The single most important issue facing everyone with an agenda these days – and that includes brands, politicians, network news outlets, the media in general and the internet in particular – is trust.

And we’re not talking about the kind of I-trust-you-not-to-fuck-this-up but positive trust as in I trust you with my money, my reputation, my vote, my future.

If we applied the same standards to our professional relationships we do to our personal ones, then trust would be sacrosanct. Because once it’s broken, it’s incredibly difficult to rebuild. After all, if you can’t trust your husband, you pick up the phone to your lawyer. If your friends can’t trust you to show up to dinner, the invitations dry up.

Trust should be inviolable yet it is frequently tossed away in the most casual way.

A lot of liberal folks liked John McCain until he said there was no other reason for Palin’s appointment other than she was the most qualified person for the job. In the UK, Gordon Brown lost the trust of the electorate when he transparently lied about his motives for not calling an early election. Apple are in danger of losing it by releasing a substandard product in the iPhone 3g. Microsoft had it but jettisoned it – and their ability to innovate – in an effort to take over the world.

And we are currently placing the future of all commerce and communications in a network that can’t be trusted to deliver a reliable answer to a simple question. You can’t trust online reviewers. You can’t trust the gossip-cum-news outlets. You can’t separate the wise from the cranks.

“Who can we trust?’ is not the voice of the paranoid anymore. It’s the Cri de Coeur of everyone.