Blogging We Media 1

Session 1 Conversation: Trust, Media and Society, moderated by Merrill Brown (Media Center), with Nihal Arthanayake (BBC), David Brain (Edelman), David Schlesinger (Reuters), Karen Stephenson (Media Center)

The debate is about trust - and centered around these statistics.

Here is a funny one Egypt - 74% trust media, 33% trust the gov’t. I have worked with the Egyptian media. Nobody in Egypt trusts their media. Egyptians buy the national newspaper for the classified comments. But then again even less people trust their government. So what media are they talking about?

Also the wrong question is being asked - what I want to know is where the trust is going not where it is now.

I asked what happens when the media abuses that trust? I mean the New York Times apologised for not asking critical questions in the run up to the Iraq war. But has the lesson be learnt? There is a gathering storm over Iran and I cannot see any decent debate in the media.

Karen - agreed with me and said when that trust is gone, it is very hard to get back. David Brain said that a positive thing is that there are bloggers who regularly follow and criticise BBC News. But did he read those blogs to get that feedback? Erm.. no. David Schlesinger is listening but he will rely on 150 years of Reuters history to get it right.

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