Public Trust and Regulatory Governance as represented through the Media

Abstract

Media coverage of politics often comments on the decline of the public's trust in government institutions. There is a notion that public trust of government is steadily decreasing. Many factors contribute to this reduced trust, including: unhappiness with government performance, negativity of election campaigns, distrust of traditional political parties, scandalous behavior of government officials (unethical, incompetent or corrupt conduct) and the changing role of the media. (1) The media is said to be "more interpretive in its reporting and critical of politicians and government" (2) and thus, politicians and government are subject to criticism on a daily basis. The use of "the eight-second spot, the quotable quote, the sound bite and live television in the House of Commons" (3) has assisted in turning politics into a public spectacle. The framing of political coverage in these negative tones stimulates public cynicism which leads to distrust in government. Past studies have suggested that increased public confidence in government institutions, particularly regulatory agencies, results in increased public comfort with the work of those agencies. (4) This is particularly important for regulators of new technologies such as agricultural or health biotechnology. In order for the public to accept new technologies, a high level of public comfort is needed. Where regulatory processes are transparent and the public is informed of new research and developments in the regulatory process, public comfort (and public trust) increases. When there is a lack of trust in the government generally, and in regulatory systems specifically, producer and consumer utilization of new developments in biotechnology may decrease. There is no doubt that the media exerts some influence on the interactions between the public and government institutions. However it is unclear whether the media shapes public opinion, or if media coverage is a mere reflection of the public's opinion. This study examines the level of public trust/confidence in regulatory agencies through public opinion data from 1990 to the present. We collected and compiled data in three separate categories: politicians, the civil/public service and regulatory agencies. We found that politicians have the lowest levels of public trust, ranging from 18% to 46%. The civil/public Service has much higher levels of public trust, ranging from 47% to 72%. Finally, regulatory agencies (in this case Health Canada, Environment Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency) all maintained high levels of public trust, approximately 70% for every year surveyed. (5) The second part of this study examines newspaper coverage of Canadian regulatory agencies for agricultural and health biotechnology. …