Tag Archives: Fox news
Some Post Iowa Debate Ethics Awards
The GOP pre-Iowa straw poll presidential debate last night earned a few ethics awards, with many more to come as we get to know these pretenders better. Continue reading
Attention FCC: What the News of the World Scandal Reveals About Rupert Murdoch
The News of the World scandal is the smoking gun of Murdoch’s ethical leadership. I know the sleazy tabloid is across the pond, but there are few clichés more inevitably true than “the fish rots from the head down.” In ethics, it is the leader that sets the standards. The Murdoch media empire does not merely foster an ethically shaky culture, not just an ethically-flawed culture, but a shameless culture that doesn’t value ethics at all. Continue reading
What Today’s Broadcast News Regards As “Credentials”
Good for media ethics pundit Howard Kurtz for blowing the whistle, however gently, on ABC News’s hiring of Elizabeth Smart as a contributing on-air expert on missing children cases. “Does that strike anyone as odd?” he writes. Continue reading
More Than a Fool: Bachmann, John Quincy Adams, and Wikipedia
In one short week since the controversy erupted over Fox News anchor Chris Wallace daring to ask her on the air, “Are you a flake?” and her subsequent botching of both her answer and the question’s fevered aftermath, Rep. Christine Bachmann has stumbled into two flaky episodes. One—her mixing up Western movie star icon John Wayne with serial child killer John Wayne Gacy—was at least funny. The other, far less forgivable—her claim that the Founding Fathers “worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States”—has signature significance. Continue reading
“Are You a Flake?” Ethics
With only four well-chosen words, Fox news anchor Chris Wallace accomplished several objectives Sunday, all of them in the best tradition of ethical, objective, responsible journalism.
The words were “Are you a flake?,” posed to Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who is running for President. Continue reading
Ethics Dunce: Keith Olbermann
Keith Olbermann locked up his Ethics Dunce by re-introducing his “Worst Person in the World” segment, which he had solemnly, if unnecessarily, jettisoned on MSNBC to demonstrate his new commitment to civility in the wake of Rep. Giffords’ shooting in Tucson. Continue reading
Abuse of Power and Press Intimidation At The White House
ncreasingly, it seems to me, a favored tactic of stalwarts, in the media and out of it, of the Obama administration is to try to silence critics rather than rebut them. This takes many forms: intimidation by labeling all criticism as proof of racism; using distorted definitions of civility to induce self-censorship, as with the “No Labels” effort and the attacks on Sarah Palin in the aftermath of the Tucson shooting; denying appropriate news coverage to stories illustrating the Administration’s copious missteps and shortcomings; and even calls for regulatory censorship of talk radio and Fox News on the theory that they are harmful and dangerous. This trend is disturbing. For the President of the United States to preside over efforts news media intimidation is more than disturbing; it is frightening. Continue reading
Botching Big News: CNN and Fox Show How Far Their Profession Has Fallen
I don’t know how the other networks handled the moments before the President’s welcome announcement last night. I was watching CNN and Fox. But if there is any profession in America’s whose professional standards have declined more precipitously in the last few decades, I’d like to know what it is. Continue reading
Ethics Dunce: Mercedes Colwin
Fox legal analyst Mercedes Colwin just spectacularly and irresponsibly misinformed Sean Hannity’s radio audience, and added to the widespread and incorrect belief that it is somehow unethical for an attorney to represent a client the attorney knows is guilty. (It is not.) Compounding her reckless mistake, she noted that she had been “a judge,” thus giving apparent credibility to her utterly erroneous characterization of how criminal defense works. This was also misleading: Colwin was an administrative law judge, which has nothing whatsoever to do with criminal justice. Continue reading →
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Tagged as "not guilty", Casey Anthony trial, confidentiality, criminal defense, defending guilty clients, duty of candor to the court, Fox news, ignorance, legal ethics, Mercedes Colwin, misinfomation, misinformation, officer of the court, pundit malpractice, recklessness, Sean Hannity, the right to legal representation