Ethics Dunces: All The News Organizations and Everyone Else Who Isn’t A Member of Savannah Guthrie’s Family

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I just took a brief break from work to have a quick lunch. As I often do, I tried to catch up on the news. I was foiled in this endeavor because CNN, Fox News and MSNBC all spent at least ten minutes each with extensive reporting on the mysterious disappearance of “Today” host Savannah Guthrie’s mother.

This is an unethical waste of journalism resources and breach of the duty for the news organizations not to at least try to report events that citizens need to know to be informed, safe, competent citizens.

600,000 Americans go missing every year, and about 90,000 of them, on average, are never found. If I were a member of the family of one of those Americans, I would be angry and disgusted at the disproportionate attention and resources being devoted to this one woman, Nancy Guthrie, whom I had never heard of before this week. And why should I have? She is not a crucial figure to the nation or society. Her greatest accomplishment is that she is the mother of a celebrity, and one who makes $8,000,000 a year.

The “Today” star has the resources to pay for a private investigation. We can empathize with her, but no more so than with anyone beset with a family crisis.

Absurdly, President Trump posted on Truth Social that he was ordering federal law enforcement to”deploy all resources” to find Nancy Guthrie. Good Lord, why? She is not essential to national security. The nation will not suffer one bit if she has vanished like Judge Crater, Jimmy Hoffa, Ambrose Bierce or Amelia Earhart.

Sure, it would be tragic for the Guthrie family. I could list the important stories that the news media is burying, hiding or ignoring now but it would take up too much of my time or yours. It is true that other disappearances from high profile families became media feeding frenzies: the kidnappings of the Lindbergh baby and J.Paul Getty’s grandson were hysterically over-covered too. But at least they were both children.

The entire spectacle just rubs ordinary Americans’ faces in the ugly truth that they just don’t matter as much as the welfare of the rich, famous and beautiful.

Comment of the Day: “I Am Increasingly Reaching The Conclusion That We Can’t Trust Anyone…”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

This rueful Comment of the Day arrived like manna from Heaven. I was cogitating about how we hadn’t had an “echo chamber” complaint on Ethics Alarms in a while, especially if we don’t count “Marisa’s” immortal “five commenters” snark. My mind went to that issue in part because I was marveling on how conservative Jonathan Turley’s commentariate had become, though he has always been described as a liberal, Democrat law professor, as almost all of the are. Most of the progressive and Trump-Deranged comments on his posts are anonymous (which I don’t allow) and also usually don’t deal with the post, but just regurgitate anti-Trump taking points. Jonathan need start moderating his comments.

Ann Althouse’s blog has evolved similarly. The few resolute progressive regulars are well-known by name, like the infamous “Inga,” but the vast majority of the former U. of Wisconsin law prof are conservative, though Ann insists that she is “fiercely” non-ideological.

I attribute the lament of EA’s house contrarian below to three factors.

1 Since 2016, Democrats, progressives, “the Resistance” and the their captive institutions have gone bonkers, abandoned ethics, and as a result, the bulk of criticism here has been aimed at their words and conduct, and appropriately so. I am as sick of this as anyone else, but it’s sure not my fault, and as an objective analyst I can’t pretend it is other than it is in the pursuit of “balance.”

2. The courageous, idealistic but annoying stance of some here that all points of view deserve respect and debate is periodically bracing, but in the case of many issues the myth involves literal denial of reality for various and generally unethical reasons. Illegal immigration is not defensible, and laws should not be cancelled by disobedience rather than legislative action. Open borders are by definition suicidal. The mainstream news media is biased in favor of the Left, and clearly so. Banning guns is unwise as well as impossible. Hate speech is constitutionally protected (and so is same sex marriage). Israel has not only a right but an obligation to end Hamas. DEI is repackaged racial and gender discrimination. The Democrats’ pursuit of Donald Trump was politically motivated and has destroyed an important bulwark of our democracy. The Joe Biden senility cover-up was among the worst and most dangerous political scandals in U.S. history. I could go on; the point is that I didn’t arrive at these conclusions and others because of any party affiliation. I arrived at them through strict ethical analysis, legal principles, and historical perspective, adjusting for bias. This is a hard time to be a loyal Democrat or a committed progressive, because so many of your positions have been proven to be wrong, and so many of your leaders have been exposed as hypocrites and frauds. I’m just reacting to reality. I feel bad for you, just as I felt bad for my Republican friends when the Religious Right, Tom Delay and assorted crooks and knaves made the GOP impossible to defend in good conscience.

3. When I was a fellow at the Ethics Resource Center in Washington, D.C, I argued vigorously that the organization, which calls itself “a source of information and guidance for ethics and compliance professionals everywhere,” needed to take stands on national issues with ethical implications, including corporate misconduct. Their response taught me a lot about the field. The organization wouldn’t take a black and white stand even when it was an easy call because it was afraid to alienate potential donors, board members and political allies. I vowed then and I retake that vow now that I will never accept that limitation, that indeed I view it unethical to do so. In both the Ethics Scoreboard (RIP) and Ethics Alarms, I have always tried to spawn discussion and enlightenment by taking strong positions, sometimes, I admit, more strongly than my true opinion justified, because I don’t think wishy-washy posts encourage dissent.

I have more to say on this topic, but the intro to Here’s Johnny‘s Comment of the Day on the post, I Am Increasingly Reaching The Conclusion That We Can’t Trust Anyone, “Experts,” Researchers and Scientists Included: My Dan Ariely Disillusionmentis too long already. So Heeeeeeere’s Johnny!

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That Tears It: I’m Heading To The Woodchipper…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

On Facebook just now, two brilliant women I have long admired, loved and respected posted the following on Facebook:

…One quoted FDR about the President as a “moral leader.” This was intended by my friend as a knock on Trump. She obviously knows next to nothing about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He cheated on his devoted wife for most of their marriage, ultimately dying with one of his mistresses. He locked up Japanese American citizens in arguably the worst civil rights breach of any American President. He helped the Holocaust to proceed by allowing anti-Semites in his Cabinet to foil the efforts of Jews to escape Nazi Germany. FDR condemned Eastern Europe to decades of brutal Communist rule in gratitude to Stalin. Roosevelt also allowed himself to be elected four times, the last time when he knew he was dying: an odd choice to use in contrast to a President being accused of being a “king.”

FDR was a great President in many ways, but few of our leaders were less interested in morality or ethics than Roosevelt.

.…The other poste that she read Kamala Harris’s book and found it inspiring. I don’t even want to talk about that one…

Ethics Quote of the Week, Self-Delusion Division: Jeff Stein, Washington Post’s Chief Economics Correspondent

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“This is a tragic day for American journalism, the city of Washington and the country as a whole. I’m grieving for reporters I love and whose work upheld the truest and most noble callings of the profession.They are being punished for mistakes they did not cause.”

—-Jeff Stein, The Post’s chief economics correspondent, bemoaning the lay-offs today of some 300 Washington Post journalists

Who does Stein think he’s kidding? Or is he completely oblivious to his own paper’s abandonment of fair, honest and objective journalism that is a major, if not the only reason for the Washington Post’s demise?

Stein was quoted in the New York Times’ gloating report of today’s metaphorical massacre. It wrote in part,

“The Washington Post carried out a widespread round of layoffs on Wednesday that decimated the organization’s sports, local news and international coverage.

The company laid off about 30 percent of all its employees, according to two people with knowledge of the decision. That includes people on the business side and more than 300 of the roughly 800 journalists in the newsroom, the people said.

The cuts are a sign that Jeff Bezos, who became one of the world’s richest people by selling things on the internet, has not yet figured out how to build and maintain a profitable publication on the internet. The paper expanded during the first eight years of his ownership, but the company has sputtered more recently.”

The Washington Post figured out too late that the country only needed one all-Democrat-all-the-time biased paper, and that the New York Times was better at its biased reporting and pandering to its bubble than the Post anyway.

The Post could have survived, I believe, by becoming a national paper that strove for even-handedness and objectivity, leaving the Frustrated Right to the Wall Street Journal and the Angry Left to the Times. USA Today had failed miserably at filling that niche (Have you read that rag lately? Weekly Reader used to be more informative!). The opportunity was there once, but many years ago. Instead, the Post continued to inflict flagrant Axis hacks on its dwindling non-woke readers, propaganda agents like E.J. Dionne, Richard Cohen, Dana Milbank, Phillip Bump, Kathleen Parker, Eugene Robinson, Jonathan Capehart and more. Since the local readership was about 95% Democrat, hey, why bother being fair or non-partisan?

Well, people like me and my wife constituted one reason. The Post is my local paper, but we got so sick of its spin and bias, particularly its efforts to sanitize Bill Clinton’s corruption and lies during Monicagate, that we paid three times what the Post cost to have the New York Times delivered every morning. I confess that I was influenced in my decision by the suffering of my professional theater company, which deliberately eschewed the navel-gazing woke dramas that were slobbered over by the Post’s theater critics and was repeatedly slammed and snubbed by the paper’s critics for it.

I remember one of the few times the Post’s chief critic deigned to attend an American Century Theater revival (they were virtually all revivals) of Gore Vidal’s satirical political thriller, “The Best Man.” She actually wrote that Vidal’s script was dated and unbelievable, because a Presidential candidate would never lose an election because of character issues, that only his policies mattered. This was, of course, while the Post was licking Bill Clinton’s metaphorical boots.

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Supreme Court Partisan Hacks Unmasked!

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The Supreme Court today refused to strike down California’s new gerrymandered congressional map designed to give Democrats five additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, and turned down a request from a group of California Republicans that would have required the state to continue to use the map in place while their judicial challenge to the map proceeded. If anyone dissented on the Court, he, she or they kept it to themselves.

This is called “following precedent.”

Two months ago the conservative bloc on the Court, over dissents from the Three Little Maids of Kneejerk Progressivism, granted a request from Texas to allow it to use its new map intended to allow Republicans to pick up five additional House seats in that state. In Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, a lower court had sided with Democratic challengers that the “legislature’s motive was predominantly racial,” making the redistricting unconstitutional. (Once again, crying racism was the Left’s default claim.)The majority reversed that ruling in its December 4 order. Justice Alito issued an opinion (joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorusch) explaining that “it is indisputable … that the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map…was partisan advantage pure and simple.”

The Republicans who challenged the California map were counting on a lack of integrity from the conservative majority although the issue was exactly the same as in the Texas case. But the six conservative, Republican-appointed Justices declined the bait. They ruled for the Democrats just as they had ruled for the Texas Republicans, which was the legal, ethical, fair and objective result. Even those conservative devils Thomas and Alito!

Another false partisan narrative bites the dust.

If the three Democratic women possessed similar integrity, they would have dissented in this case too, as they had in Abbott. But they didn’t, did they?With their votes, they showed that their principles only hold when their favorite party benefits from them.

They are the hacks.

Unmasked at last.

Fact: MS NOW, aka MSNBC, Is Entirely A Leftist, Woke, Untrustworthy Anti-Trump Propaganda Operation [Corrected!]

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

…and anyone who admits to using that network for news should be ashamed of themselves, as well as ignored when they opine on political issues.

Just when I think the news media cannot get more biased, unprofessional and dishonest, something like this happens…usually on CNN, MSNBC, or in the New York Times.

MS NOW used an AI-enhanced image of Alex Pretti, the anti-I.C.E. activist who was killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent during an immigration enforcement operation. Naturally, the faked photo made him look better than he really did, a public opinion manipulation tactic as old as photography and unethical to its core. This is cheap Cognitive Dissonance Scale game-playing, because “lookism” is embedded in our DNA. A nicer-looking figure is more likely to land in positive territory on the scale than a fat troll: remember how much sympathy there was online and in the media for the handsome young terrorist who maimed all those innocent people in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing? The alteration of Pretti’s image was subtle, but the point is why do it at all? Anything to make attacking Trump and supporting open borders more persuasive, I suppose.

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Today In The Wacky World of Trump Derangement…

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

The above tweet (Do they still call them that even though it is no longer Twitter? We need a new word. “Xeet”? “Exit”?) is being circulated on social media followed by declarations that the only ethical course is to root for the Seattle Seahawks in this weekend’s Superbowl broadcast. My Facebook friend, an esteemed professor whom I have known in an arts context since 1969, making him also one of my oldest friends, posted it with commentary stating that the contents made it clear that every decent, thinking person should be rooting for Seattle.

My friend calls football “concussion-ball”) and reviles the sport for the same reason I do, though I have extra ethical ammunition against the National Football League, easily the most unethical among the spectacularly unethical professional sports organizations. If I were inclined to watch the Superbowl, the fact that the NFL was so irresponsible as to pick a cross-dressing, open-borders Trump-Deranged performer who will mostly perform in Spanish to lead its half-time show in what was once a non-partisan, All-American event that everyone could watch without feeling political anxiety would end that inclination instantly.

Who decides what sports teams to root for according to whom their owners are friends with, or where their political contributions go? My answer: crazy people. These factors have absolutely nothing to do with the sports, the teams, the players, or the entertainment value of the team’s games.

If one is looking for a professional sports team to favor and one is a wokeness-obsessed loony, it is probably impossible to cheer on any of them. They are all owned by billionaires or consortia including big, bad corporations. They are all privileged tycoon who reliable act as if they can make their own rules, because much of the time, they can. Jody Allen, for example, was sued along with her brother and Vulcan, the holding company she served as CEO in 2013 by five of her former security guards who alleged sexual harassment by Jodie, illegal activity, cover-ups and more, including bribing customs officials to smuggle animal bones out of Africa and Antarctica. The lawsuit was settled out of court, probably because that’s what rich people and corrupt corporations do when they are scared to death of what discovery will uncover. Not that any of that should matter to a Seattle Seahawks fan.

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I Wonder How Often This Happens and In How Many Places…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Frank Thomas Feels Insulted By The Chicago White Sox Black History Month Graphic. He Should Be.

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

After the Chicago White Sox posted the above graphic to honor “momentous firsts for the White Sox organization related to Black History Month,” White Sox slugger and Hall of Fame member Frank Thomas, “The Big Hurt,” posted bitterly on “X”: “I guess the black player who made you rich over there and holds all your records is forgettable!”

Petty? Childish? I don’t think so. If you look at the graphic, Frank Thomas appears only a virtual footnote, an afterthought following the recognition of Dick Allen, nowhere near as great a player as Thomas and certainly not the credit to the game that Frank was, as the Chisox’s first black MVP. Yet if the purpose is to honor standout African -American members of the team over its long history, Thomas’s record should have earned him top billing.

Thomas played for the White Sox from 1990–2005, winning back-to-back American League MVP awards (1993–1994) and now holds franchise records for home runs (448), RBIs (1,465), and walks. He tied Ted Williams on the lifetime homer list with 521, and ended his career with a .301 lifetime batting average in an era when .300 averages have become rarer every year. Thomas has the highest on-base percentage of any modern player who wasn’t Barry Bonds, as in “a freak steroid mutation that pitchers were afraid to pitch to.”

Thomas isn’t just the greatest black player in White Sox history, he is the greatest player in White Sox history of any color or ethnicity. But Thomas’s snub by his team is even more outrageous than those facts suggest.

Chicago is one of the eight original teams in the American League, meaning that the franchise has been operating as a major league team since 1901. Of the eight, only the White Sox can boast that a black man was unquestionably its greatest player.

The greatest Boston Red Sox player was Ted Williams. The New York Yankees: Babe Ruth; the Cleveland Indians: Bob Feller or Nap Lajoie; the Detroit Tigers: Ty Cobb; Washington (now Minnesota): Walter Johnson ; St. Louis (now Baltimore): Cal Ripken; Philadelphia (now Las Vegas, previously Kansas City and Oakland): Jimmy Foxx. All white. Frank Thomas stands alone as the sole black star to dominate an American League franchise over 125 years. If the idea is to honor “firsts,” he is the first black star in the league to achieve the status of all-time franchise great.

So the Chicago White Sox, seeking to celebrate Black History Month, minimized the impact, contributions, achievements and reputation of its greatest player, even though he is black.

Frank Thomas regards that as a slap in the face, and I don’t blame him.


I Am Increasingly Reaching The Conclusion That We Can’t Trust Anyone, “Experts,” Researchers and Scientists Included: My Dan Ariely Disillusionment

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

We’ve had some interesting discussions here about “experts” here of late, notably this post. I am rapidly reaching the point where anyone who appeals to authority to justify his or her position, particularly if the authority is a study, a report, an “expert” or a scientist, immediately inspires my skepticism and even suspicion. Now what?

Once again, Duke professor and researcher Dan Ariely is in the news, and not in a good way. Ariely, professor of business administration in the Fuqua School of Business is named 636 times in the more than 3 million additional Epstein files released on January 30. He may be innocent of any wrong-doing and he and Epstein may have just played in a Fantasy Baseball league together, but the problem this creates for me is that I have been using Ariely’s work as authority in my ethics seminars for as long as I can remember.

For more than a decade, I told incoming members of the D.C. Bar as part of their mandatory ethics training that such sessions as mine were essential to making their ethics alarms ring. To support that thesis, I related the finding of research performed by Dan Ariely when he was at M.I.T. Ariely created an experiment that was the most publicized part of his best-selling book “Predictably Irrational,” giving Harvard Business School students a test that had an obvious way to cheat built into it and offering small rewarde for the students who got the highest scores. He tracked how many students, with that (small) incentive to be unethical, cheated. He also varied the experiment by asking some students to do simple tasks before they took the test: name five baseball teams, or state capitals, or U.S. Presidents.

None of these pre-test questions had any effect on the students’ likelihood of cheating, except for one question, which had a dramatic effect.  He discovered that students who were asked to recite a few of the Ten Commandments, unlike any of the other groups, never cheated at all. Never. None of them. Ariely told an NPR interviewer that he had periodically repeated the experiment elsewhere, with the same results. No individual who was asked to search his memory for a few of the Ten Commandments has ever cheated on Ariely’s test, though the percentage of cheaters among the rest of the testees is consistently in double figures. This result has held true, he said, regardless of the individual’s faith, ethnic background, or even whether they could name one Commandment correctly.

The classic moral rules, he concluded, reminded the students to consider right and wrong. It wasn’t the content of the Commandments that affected them, but what they represent: being good, or one culture’s formula for doing good. The phenomenon is called priming, and Ariely’s research eventually made me decide to start “The Ethics Scoreboard” and later this ethics blog.

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