00:00:00.000I'm once again on the promenade in Davos, Switzerland, on day one of the World Economic Forum's 2024 annual meeting.
00:00:08.080True North is back on the ground covering this conference for the whole week.
00:00:11.160It's when all of the world's rich and powerful, well, maybe not all, just the select invite-only crowd,
00:00:16.380are here for a bunch of official meetings and also unofficial meetings,
00:00:20.260including, in some cases, bilateral and multilateral sessions, which don't appear on any public agenda,
00:00:25.640but nonetheless happened behind closed doors, just down the road here in the Davos Congress Centre.
00:00:31.280The theme for this year's conference is rebuilding trust.
00:00:34.600Now, I don't think most people watching this or listening to this would disagree that there is a deficit of trust.
00:00:40.340People are very distrustful of many institutions, from the media to the institution that we are here because of,
00:00:46.820the World Economic Forum itself, not to mention governments and corporations.
00:00:50.540Now, whether they think they are the problem or shoulder some of the blame for this trust issue stands to be seen.
00:00:58.180This is what Klaus Schwab said when describing why rebuilding trust was going to be this year's theme in the first place.
00:01:03.720Now, why did we choose the theme or the motto, rebuilding trust?
00:01:12.460If we compare the world today with the world before we had the COVID pandemics, we find a completely different mood.
00:01:24.260First, the world has become very fearful, very fragmented, of course, and in such a situation, trust has vanished.
00:01:43.180We have lost trust to a certain extent in each another because we all have become, under the pressure of the crisis,
00:01:51.520of the multiple crisis, we have become more egoistic.
00:01:55.780So, and if you are more egoistic, you think first of yourself, and this distorts an atmosphere of trust.
00:02:05.560As you hear there, he's describing it as though people are the problem, not the institutions themselves,
00:02:11.420as though the reason we distrust them is our fault and not theirs.
00:02:14.960One thing that is noteworthy this year is that there has been a lack of transparency from the World Economic Forum on who exactly is meeting here.
00:02:23.840In years past, the organization has published a list of participants and a list of public figures,
00:02:28.800a list by country of who is actually here at this conference.
00:02:33.020This year, no such list has been made public.
00:02:35.280We actually reached out to the World Economic Forum's Media Relations Department and asked for it and received no reply.
00:02:41.300So, how is this process of rebuilding trust going to take place if they're not even going to give us the courtesy of telling us who is meeting here?
00:02:49.860By the way, attendance costs tens of thousands of dollars for business leaders, for politicians.
00:02:55.340They're here for free because, as we know, this is one of the biggest opportunities for business leaders
00:03:00.740and leaders of government to meet without the prying eyes of the media.
00:03:05.440True North has been relegated to the street this year.
00:03:07.580We were not given accreditation to go inside the Congress Centre as we were last year.
00:03:12.460Perhaps they didn't like our coverage.
00:03:14.280But again, if they want to start rebuilding trust, why not look in the mirror first?
00:03:18.760For True North, from Davos, I'm Andrew Lawton.