Politics

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Some basic rules put in place at the top and then allowed to trickle down might help address the need for honesty within our society.

Those who take liberties with the words they use should consider refraining from public office.  No matter how likeable, charming, well worded, or charismatic, any rules to encourage honesty should put a penalizing spotlight on those who are dishonest.

Middle management might soon be the last safe career to fail upwards to for those without the will to be honest.

National Office

1. For national office from the president and down, there can be no statements, agreements, policies, understandings, or anything whatsoever which is not public record.

    a. All conversations must be recorded, all gestures, expressions, or other form of communication must be recorded - though not all immediately released unless a need is found.  Technology should have no problem covering this.

    b. The only exceptions are family, friends, etc.  Which means no family member, friend, or etc can then be allowed to communicate using policy affecting content unless asked for.  Then that must be recorded.

2. Everyone - other officials, media, public citizens, private citizens - should all offer their polite, neutrally worded and phrased, deconstruction of public officials released communication as often as possible when it's asked for.

    a. Truthful, accurate, and open communication tends to be more logical, simple, and direct than falsehoods, misrepresentations, and just between you and me's.

    b. There's no reason a politician couldn't have their communication graded for an honesty scorecard except for it being used abusively or for furthering personal agendas.  Note: on the national level there should be no personal agendas.

    c. Someone should create a way to objectively score all communication from an individual as honestly as possible against as precise and accurate a perception of reality as can be agreed upon.  Even a score that can be said to fall within a range should work.

All this is intended to produce is a continual awareness in the mind of every politician.  That awareness should be of how the words they are composing at the moment will be deconstructed in the following days and weeks specifically to identify a lack of honesty, transparency, and respect for those being communicated to.  It's so that no word or phrase is ever substituted for another without considering the trade off which must take place.

If we care more about honesty than other qualities then that should be the result.  If not, we should get exactly what we value.

Corporations

The majority of CEOs are now figureheads who aggregate the decisions and information of those that report to them.  The position should now be recognized as such and treated as a Chief Corporate Spokesperson role.  Their primary - if not only responsibility - shoulder be communicating information about their company to the public in an honest, accurate, and truthful way.  If possible, their communication should be scored in the same way as public officials but the SEC could benefit from any regulation that allowed scores to be directly converted to fines.  The CCS must take a personal stake in their companies communication and so take personal stake in fines should they be given.  Current CEOs which are less figurehead would then transition down a level of management to a slightly more hands on position.

That level of management - who contributes to the communication provided to the public by the CCS -  must take personal stake in fines should they be given though applicable to what they provided.