Who can you trust?

Today at Rotary we had a speaker from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He told us how safe nuclear power is, how wonderful it is and how it could remedy our energy crisis. Although he seemed like a nice enough guy and was probably right on all counts, I found myself questioning his statements for several reasons. First, he cited one of his resources for his talk as the publication of the John Birch Society. Now, I'm as open minded as the next gal, but what does the John Birch Society know about nuclear power? Heck, I didn't even know they still existed. My second reason for questioning his talk was the almost "off-color" stories he told. In addition, he flew through technical data that most of us didn't grasp and then appeared entirely too flippant about his subject. In the end, I kept asking myself, "is this another government propaganda campaign?"

After all this country has been through in the past eight years, how do we know when to trust government spokespeople? How jaded has the general public gotten about any message from government or large organizations? How do we instill trust when we deliver a message? For those of us in the communications business, we have some interesting challenges ahead as we craft and present messages on behalf of our clients.