This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Ruth Lectures. This lecture in the series A Question of Trust, given by Onora O'Neill, was originally broadcast in the year 2002.

Good evening and welcome to Scotland. We're sitting beneath the stained glass windows of a former church, now the media centre of Glasgow University,

and an appropriate place to bring the 2002 Reith Lectures to their conclusion.

In the course of these lectures, the moral philosopher, Anora O'Neill,

has been discussing the issue of trust in Britain today,

arguing that despite the greater openness and accountability of our

public institutions and professional organisations, we don't seem to enjoy greater trust, rather

the opposite in fact.

There is, she's argued, a culture of suspicion.

Why?

Tonight, Dr O'Neill looks for an answer and finds it in an area of our society

which she says has escaped the revolution in accountability, the media, and in particular, the

press. The freedom of the press has become one of the unchallengeable foundations of liberal

democracy, but tonight it is going to be challenged seriously and deeply.

And later we'll find out how our audience of journalists, broadcasters, readers, viewers and listeners rise to the argument they hear.

But first, ladies and gentlemen, will you welcome the principal of Newham College, Cambridge, our wreath lecturer 2002,

Anora O'Neill.

Well, we all know the story of the hero who goes courting a princess.

Her father refuses consent and sends him on demanding quests in distant lands. Well, on the face of it,

this might not be the ideal preparation for marriage, or indeed for ruling the kingdom. But the

point of the quest is that the king needs to judge the hero's commitment and steadfastness. If the hero

persists in his quest, the king will have reason to

...