Trusted social media - having a little lie down

Harking back to last week's post on Trust being the Social Networking Thing of 2007......PR agency Edelman released a Trust Performance Indicator at a conference in London on Monday (video here).

Others have commented on this presentation already, but the one thing I haven't seen commented on much - the thing that hit me immediately - was the precipitous drop of trust for nearly everyone between 2006 and 2007. For example, the most trusted - Doctors and People Like Yourself have gone from 55% and 56% respectively to 45%, midrangers like Lawyers and Company Employees from 41% and 32% repectively to 28%, and the digital scumbags - thats PR people and Bloggers - from 16 and 10% respectively to 9% and 6%

The truth table in question is posted up over here on Ian Delaney's site.

What has brought about this decline in trust ? I wasn't there, so if anyone was it would be intereresting to know why people thought this may have occurred.

Oh...except for this lot - five years after Wall Street’s stock research scandals, trust in “stock or industry analyst reports” in the United States is 47%, up from 26% in 2003. In 12 countries, stock or industry research is either the most credible or second most credible source of information about a company.

Strange times.......when Sensible Party people are trusted less than Stock Analysts its probably time to hide your money under the mattress....