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December 7, 2005

The public trust

I’m glad I’m not a telemarketer, and not just because I wouldn’t like the weather in Bombay.

Telemarketers came in dead last in the annual Gallup Poll’s rankings of America’s most and least trusted professions, released this week.

This should be of no small concern to telemarketing executives as they lounge by their Palm Beach pools and scheme about how to get old people to part with their hard-earned pensions.

But it ought to be a relief to car salesmen, who knocked politicians out of last place in 1976 and have dominated the spot almost unbroken through this year.

For the record I’m also glad I’m not an advertising practitioner or a congressman, stockbroker, business exeutive, senator, labor union leader, lawyer, building contractor or a real-estate agent — in that order. Americans believe you can’t trust ’em.

At the other end of the list, nurses were the most trusted professionals, as they have been since 1998 (with the exception of 2001, when firefighters surged to the top for obvious reasons).

Pharmacists used to be more trusted than nurses, but no longer thanks to the decline of the mom-and-pop drugstore and the rise of big-money drugs like Viagara. This year pharmacists held down the No. 2 spot, followed by the family doctor at No. 3.

As a journalist, I’d settle for No. 4. Who can compete with those guys?

But as I scanned down the list, the next spots were occupied by high-school teachers, policemen and the clergy.

OK. I’ll concede high-school teachers. But I’ve spent some time in cop shops and boy, could I tell you a story or two!

And the clergy? You’d think that Pat “Let’s Bomb the State Department” Robertson and the Catholic sex scandal would knock them down a notch or two. I guess not, but I can live with it.

I read on and finally found myself and my colleages — after funeral directors, bankers and accountants.

Funeral directors? Yeesh, that hurts!

If you ever wanted evidence of how Jayson Blaire and other scandals have hurt this profession, there’s all the evidence you need. People would rather have a funeral director babysit their kid than Dan Rather (who, by the way, was set up).

It pains us to see this because most of us in the newsroom are scrupulously honest, hardworking and sometimes even downright noble.

I pride myself in the fact that I’ve never accepted anything more valuable than a cup of coffee from a source or a potential source. That means no gifts, no freebies and no free lunch. That’s right: If I meet a source for lunch, I pay my share. If he insists, I tell him the newspaper will reimburse me. Usually it’s not true, but I leave the table knowing I can’t be bought.

Every other reporter I know adheres to a similar standard. It’s the policy of our newspaper. It’s the policy of the Society of Professional Journalists. And it’s what they taught us in j-school.

Now, take your average banker (remember, they came out as more trustworthy than we did in the Gallup poll). Actually, take a specific banker, an investment banker I’ve known for years.

When he wants to bring in a corporate client, he lays out all the facts about why his firm is offering a better deal than the other guys. He uses charts, presentations, in-depth research, independent consultants, the whole nine yards.

Then the real wooing begins. Think Michelin four-star restaurants, $600 bottles of wine, Super Bowl tickets and trips on the company yacht. Think nights on the town drinking the finest Scotch whisky, smoking Cuban cigars and lap dances.

That’s how it’s done in the business world. That’s the established practice. It’s not illegal (except the Cuban cigars). They call it “building a relationship.” Everyone else calls it bribery.

Unfortunately, that’s usually how it works in the public sector, too — witness disgraced former U.S. Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham and ousted Connecticut Sen. Ernest E. Newton II. Even when they’re not taking outright bribes, which are illegal, the politicians who are supposed to be serving us instead take untold millions of dollars in legal bribes known as campaign donations.

They take money from defense companies that want contracts. They take money from oil corporations that don’t like the environmental rules they have to follow. They take money from special-interest groups that want less restrictive gun laws or no more abortions or more spending on the environment.

The lawmakers themselves, of course, swear up and down that none of that money has any effect on the decisions they make.

I pose the question: Would corporations waste their money if it weren't affecting policy?

At least the politicians ranked below us.

Posted by edcrowder on 6:57 PM | Comments (1632)