Across our public life,
we’re yearning for higher standards of integrity.
Whether we work in business, politics, or the media,
we aspire to act with integrity, and recognise those doing the same in the other fields.
None of us can get it right all of the time. But all of us know integrity when we see it – and when it is absent.
thePACK exists to identify, promote and applaud integrity in public life.
Media
This should be the most exciting of times for our media. Digital and social platforms have released limitless opportunities for us to communicate, illuminate and debate – globally, collectively and instantaneously.
As with any massive reformation, there are outcomes that generate equally massive crises of confidence and threaten our media’s integrity: corruption, political interference, misinformation and lack of regulatory accountability.
We need to decide what balance we want between private and public-service media. We need systems of authority that are transparent, accountable and offer freedom of expression, independently and democratically. And, above all, we need a refreshed journalism, with a pool of innovative, diverse talent attracted to the sector as an exciting and important career prospect.
Good media, acting with integrity, can change the way the world works for the better. By reporting what the powerful want to conceal, by holding our institutions to account, by speaking truth to power and by giving a voice to the voiceless.
Politics
Our political machinery is broken. To paraphrase politicians who use similar words all too often: politics isn’t fit for purpose.
Standards of public service are shocking from Westminster to Washington, D.C. Lack of professional integrity has become an accepted state of public affairs. We have to do better than shouting in echo chambers.
Our divisions aren’t just between political ideologies. We’re divided, often bitterly, by issues: the economy, tax, Brexit, globalisation, climate change, migration, north and south, elitism, nationalism and populism – to name but a few.
We need to prosper, rather than be reduced, from debates on these issues. And that’s why collaborative citizens of all progressive political persuasions must work together, if we’re to have a better future.
A political dispensation motivated simply by the desire to get elected is, thankfully, drawing to a close. We must ensure a return to standards of public service and duty in politics. That means re-discovering integrity in public life.
Business
Threats to doing business well have never been so challenging in living memory. Operating effectively during global crises is vital for businesses to survive and prosper, but doing business well requires more than focusing on economic growth alone.
Businesses have to re-examine how they act in the markets in which they operate, and must act with integrity.
Integrity is often confused with reputation, with too many firms identifying a target image and working backwards. But reputation is a direction of travel, not a destination.
Businesses also need to understand better the reality of corporate trust, how stakeholders invest their trust, and how to generate and interpret data on trust accurately and usefully.
Corporates have many pressures to which to respond. These may be economic, societal or environmental. But whatever the pressure, to succeed businesses must respond consistently and become part of the movement that is building integrity in public life.