Edelman sounds alarm over 'descent into grievance' in Davos – but whose fault is that? | Adam Lowenstein
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While the global PR firm blames ‘economic fears’ for this ‘age of grievance’, the executive class doesn’t seem very fearful. High up in the Swiss Alps this week, an influential public relations executive issued a stark warning to the world’s corporate and political elite. Public trust is “plummeting”, Richard Edelman declared, prompting a global “descent into grievance”.
For the 25th year, the PR agency Edelman released its annual “trust barometer” at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The survey asks respondents in dozens of countries if they trust governments, NGOs, media outlets and corporations. Edelman promotes this exercise as an objective gauge of public trust. A foundational tenet of the survey – and the advice Edelman derives from it – is that it measures whether people trust elite institutions and those who lead them.
But the barometer might be similarly revealing in reverse: as a reflection of what corporate and political elites think of ordinary people. “I just think that’s a fundamentally flawed premise,” Edelman, the agency’s CEO, told me in an interview on Monday. “I mean, we survey ordinary people, and we say what we find. And in this case, we found 20% of them highly aggrieved.”.
Edelman says “economic fears” are to blame for this “age of grievance”. But, from the post-election market “Trump bump” to the giddy enthusiasm of billionaires excited to see fellow billionaires running the US government, these economic fears do not necessarily extend to the executive class.
