On the Topic of Trust

Brief item in the ARD public news this morning, which has some curious things attached.

The ZAPP folks who do public polling went out in Germany and asked a couple of questions.

First, all the information and data provided to you on the Coronavirus.....do you believe it to be true?

Well....20-percent of Germans said NO.  This group suggested that both the media and political folks were working together, and in some form.....making up a number of fake stories.  That means one out of every five Germans....believes this.

Why?  There are varying opinions on this.  I'll offer my five observations:

1.  Ten days into the first infection in Bavaria....this became a nightly news discussion, and would broaden out into public forums, front-page news coverage via the daily newspapers, and become a major part of your news.

At 6 AM.....it was being blasted into your house.  The BILD you picked up at the train station while going to work.....would have five or six articles.  You'd get more via the radio.  At night, you might have gotten two to three hours of Corona news.

Sometimes the news agreed....sometimes, it was differing.  The public would eventually start asking stupid questions.

2.  Merkel was never in charge of the message or theme.  You might be able to assign some leadership to the Health Minister (Spahn), and to the sixteen state Premier-Presidents (the governors).  This became obvious about a month into the chaos.

If no one was in charge....no one got any blame.  You can appreciate that logic but ask rather insulting questions about why there's not a person at the lead. 

3.  Every state had differing rules or bans.  People noticed this.  Why not just one central federal policy?  But they could never reach that consensus.

4.  The massive infection prediction or death count?  Never reached.  In the five eastern states of Germany....it was actually an extremely low count on both infections and deaths.

5.  The ban business meant a lot of people stayed home, and they went to social media to 'chat'.  Anger and frustration poured out......disbelief gained traction....confrontation became the norm as people went out and the police tried to correct their behavior.  That didn't work that well (even the cops will admit that they aren't behavioral-police).  Bars quietly opened up on the side, letting people ease in while being illegal because of the ban rules.

So I come to the other odd part of the ZAPP survey.  Roughly two out of three Germans did give the public media (ARD, ZDF) a grade of credible reporting on Corona.  That means one-third didn't agree with their reporting.

The print media folks?  A much lesser grade....just 42 percent saw them as credible. 

The social media crowd?  Just seven-percent of Germans saw them as credible.  Twitter, Facebook, YouTube?  Yep.....a large segment gave them all a fairly failing grade. 

So now?  I think the intellectual and news crowd are a bit worried.  People obviously didn't get the 'message'.  But then the public might be lacking trust in whatever message that did come across.  The fact  that we are at near 100 days of this?  That might play into this as well.