The trouble with transparency: How pandemic is challenging the CDC

Pandemic messaging is a difficult balancing act. Leaders must project authority and try to combat spread, while being transparent and admitting unknowns. At stake are their own credibility and public trust.

Credibility, transparency, and trust. 

Ask public health experts about their field’s guiding principles for communication, and those three words come up over and over.

“Especially when you are communicating under very difficult circumstances, these are the three essential ingredients,” says Vish Viswanath, a professor of health communication at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

But it’s precisely...