We see this moment is a challenge. We have to stay safe. Our community safe. We have to rally our community to take on the challenge of a sort we have never seen. Our team will be monitoring your questions. You can do this as much as possible. We will get more of this sort of thing from the atlantic council. We are working together with our friends and partners. We are working rapidly to respond to provide all of you policy understanding and ideas and how we can collaborate better. We find ourselves bracing for major geopolitical and economic impacts. Causing chaos, confusion, but also the beginnings of common cause. 130coronavirus has reached countries. 169,000 cases. U. S. , it could be as much as 80 deaths now. Is this information about the virus is spreading faster than the pandemic itself. We must all turn to fax first. The words we use matter. This is a pandemic. The president called for a national emergency. Viralis reason the term applies to this. This is making it harder to mount a public response. Need toerscores the decide whether it is safe. Weekend, Anthony Fauci said with outbreaks such as those, we are never where we think we are. We will not even know about the spread until 16 days from now. We will see a spread that has already taken place. If you think you are in line with the outbreak, you are already three weeks behind. You have to be overreacting to keep up. What we are learning and realtime is proactive. As the number of confirmed cases , individuals and communities are increasingly making judgments about the trustworthiness of institutions and information. We have brought together this panel of experts to understand how we may trust information about the outbreak. Public trust is the keyword right now. Thank you for joining us. I will handed over to my. Olleague thank you to my colleagues. They are in the city that never sleeps. I the director and managing editor. I would like to thank all of you for joining us. If you figuring this out for the first time, i want to give a warm welcome. We love your engagement and questions. We will be taking questions at the end of the conversation. This is happening at a critical time. We are learning more about the Global Pandemic at the minute. Aboutonversation is information and trust. We are talking to folks who have experience in all of these things. I am joined by the chief operating officer. She is the media reporter at axios and the author of the weekly newsletter. Joining us is the ceo of edelman. I will take moderators and set up some ground rules. Only best practice is always referring back to the latest information. We use certain terms and we dont use other terms. We use the term misinformation. The spread of false information. We are seeing a lot of this. This is an overabundance. Right now we need this most. I would like to start this conversation by turning it over to richard. He will go over some of the key findings released this morning. We have been doing studies in trust for the past 20 years. There are important trendlines to Pay Attention to. Trust in media is at a low ebb. This is something that is happened over the last five or six years. The gap between trust in business and government is at record levels. As much as 50 points. Has maintained its position, but the overall rank in media trust has declined because of social media. We go into this crisis understanding that the relative position of institutions has changed. What this has caused is a very important change in the way that trust is conferred. Historically, it was from the top down. With the rise of facebook and other social platforms, trust became horizontal. It went peertopeer. It has moved local. Institution ind the world today is my employer. What that means is there are new expectations of the corporation. Ceos are expected to speak up on the issue of the day. There is no more important issue today thing coronavirus. This was taken 10 years ago. There was misinformation and disinformation. How bad was it . . Who are people believing how are they getting their information . This was vital to understand. Hat role there could be we went up to 10 countries over the last week. T is in europe, the u. S. What we have found is deeply important. The most credible source of information is my employer. My Employer Paid cash plays a central role in this information. It is theream media most frequently referred to information source. Followed by the cdc, etc. Spokespeopleible are scientists, cdc, who. But also a person like me. That trust is conferred horizontally or peertopeer. We find there is a deep need for frequency of information contacts. If my employer is the most trusted, they want people to be communicating daily. It needs to be fresh information. What is going on at the company . Paid leave or what is happening in terms of your employee. They want credible information in third parties. They want people who have academic credentials. People believed that this is being created by the politics of the time. That is a deeply important problem. We must stamp that out. For cannot be seen for Good One Party or another. There is a clear sense that my employer is that are prepared in my country. 14 points different. Business and communicating quality information on a frequent basis cannot be more clearly stated in this study. Contacts is that we want information from health authorities. But it is not sufficient. We deeply distrust social media. Thank you. I will ask you to mention one source of information that you have found incredibly useful or learn something from or is objective about covid19. Plug one source of information. The first question is to you. Gettingnt said they are most of their information from major media organizations over National Government sources. 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 dealing with that kind of variance. One thing that people are turning to from news organizations is really strong Data Visualization. The things that are going viral on social media are charts that are being produced. If you have really strong subject matter. It might make sense to elevate your top science reporter. One of the ways journalists can get around this trust issue is to lift up voices. That is one area where news organizations can be very powerful arbiters of truth. You mentioned a few sources specifically. The Data Visualization from the washington post. Projections on how to flatten the curve. Pointed source of information is to continue to check in with government websites. That is where i would point people for quality information around this virus. Markets are not the only indicator. Overallseen when the federal government declares policies like a national emergency. Markets respond fairly positively. When trump communicates about this, the markets tend to respond negatively. How would you advise the . Resident on how to respond thank you for putting this piece out. This report is based on data. This is not your opinion. This is is data driven conclusions. I had the benefit of being in the confluence of two of these categories. My colleagues are highly respected academics. I learned from them. I meant toward some of them. They mentor to me. They are the leading epidemiologists and virologists. I have had this very interesting themtunity to have each of working for each other. Including myself. Have graphics and data and analysis by people who are the recognized experts in their field. I was to coordinate all their actions. I would caution them against a number of things. We need to stay and our lanes. When i repeat something that is medical in nature, some regression analysis, i say, that is what i have been told by experts. The notion of telling the president what to do, you advise him. There are key principles that i would advise of any leader. You should tell people what you know. You should avoid telling them what you do not know. You should acknowledge uncertainty. It is important to be affirmative about that. To tell othersot about what they know. You should also acknowledge areas of uncertainty. I think this president has come around on this. He moved into something that is not a crisis in nature. He started to foreshadow the future. You see these reporters around. A Public Affairs officer will say what he knows and what he does not know in he will stop at that point. If there is information he cant give you, he will tell you why. They have all sorts of knowledge that they are not allowed to tell others. But that is a sensible answer. In cases of Law Enforcement investigation, you hear about a suspect. The officer will not give you any information. It will jeopardize their ability to catch the subject. Theres a lot you can do for public trust. I said, lets frame it around core principles. They always apply. The consistency is to the point that people are trying to drive home right now. Lets remember to not make fun of peoples fears. We should not make fun of people skeptical of information. The plan is based on data. This is not an idea they came overnight. We developed that concept in 2006. These things have been researched. There is objective data. We have internalized this for 15 years. Dont presume that people are not unwarranted with their fears. Those would be the keys and principles i would be giving this president and everyone. One of the things we think about in this research lab is knowing your source. That is a good way to guard against misinformation. Also, knowing your sources source. That is a good way to guide against misinformation. Have aou dont happen to group of leading experts like i , i always tell people, if you have no other barometer, look for some editorial function. If you can find a curated source where a group of people edited a pieceen when i put out, i run it through the washington post. They have lawyers and editors and curious fact checkers. They make sure they stand up to the test of accuracy. I try to find this and repeat it in some source. Talking about curated sources or edited sources, a lot of the lowest edited sources are a persons place of work. This special report shows that their employers are more prepared to deal with the continuity of operations during a threat and also be a trusted source of information. What does that tell us . What are corporations and employers responsibilities in these moments . It is not business as usual. But it is business. We have a moral responsibility to keep business going as much as we can. There are three primary principles of those. It is unprecedented. We will figure this out. We are doing the best we can. I would rather be safe than sorry. I would rather overreact than under react. We are telling clients to have an abundance of care in doing this. For those who can work remotely, that is part of the modern workplace. Is the case with many situations, we are going to calm out of this better and stronger. You talked about compassion. Four innate sensibilities that all communicators need to have. People,e for your clients, the environment. Be compassionate. Different places on the continuum. From icap believe we spend so much time talking about it to how wrong was i . Give people race and compassion. Extraordinary responsibilities to Show Confidence. We are advising all of our clients, you have to Show Confidence right now. People are not only worried about their health, they are worried about the economy, job, what will happen. We talked about the impact that this could have. Responsibilitya to know that people are worried about their future. Is going back to show compassion but be very clear about how you are communicating. If you know what you are saying, say it. Ityou dont know something, is ok under any circumstances to not know. Not business as usual. We have to continue to the degree we can. It seems like that is prudent advice not just in this moment but always. Inflection point to take a step back and think about how we can do this . I tend to be a natural optimist. Happenings happen, they for a reason. We will come out of this better. We will be smarter in terms of how we do this. We will be better informed. More forward thinking. More compassionate. Everything is elevated right now. This level of grace when we are operating right now. Seems like that is a good words. To heed our own if you are following along, please engage with us on social media. You will notice that if you use that, you will get more information. Related to engagingus, if you are noticeinternet, youll cdc. Gov, come up and none of us are medical officials. Young people defined in this 18 to 34e defined as starting they are trying to social media by 56 . Theal media is also one of least trusted sources of information. Google as well as search question isthe social media platforms have had to promote objective affirmation, but does that enough, you see this every pandemicy in times of and media illusion. Quacks im grateful that you walk through the misinformation upfront and the reason is for social media platforms and people putting out misinformation can be difficult to detect, but there are a lot. F ways you can detect it what is really difficult is is thermation and ormation posted not to what people believed to be true and it is not true and i see this as the greater problem than. Otentially disinformation a lot of people are looking to their friends and family for information and we know people are posting things that are not expertsed to the same because they are not as trained to cite experts the way that we are in the work forces of public government and media. So, especially with young people turning to social media, who are young people most likely to be tuning into, its their own friends and family and i think thats going to be a huge problem. I think the best thing that social platforms can do right now is make a constant effort to change their algorithm. Out of the more trusted brands and information, and the News Companies, they can be officials, so it can be something at c. D. C. , someone at the world health organization, it could be local health authorities, they need to make a conscious effort to elevate working on their algorithms. We saw two years ago, two and a half years ago facebook decided to remove some of the brands and News Companies from its news feed because it wanted more interactions between friends and family. Now might be a time to turn up the way the algorithms with trusted sources. And the last piece of advice with social platforms. Make bold choices. I know in the past, social platforms have taken on deciding which news sources they thought were credible. At this time, use your best instincts. Hire professionals, talk to the government and strong people in the Scientific Community to figure out what are the best sources to elevate and that might mean that you could aggravate one party over the political aisle for not picking their news sources. Elevate the right calls and in your algorithm. Youre speaking to a point that richard made earlier where information is typically or in the past had been kind of vertically oriented and trust had been from top down, from various specific sources, kind of less gateways into the information environment and then social media kind of made that more horizontal and more gateways into being a more valid actor in the information environment, and your advice is essentially making a strong pitch for heavy content, or heavy editing to a point that tom made earlier. How do social media do that in coordination with government and media. Do we have those kind of information path ways . Do we have the concentric circles of trust between social media as well as government and the private sector as well as media . Well, were starting to get there. We started in the wake of 2016 where we did have a crisis that social platforms recognized two things. One they needed to develop a stronger relationship with trusted sources and facebook to elevate their news content and google developed the Google News Initiative to find the quality local news and National News so we know that that relationship is getting a little bit stronger. In terms of these platforms and the governments were seeing ways theyre working together. In light of 2016, the social platforms were complaining they werent getting enough collaboration that could have been them dispersing blame and werent getting enough coordination between them and experts this Cyber Security in the government and et cetera. Now, thats never what they say. They dont of blame the government for not having that level of coordination because theyve taken great steps to build it. I think that we should feel much better about where the relationships are, theyre not yet perfect, but based off the reporting where it was after 2016 were leaps and bounds. And talking again about the the concentric circles of trust between the social media, et cetera. One of the reports from the findings showed that employers, again, are a goto source for information in the days of coronavirus and that makes sense because if you have an eighthour workday then you essentially spend a third of your existence at your working with your colleagues or interacting with your employer. But one of the interesting findings from the trust barometer, out of the 10 countries listed for service, nine of 10 of them have National Health care and so, you have two concentric sources there where you have National Health care systems with the government essentially, as well as employers who are kind of sources of information. And do we see them coordinating enough . How would you, a, advise an employer to navigate that system or communicate with the government about what they need in terms of from the Health Care System in their country . And how would you advise the government on how to address employers if the Health Care System is partly or in part or wholly natural. Ill turn to richard and lisa if you want to chime in. Part of what richard referenced and i will pull out more in our overall data that theres a perception of competency or lack of competency in the four arenas that we look at. But there is a desperate need for government and business to Work Together. Theres a need and theres an expectation for government and business to Work Together and i actually think this is the prime opportunity to showcase how working together makes a diff