Trust: is this a crisis?

November 16, 2012, 12:17 PM GMT+0

John Humphrys asks: do we now face a crisis of trust and what can be done when trust breaks down?

It is a commonplace observation that human relationships cannot function unless there is trust. It’s true of marriages, true of the relationship between children and adults, true of people who work together, of the relationship between businesses and their clients, of governments and governed, and of the whole infinitely complex system that is modern society. Yet it is said we now face a crisis of trust. Is it true? And what can be done about it?

In all the turmoil engulfing the BBC at the moment, one message seems to come over more clearly than any other. It is that the corporation needs to regain the trust of the public in its journalism. Although the events that have undermined that trust have largely been confined to one programme, Newsnight, there is a fear that some dreadful journalistic decisions taken there have the power to spread a virus of mistrust about the whole organisation throughout the land. Such a virus could be fatal. Once trust is lost it is immensely hard to regain.

And it is not as though journalism itself has a deep reservoir of trust on which to draw. The phone-hacking scandal, which led to the setting up of the Leveson Inquiry, has shattered the already shaky reputation of a trade (not a profession!) that needs to be trusted simply because a trustworthy, independent press is one of the vital institutions of a properly-working democracy.

But of course it is not just journalism that is breeding mistrust in itself. Far from it. Almost every week there is a new story of some aspect of our lives we had thought unquestioningly to trust that turns out to need investigating. This week it was gas prices. The allegation has been made that prices in the wholesale market for gas are being rigged with inevitable knock-on effects in the retail market. The inference being drawn is that those guilty of the rigging can make unjustified profits while hard-pressed households have to cough up more and more just to keep warm.

All that follows the revelation of the rigging of another ‘price’, the arcane-sounding Libor. We learned that the setting of this interest rate (which determines the price at which banks lend money to each other) was not quite as purely market-driven as had been imagined. The fiddle cost the Barclays Chairman and Chief Executive their jobs. Ordinary mortals might have thought this drama in high finance had little bearing on their own lives, but actually the setting of the Libor rate affects all of us because it helps determine what we pay to service our mortgages and the cost of our overdrafts. And that little scandal came on the back of the much bigger banking scandal that has plunged the world into what looks like the longest recession in over a century. Yet a bank manager used to be the model of the person to trust.

It is not just professions and institutions that seem to be shattering trust in our own trustfulness. Individuals are doing it too. The revelations about Sir Jimmy Savile leave many people thunderstruck. To them he had seemed not just any old popular entertainer but a man who did real good, who devoted himself to worthwhile charitable causes and raised millions to make the world a better place. Now they learn that over four hundred people have come forward alleging that he abused them when they were underage. Other prominent figures are being arrested under suspicion of committing similar crimes.

Even a retired Anglican bishop was arrested this week. If a bishop cannot be trusted, it might be asked, who can be? Yet the story of the Irish Catholic Church tells us all we need to know about what happens when trust is lost. It is hard to see how an institution that was once the most trusted and respected in Ireland can ever recover that trust after the revelations, not only about the scale of child abuse by its priests, but the lengths to which the church authorities went to cover up the scandal.

What is to be done when trust breaks down? The immediate answer people give is: we need regulation and supervision. That is what is going on in the banking world. It is what Leveson is likely to propose for journalism. It is at the heart of the debate about the BBC: does it have adequate structures of internal regulation or should it be regulated from outside?

But is regulation always the correct antidote to breaches of trust? Indeed could regulation actually make things worse? This is probably a matter of horses for courses. There may be cases where there is no alternative to regulation but there are other cases where we should perhaps tread with care.

Take schools, for example. It is hard to imagine a more awful breach of trust than that between adults and children, so when the case of a paedophile teacher abusing a child arises it is hardly surprising that people call for much more stringent supervision. The trouble is that if systems are set up to watch over all teachers more closely, even though it is only a tiny handful who ever pose a risk, then children will grow up being suspicious of all teachers as potential abusers. In short, children will be being brought up to mistrust. But children need to learn what trust is.

It’s for this reason that some people say we need to trust our trustfulness no matter how much the world seems to be undermining it. If we can’t walk along the street saying hello to a child who smiles at us for fear of being thought a potential child abuser, then that child is going to grow up seeing adults as unsmiling, unfriendly people who cannot be trusted. Our world will become colder, harder and devoid of trust.

On this view we should not allow ourselves to believe there is a crisis of trust. To think otherwise is to succumb to a moral panic got up by the media. Our only way to fight back is to go on trusting. And if our trust is sometimes betrayed, then so be it, that’s life.

So who’s right? Are we living in a world in which trust is dwindling and in which the only sensible response is no longer to trust in the way we once may have done? Or should we go on trusting regardless in the hope that, by example, we can help revive something it would be terrible to lose entirely?

What’s your view?

  • Do you think in general we are suffering a crisis of trust?
  • What do you make of recent events in the BBC: have they shaken your trust in its journalism or do you still trust it?
  • Do you think a system of internal regulation is still best for the BBC or should it submit to an external regulator?
  • Did the news of alleged price-rigging in the wholesale gas market surprise you or not? Do you think it is likely to be true or not?
  • How much has your faith in bankers been affected by the events of recent years and what do you think can be done to restore it?
  • Do you think our society is insufficiently regulated, over-regulated or neither?
  • With regard to trust between children and adults, do you think we need more supervision and regulation or should we be prepared to leave it to trust?
  • And do you think we are likely to become a more or less trusting society?

Let us know what you think.