Trust levels: much room for improvement

NUREMBERG (Germany) 26th November (PROTEXT) - Politicians,managers and journalists all suffer from the same problem: peopledo not really trust them - these are the results of a survey byGfK Ad Hoc Research Worldwide on people's trust in leading lightsfrom politics, media, the church and business European citizensafford representatives of the church, lawyers and in particulardoctors a greater degree of trust. The situation in America issimilar to Europe. People from Northern Europe are morepositively disposed towards leading figures, whereas those inCentral and Eastern Europe tend to be more cynical.

In Western Europe, 86 per cent of people responded that theydid not have any faith in politicians, while two thirds harboursimilar feelings towards top management in companies. People inDenmark and Finland, however, feel very differently. 64 per centof Danish respondents and 50 per cent of Finnish respondentsindicated that they trusted business leaders, which is a farhigher percentage than in other countries. Danish people werealso more positive regarding politicians than othernationalities, with four in ten people finding politicians atleast a little trustworthy.

No other nation is as critical of politicians, businessleaders and the media as the Germans: only 18 per cent ofrespondents trust the managers of large companies and only twoper cent have a great deal of trust in them. Over 90 per cent ofGermans are at the other end of the scale, with three out of fouractively distrusting top management. In a comparison of thevarious groups, managers come second to last, and politicians areeven worse off. Only eight per cent of all Germans trust them andonly one per cent trusts political representatives completely.Contact: Ulrike Schoeneberg, phone +49 (0)911 395 2645,ulrike.schoeneberg@gfk.de

Subscribers please note that material bearing the slug"PROTEXT" is not part of CTK's news service and is not to bepublished under the "CTK" slug. Protext is a commercial serviceproviding distribution of press releases from clients, who areidentified in the text of Protext reports and who bear fullresponsibility for their contents.

PROTEXT