DailyPost 935
CREDIBILITY ON A SHORT FUSE!
The onset of the digital age, being data driven, integrity of data taken care of, the source known; for business, media, politics et al, the age of credibility was destined to emerge. Credibility based on business ethics and brand building was already in vogue. IT behemoths with all their proclaimed love for knowledge, transparency and business democratisation and large well reputed media houses controlling the electronic and the print media with ethical pronouncements blaring all across the globe, we were just about to transition to data based, objective, empirical credibility. But that was not to happen.
With the credibility erosion already under process in different fields, the Trump ascendency to power seems to be a watershed moment in its history, hastening the process of its demise. The first to go was the credibility of Presidency itself, the ever churning contradictions of Trump administration, between its different organs and the Twitter President can only be termed legendary. Might be loss of credibility is an understatement. Even before be came to power, he had done enough to ruin the credibility of the US Intelligence Agencies.
Hillary Clinton did her bit by using personal servers for the Secretary of State work. The DNC servers getting breached happened later and whole 2016 US presidential elections got into disrepute, starting with Russia to the loss of credibility of iconic IT companies like Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, a leading AI driven company. The Credibility Crisis rose to a crescendo with Fake News Syndrome, eating into the vitals of renowned TV channels like CNN and BBC and print media too, albeit in its last lap.
Like other crimes, hacks / breaches were never under the scanner of suspicion. Wipro has been hit by an advanced phishing attack, without getting into details, the issue in question is Wipro denying the findings and stating the attack didn’t have any material impact on the financials. Whose purpose does it serve? In another case of Data breach, JustDial has come up with the same winding defences. First the data is not protected and then the convoluted story. Who gains? Nobody. Might be, it is the last straw on the Credibility’s Back.
A WORLD SANS CREDIBILITY IS BOUND TO CRASH.
Sanjay Sahay