The news out of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month was dominated by United States President Donald Trump deciding not to invade Greenland and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s warning of a "rupture in the world order" whereby "the strong can do what they want".
So you probably missed the release of the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer at the same conference. It is a well-regarded global survey across 28 countries that since 2000 has measured trust — the glue that holds society together.
It, too, spoke about a rupture in the world order; a rupture not based on authoritarian politicians but on the breakdown of trust between people like you and me.
This year’s survey points to the early 2000s when, by its measures, the main sources we trust shifted from authorities to peers, through the ‘battle for truth"’ in the late 2010s, to 2026, and what it calls "the retreat into insularity".
It tracks a path carved over 26 years from polarisation to grievance to, now, a world where we are reluctant to trust anyone who’s "different" from us. The word Edelman uses to describe that is "insularity".
It finds fears — mostly economic fears — are at an all-time high for this study and says that as fear grows, trust shrinks.
Why does that matter? As historian Yuval Harari wrote in his 2024 book, Nexus, trust underpins the sharing of information and information is the most vital of human networks that has allowed humanity to advance and thrive.
Our "unprecedented capacity to co-operate with one another" was what gave our Homo sapiens ancestors the evolutionary edge over other species.
It follows, then, that the erosion of trust and truth is something that matters to us not just as individuals or nations, but as a species. When we choose "me" over "we" and trust only the familiar and local, we reject the species-expanding view of the great scientists, explorers, artists, businesspeople and thinkers who have dared to go beyond, dragging us all with them.
That’s bad for business and trade, for productivity and innovation. It’s bad for the creative and education sectors.
It’s bad for our sense of a shared humanity and the compassion and ambition that stem from it.
At the end of 2024, I spent three months at the University of Glasgow, just a few minutes’ walk from the gorgeous Gothic Revival creation that inspired the University of Otago’s Clocktower building.
I was researching how to rebuild trust in journalism. If information networks are the secret to our species’ success, then it is crucial we can count on our main sources of information — those who "inform people about things they have never faced themselves", as Harari put it.
That’s the vital work of journalism. News media, universities and courts are among the key institutions that serve as "essential self-correcting mechanisms that protect the truth even from the will of the majority".
Yet trust in those institutions — and journalism in particular — is in rapid decline.
I have come to see trust through the lens of a relationship and it is blindingly obvious that the marriage between journalism and the public is in serious trouble.
It is not all journalism’s fault. We’ve seen media and advertising spending disconnect from news and move elsewhere, new technologies arise with cheap "content" that doesn’t meet journalistic standards and the rise of political polarisation. All have eroded trust.
One of the other fears captured in the Edelman research is that of misinformation. The fear that "other countries purposefully contaminate our media" has reached 65%, up from 54% in 2021.
It is hard to know if this is causal or not, but at the same time the percentage of people who say they get information "from sources with a different political leaning than mine at least weekly" has dropped six points in a year to 39%.
Yet journalism must own its part in this trust crisis.
It has been unfaithful. Its promise was to provide information without fear or favour; accurate, unbiased, useful information.
That is still the mission of most mainstream journalists and news organisations, but we journalists have to accept that many of you will have raised your eyebrows, even scoffed, when you read that previous sentence.
Trust is built on a belief the other party has good intentions and competence. Many of you doubt we have either. So who can blame you for being lured away?
We have let you down. The thing is, it is not hard to see where we have strayed.
One interesting part of my research was seeing that survey after survey tells the same story — you want journalism to commit to a lack of bias, to be open and honest about how its work is done, to factcheck with care and to serve the public above all else. As you should.
This is the good news amidst this trust crisis — the things the public want from its relationship with journalism are the things journalists know how to do.
The hard part is that news outlets are struggling to do that essential work amidst shrinking newsrooms and revenue, trust-eroding technological changes and public scepticism, even hostility.
In my new book, How to Rebuild Trust in Journalism, I identify journalism’s four "superpowers" — objectivity, transparency, verification and caring.
Harness these and journalism can lead the fight against distrust and insularity. It can earn back trust and repair its relationship with the public.
It can offer something distinct from your favourite Tik Toker and more credible than that guy on YouTube. It can be a beacon of shared, established facts.
Trust is based on a promise. To honour journalism’s promise we need to prioritise less bias and more transparency; to do the always rigorous, sometimes mundane work of checking facts, challenging power and showing a diverse range of views; to care about the issues that matter to you and the fidelity you expect from us.
Because journalism needs you and, however tempted you are by that next cat video, you need journalism you can trust.
• Tim Watkin has worked in journalism for nearly three decades and is an industry representative on the NZ Media Council. His new book is entitled How to Rebuild Trust in Journalism.
