of this uncertainty today we brought together this panel of experts to help us understand how individuals may access trustworthy information about the outbreak and what governments, the Public Sector, the private sector in the media should be doing to gain public trust. Thats the key word right now is a trust. I do want to get for joining us for this timely conversation. Im going to hand it over to my colleague Graham Brookie, director managing editor of the Digital Forensic research lab. He will be moderating todays discussion. I also will not be introducing the panelists body do want to give a great warm thanks to my friend Richard Edelman in new york whos going to give us some interesting information from some work they have done. Richard is in the city that never sleeps but now is shutting down its restaurants and bars, whoever thought we would see that . Let me pass to Graham Brookie to kick us off. Thanks, grandma. My name is Graham Brookie. Thanks, graham. Id like to start the echoing freds remarks of affecting alf you for joining on zoom, youtube any other platform. If youre forgot how to also like to give you a warm welcome to the internet. Though youre not in the room with us, we love your engagement and questions. To reiterate if you have any questions please use the hashtag ac coronavirus. If youre the assume please add your question to chat. If you tune in on facebook please leave your question in the comments section and if youre monitoring, well, we are monitoring all of those channels and will be taking questions here at the end of the conversation. This conversation is happening at a a critical time. Were learning more about the pandemic minute by minute. The conversation about objective, this conversation a a particular is not objective information and public trust which is for us collective challenge that involves government and media and the private sector. We are here today joined by folks that have experience in all those things. Direct that my left i join at an appropriate distance by lisa ross, edelman used chief operating officer who leads the edelman d. C. Office as president. Tom bossert who served as the president Homeland Security advisor, and is a Current National analyst at abc. And sara fischer who is the media reporter at axios and author of the weekly axios media newsletters, media trends newsletter, sorry, i screwed that up. And joining us via the duke of her skin is edelman, ceo of edelman who is launching a special report today on the 2020 Edelman Trust barometer specific on the coronavirus. Ill take moderators prerogative and just set a few ground rules. First and foremost this first and only best practice is always referring back to the latest sciencebased information. If you havent already please visit coronavirus. Gov, a website thats updated on a continuous basis by the centers for Disease Control. Second, as the Digital Research forensic lab here, we use certain terms and we dont use other terms. We dont use the term fake news. Turns out its not a particularly Good Research term. It is objective and causes more harm than not. What we do use is a term misinformation which we define as resident false information without intent meaning is not deliberate. We also use the term disinformation which is the spread of false information with intent. In this moment of global infodemic, were seeing a lot of both. Third, and infodemic is defined by the World Health Organization as an overabundance of information. Some accurate and some not, that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it. And right now we need it most. Id like to start this conversation by kicking it over to richard who will go over some of the key findings from this report. Richard, over to you. Tanks, grandma. We been doing studies in trust for the past 20 years and there are important trendlines to look at, which is specifically that trust in government and trust in media are at quite a low ab. And this is something that has happened over the last five to six years. In governments case its really been since the problems over the budgets in washington, the gap between trust and business and government is at record levels. In fact, in some countries as much as 50 points. The media, major media has maintained its position but the overall rank in media trusts has declined because of social media which is not trusted in the low 20s in western developed markets, democracies. We go into this crisis understanding that the relative position of institutions has changed. Businesses are the most trusted followed shortly thereafter by ngos [inaudible] at a pretty low ab. What this has caused is a real and very important change in weight in which trust is trust was from the topdown, vertical. About ten is ago, trust became horizontal and went peertopeer. In the last two years trust has moved local. The most trusted institution in the world today is my employer. 20 points higher than in normal business and 30point or more higher than in government or media. And what that means is that theres new expectations in the corporation that ceos are expected to speak up on issues of the day, and there is no more important issue of the day than coronavirus. And so this study was undertaken literally ten ten days ago bece we were hearing about infodemic and it was a misinformation, disinformation curse and how bad was it, who were people believing, how are they getting their information without this was vital importance to understand what role the could be for the private sector in supplementing that of the Public Sector and other media. And so we went out to ten countries over the last week. Its in europe, the u. S. , a couple countries in asia, korea and japan, south africa, et cetera. And what we found is deeply important. Specifically, that the most credible source of information is actually my employer. 13point type in media, and five points higher than in government. And so my employer plays a central role in credible information. The Mainstream Media is the most frequently referred to information source, followed by the cdc, w. H. O. , et cetera. The most credible spokespeople are scientists, cdc and w. H. O. , but also a person like me. So it reinforces this idea that trust is conferred horizontally or peertopeer. We find that theres a deep need for frequency of information contact. So if my employer is the most trusted, they want people to be communicating at least daily if not twice a day. So it needs to be fresh information. And about what . Well, specifically what is going on at the company. So vacation or paid leave or whats happening in terms of your employee force or what your policies are on benefits. But it also are expecting there to be face forward for leaders. They want credible information in third parties. They want scientists. They want people who have academic credentials, experts. They dont want politicians. And i want to reiterate, theres a deep in our study about the quantization of the discussion. More than secured of people believe somehow some of this is being created by the politics of the time. That is a deeply important problem. We must stop that out. This must not seen as good for one party or another. It is whats good for society. Further, i want to reiterate that theres a clear sense that my employer is better prepared than my country. 14point difference between my employer and my country. And so again, the role of business in communicating quality information on a frequent basis from scientists and other experts cannot be more clearly stated in this study. So again, the information context is that yes, we won information from Health Authorities, but is not sufficient. We are not sure that it is so. And moreover, we are not sure that what were getting from Mainstream Media is sufficient. We deeply does trust social media. Onethird of people told us specifically, anything they see in they completely discount. So again the platform for truth must encompass a major contribution by business, which must do so frequently and must do so through credible sources such as scientists and experts. Thank you. Thank you very much, richard. For our panelists, for your first intervention what im going to ask you to do is mention at least one source of information that you found incredibly useful or that you learn something from or is objective about covid19. So for your first intervention make sure to plug one source of information. First question is to sara. In the report, respondents shared their getting most of their information about virus from major media organizations over National Government sources, Global Health organizations, or National Health authorities like the cdc. But it also found that respondents trust journalists the least to tell the truth about the virus. How do you see news organizations like yours dating with that various between those findings . I think in times of crises, especially ones that encounter numbers or encounter total number of cases that fluctuate over time, one thing people are turning to the news organizations is really strong data. Youll see the things that are going viral on social media are charts that are being produced by the Washington Post and fox media. Thats why think people really trust news organizations right now. Its not the same, however, some adjusting a report by a certain author or reporter. Now is the time were news organizations need to bring authority of the organization about authority of the journalist. With one exception. If you really strong subject Matter Experts within your walls. So, for example, it might make sense to elevate if you are the New York Times who their top science report has been all of the news lately. That might make sense to elevate your topsides reported to be taught by cases, how they spread, et cetera. Might make sense in another case to elevate your top most report on how the market is reacting but otherwise i think the pieces that are done really well, the people really trust other people that stand by life or not by vine first but they are really graphic heavy and the help people understand the disease more so than help people vicinity. [inaudible] one of the ways i which journalist writ large can get around that trust issue is to make sure their lifting up of voices, that they are either cover it or they have inhouse in order to build more circles of trust. Was yes. And use data as much as we possibly can. News organizations are wellequipped to create really smart graphics. I cant stress enough thats when and why think news organizations to be really powerful arbiters of truth and quality information. You kind of bank shot into it but you mentioned two or three sources specifically of good information could you mentioned the david digitalization from the Washington Post that essentially showed projections on how to flatten curve as follows are there any other very good source of information to include the media trends newsletter . I think one good source of information thats not necessarily a Media Company is really continue to check in with government websites. Thats the thing youll hear about from other panelists but information you are getting from the World Health Organization, getting from your local Health Authorities is another is the a where i would point people to really strong quality information about this virus. Thank you. Markets are not the only indicator but weve seen when the overall federal government communicates policy, like the click of national emergency, markets responded very positively to that. But weve also seen whenever President Trump hursley committee gets about this via Twitter Twitter the markets tend to respond negatively. Take a seat back into your old role, which for those who dont know, its in the Basement Office that is very low clearance and no windows whatsoever. If you had your old job right now, how would you advise the president not only on how to respond to a pandemic threat how to respond and navigate this pandemic . Firstly what is is a might be a part left out as as a thank u to Richard Edelman for putting this piece up out because this report is based on data. People are gravitating towards data and if theyre not they should be. This isnt richards opinion and a support member that. This is richards dated driven conclusion.