Reversing the Destruction of Trust

Our society lives on trust. We do business by trust.
When we read that multi-million-dollar PR firms like Burson-Marstellar took their 30 pieces of silver from current Internet giant Facebook to wrongly bad-mouth rival giant Google, it rends the very fabric by which our society holds together.
Without trust, one ultimately has anarchy. A growing lack of trust means things cost more. Low trust leads to greed.
What is even more sad and disheartening is the fact that Burson is widely credited with the classic and highly praised trust-building strategy that saved Tylenol (and Johnson & Johnson) way back in 1982.
Apparently both Johnson & Johnson and Burson have both misplaced their moral compass.
The PR giant, one of the largest in the industry, makes matters worse by serving up weak blame, pointing the finger towards its client, Facebook: "
"[T]his was not at all standard operating procedure [for Burson] and is against our policies, and the assignment on those terms should have been declined."
What "nice" words, the phrase: "Should have been declined." Unfortunately, such a mea culpa doesn't work.
This is a classic "dirty tricks" campaign, and one in an unbroken line as long as recorded human history. However, that does not make it right. In fact, in this post Great Recession time of shaky trust, it comes at a very bad time. It's bad for the PR profession, it's bad for Burson (and Facebook) and it's bad for society.
When people start tossing around words like "integrity," they better be prepared to show that their motives are a little more pure than power-grabbing and profit-taking.
Fast Company magazine asserts that the Burson/Facebook dirty tricks tactic is simply the first round in "an epic, escalating war" between Facebook and Google. I sincerely and feverently hope that FC is totally wrong on that one.
The antidote to this collapse of trust is actually fairly simple. Paraphrasing the famous line from Robin Williams in the Disney movie Aladdin, all one really has to do to be successful here is "tell the truth." Further, when companies like Facebook and Burson are openly caught in such matters, justice is required. If no legal recourse is available, then people should make their displeasure known in the marketplace. If not, bad things happen. As one ancient source says: "Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil" (Ecclesiastes 8:11).

Let us reverse this. Among other bits, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) needs to do its bit and condemn Burson for its breach of ethics. Facebook should be sanctioned by the marketplace. And we all need to agreed that going forward, the restoration of trust is critical. No lying. No cheating. No accepting 30 pieces of silver to wrongly bad-mouth anyone.

We need to change, and we don't need a presidential administration to do it for us. We need fundamental change inside of us -- accompanying by an open change in behavior -- to truly reverse the destruction of trust.