I give Bernay's justification about corporate transparency a solid 10. I fear for any large corporation's success if their senior management do not also find this highly persuasive.
We are in a society today which demands 100 percent transparency from each company that communicates to us. We find it extremely important to know that a company has our (consumers) best interests at heart rather than strictly focusing on the bottom line. We not only expect for companies to be open and honest about their finances but we also expect to have easy access to their code of ethics and they ways they contribute to the environment, among others. One wrong move, true or false, will in some way, hurt the brand image of a company. United Way and Enron are just some recent examples of how difficult it can be to recover from the releasing of private facts (or fiction) proving that it may be better to create an initial trust rather than waiting until it may be too late.