Ethics Quiz: Investigative Reporting Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

In this article, (Gift Link) a New York Times investigative reporter explains how he has cultivated a source that he knows is distributing illegal drugs that may be fatal.

He writes in part,

“It was a small-time operation, but one that illuminated a big point for our reporting: A single person, without cartel backing, can order and redistribute potent chemicals.

I wanted to verify his account with others. But I also had to make good on my commitment not to reveal his identity. So I compared the information he was giving me with reporting I’d done with dozens of experts and law enforcement officials who told me what they understood about this market. I also spoke to people in his circle of friends and associates.

All along, I was keenly aware that the drugs Chemical Analyst was selling can be fatal. I asked him about this — as I’d asked other dealers and suppliers — and he professed here to be a libertarian. As a human, I find it terrifying the drugs he sells could kill people. It was painful to watch him use drugs himself, and I often feared for his safety. But as a reporter, I have a responsibility to explain to the public what’s really happening on the drug frontier.”

This is different from most Ethics Quizzes here, because my position is set and unshakable. The reporter’s duty “to make good on [his] commitment not to reveal [the drug pusher’s] identity” must be subordinate to his duty to society as a citizen and responsible human being. Even lawyers are authorized to violate a clients’ confidentiality to prevent death or serious bodily injury to a third party. How many people should die so that the reporter can explain what’s happening on “the drug frontier?” My verdict: none.

The reporter says he’s talked to lawyers and other journalists as well as “experts” and law enforcement officials. I doubt that he has talked with any ethicists.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day(that I have already told you my answer to..) is…

Would it be ethical for the reporter sic the police on this criminal? Could it be ethical not to?

I Just Can’t Give Trump a “Julie Principle” Pass When He Says Things Like This…

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

“For Fox executives only, take Jessica Tarlov off the air. She is, from her voice, to her lies, and everything else about her, one of the worst ‘personalities’ on television, a real loser! People cannot stand watching her.”

….quoth the President in a Truth Social post two days ago. Tarlov is one of the rotating progressive Democrat co-hosts on Fox News’ talk show “The Five” and routinely does what she was hired to do, which is to be the house contrarian on a biased news channel, like Scott Jennings on CNN.

It’s a lonely and crummy job, but somebody’s got to do it. Jennings does it much better, but 1) he’s smart, articulate, and usually has the right side to defend, 2) the wokies and Axis agents on the panels with him are hardly the best and the brightest, and 3) Tarlov isn’t the worst of Fox’s hired Lefties, and I’d rank her as better than Juan Williams, the thankfully departed long-time holder of that role on Fox. Faint praise, I know.

But Ethics Alarms correctly slammed the Biden White House when it dishonestly attacked Greg Gutfield of “The Five” in 2023, so I shouldn’t use The Julie Principle to give President Trump a pass now. Presidents should only carefully criticize journalists and pundits by name if at all, and Trump doesn’t do anything carefully. It is punching down by definition; it looks petty, it makes him look thin-skinned and weak, and worst of all, it hands his principle-free and shameless critics an opportunity to say he’s pro-censorship.

This has been true for years, and yet Trump has a flat learning curve. It’s like a man who keeps smashing his head against a wall without figuring out that it’s not a good idea.

The Tarlov nonsense is even worse that that, in fact. After Trump has “demanded” (he can’t demand, because its none of his business) that Fox fire someone like Tarlov, he’s given that individual immunity from getting dismissed no matter what she does. Fox News has to keep Tarlov or look like Trump is running the network. Fox News is too much of a Trump and MAGA lackey already.

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The ABA Wants Lawyers To Report Biased Judges

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Hmmmm. It can’t be that the notoriously woke ABA is concerned about partisan judges legislating from the bench, can it? Naaah, impossible. What was I thinking?

The American Bar Association Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility today released a formal ethics opinion regarding the ethical obligations of lawyers who possess information that could lead to a judge’s disqualification. The opinion declares that a lawyer’s role as an officer of the court requires the disclosure of such information to protect the integrity of the judicial process, provided the disclosure does not violate client confidentiality.

Citing ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(d), otherwise known as the “catch-all rule” that some bar associations (like Virginia) regard as too vague to be meaningful, the ABA concludes that because lawyers are prohibited from engaging in conduct that is “prejudicial to the administration of justice,” when a lawyer knows of information reasonably likely to trigger a judge’s disqualification obligation under the Model Code of Judicial Conduct, the lawyer has a duty to speak up. Lawyers typically would rather not do so in such situations, being afraid of making an enemy in black robes.

Examples of such information not meant to be all-inclusive include prior employment connections (a client of mine couldn’t get a judge to recuse despite his having been a partner in the opposing counsel’s law firm), campaign contributions (the judge knowing that your client, or you, contributed to the judicial candidate who ran against her); a spouse’s law firm’s involvement in the case, and a counsel’s business relationship with a judge’s family member.

Here is the link for ABA Opinion 522.

Anyone Who Genuinely Couldn’t Figure Out That Trump’s Threats and Deadline For Iran’s Annihilation Weren’t Bargaining Ploys Should Shut Up… Forever

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

…or at least stop weighing in during this President’s term.

What does it take for the Trump Deranged and hopelessly biased (or hopelessly stupid, or hopelessly dishonest) to be embarrassed? Surely there has to be a tipping point where the public starts pointing and laughing. Surely. Surely.

No? Wasn’t it obvious that Trump’s “war crime” ultimatums were designed to get Iran to make concessions? I don’t mean just obvious to me (“I’m smart! I’m not dumb like everyone says!”) but obvious to doctors, lawyers, beggarmen, thieves and Indian chiefs along with anyone else who has watched this guy operate since his real estate days? Seriously? Really? No? Wow.

I’d like to make Rep. Ro Khanna the poster fool for this malady. Shortly after this EA post, Trump announced the two week cease-fire and Khanna did a double back-flip with a twist, stood on his metaphorical head and called the President a TACO, as in “Trump Always Chickens Out”! This is another clear Trump Derangement symptom. Attack the President on the presumption that he is doing or will do one thing, then attack him when he does the opposite.

Why isn’t this embarrassing to those exposed again and again as reflexively criticizing whatever the President does? Let’s see: the ethical values here are fairness, honesty, integrity, accountability, consistency (being consistently inconsistent doesn’t qualify), prudence, proportionality, humility…there are more, but I don’t feel like looking up the list. Ethics, analysis, logic and reality has nothing to do with how these critics react. It’s all emotion and the Cognitive Dissonance Scale:

Imagine, however, that sub-zero section reaching down forever to infinity, with Trump there rather than only at -10. Prof. Festinger’s theory holds that a negative bias that strong is enough to pull anything…literally anything, people, ideas, books, policies, bunnies, rainbows, babies, The Beatles, Taylor Swift, Nancy Guthrie, opposing cannibalism…into negative territory. What’s going on here? THAT’S what’s going on.

Podcaster Dave Rubin wrote on X: “Trump has been running the same negotiation playbook forever. Pressure, escalation, chaos… then leverage a deal. We’ve watched it happen again and again. This wasn’t complicated. It was basic pattern recognition.” Yup! What does this tell you about people who refuse to see that pattern? Go ahead: come up with a kind description. I can’t think of any.

While Fox News and even CNN were properly reporting on the developments in Iran (Not a word about Nancy Guthrie!) do you know what MSNOW decide was the big news? The danger that Trump was going to come up with some way to steal the mid-terms! Yes, that well-used “future news” subcategory of fake news.

Anyone who watches MSNOW for anything but amusement or intelligence on what the Axis of Unethical Conduct is plotting next should also be embarrassed. How I long to post an entry like this on Facebook…but that would be mean. But fun. But mean…

Over at the New York Post, conservative pundit and law prof Glenn Reynolds wrote, before yesterday’s late developments,

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Stop Making Me Defend “Law and Order”!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

A recent study accuses Dick Wolf and his various “Law & Order” shows of “manufacturing white criminals.”

Depictions of criminality and violence on “Law & Order,” the researchers say, are misleading and divisive. “Results suggest whites are disproportionately portrayed as criminals five to eight times more often on police dramas compared to actual crime statistics for the city of New York,” we are told, “and exposure to police dramas leads to elevated perceptions of white criminality among non-whites.”

Oh, bite me.

Don’t get me started on all the ways “Law & Order,” “Law and Order SVU” and TV procedurals in general commit routine demographic whoppers. All the police women are trim and gorgeous, for example, except for Mariska Hargitay, who is 62 and way past her pull-date. These shows, see, are make believe. They aren’t documentaries, and anyone who thinks they represent real life should be watching Nickelodeon.

If you believed television shows or streaming series were accurate, you would conclude that half the population is gay. You would also be convinced that all illegal immigrants wonderful people just trying to have a better life. Commercials tell us that about 60% of couples are mixed race. The procedurals also pretend that most computer and tech whizzes are female, black, or both. It’s nonsense, but why should anyone care? Yes, it’s indoctrination by trying to erase somewhat accurate stereotypes, but so what? That’s entertainment.

And we all know—why don’t the researchers?—that if L&O showed the disproportionately high rate of black on white crime consistent with the statistics, it would be boycotted and attacked as racist. At least pretending that almost all inner city crimes are committed by whites gets white actors hired while Hollywood is actively trying to DEI them onto the unemployment line.

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month (and an Ethics Dunce To Boot): Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Cal.)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Wow. Just look at this tweet…

So any unethical assholes to write about, so little time.

What do you think: does this creep know how dumb that tweet is? Or is he just counting on the dumb voters who elected him not to be civically literate enough to realize it? We have so many incompetent, irresponsible fools in Congress that it’s hard to keep up with all of them, but this guy is special.

Let’s see:

1. The 25th Amendment is specifically designed for situations where the President of the United States is disabled. The Democratic Party’s delusion that it can be used to remove a President whose policies they don’t like or whose public utterances are annoying is itself unconstitutional.

2. Like so many progressives, Ro wants to criminalize speech. Threatening isn’t a war crime: it’s called negotiation. When Nikita Khrushchev said “We will bury you,” nobody was stupid enough to call it a war crime. But Ro, as I said, is special.

3. Exactly what provision of the Constitution does this moron think prohibits Presidential speech, whether it is threatening or not? Either Rep. Khanna hasn’t read the Constitution, has read it but doesn’t get it, or he’s lying.

4. The argument that threatening to destroy the infrastructure of an enemy is a war crime is being flogged by Democrats now who want to make sure the U.S. loses. If a nation makes a threat only in order to “spread terror” among civilians, that’s a war crime, supposedly (that war crime has never been prosecuted or charged). If the threats are designed to, you know, make the enemy surrender, it’s not a crime. If threats in war are aimed at making the enemy commit a war crime itself (“Kill all the male babies or we destroy your electric plants!”) that’s a “war crime.” If the threat is used to get an enemy to be reasonable and negotiate, it’s copacetic. Mind readers are not admissible in court as expert witnesses.

In any event, neither the United States, nor President Trump, not I, would submit to any international claim that threatening a brutal, dangerous, terrorism-spreading nation like Iran with mass destruction is a “war crime.” A law that is void for vagueness and unenforceable isn’t a law at all. I wonder if Ro knows that.

The anti-American, anti-Trump, anti-military, anti-strength weenies that run the Axis of Unethical Conduct think war itself is a “war crime.” They would love to settle disputes with evil regimes like Iran with a Twister tournament.

Dana Milbank Helpfully Illustrates Why So Many Pundits Are Useless and Incompetent

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Dana Milbank is one of the Washington Post’s most dishonest and untrustworthy partisan hacks, so naturally he rates a “Guest Essay” in the New York Times. This one is called, “How Much Humiliation Can JD Vance Take?”. The thing is filled with the standard issue Axis talking points ( GOP policies to enforce laws against illegal immigrants are “anti-immigrant stances” and are among “other dark elements of the MAGA movement”) but the most notable aspect of this trash is that Milbank found remarkable what is standard management practice in business, government, and in fact any hierarchical organization blessed with competent leadership. He wrote,

“At a closed-door Easter luncheon at the White House, President Trump decided to entertain the crowd by humiliating his understudy. Mr. Trump demanded an update on Iran peace negotiations from Vice President JD Vance. “How’s that moving?” Mr. Trump asked, in a video of the event the White House seemed to have accidentally posted online. “It’s going good, sir,” Mr. Vance replied from the audience. Mr. Trump cut off the rest of his response.“Do you see it happening?” the president asked, about a successful end to the war. “Uh,” the vice president replied. “We’re going to brief it to you.” Then Mr. Trump delivered his punchline. “So, if it doesn’t happen, I’m blaming JD Vance,” he said, to laughter. “If it does happen, I’m taking full credit.”

Milbank seems to think he has a smoking gun example of the VP being “humiliated.” The only one humiliated is Milbank: Somebody tell him.

First of all, Trump was joking, and, as usual, obviously so. The Axis has established a pattern of interpreting Trump’s deliberate self-parodies, trolling and exaggeration for effect as sinister. Morons. Even if much of Trump’s clowning is needlessly polarizing and unpresidential in my view, taking it seriously is a core Trump Derangement symptom.

Primarily, however, a superior’s position that if a subordinate fails, he or she is accountable, but if the subordinate succeeds, the boss gets the credit is routine, classic, absolutely correct and well-understood by anyone who has managed, been managed, been in the military, been active in the business world or, to be blunt, has the minimal life experiences minimally qualifying anyone to be trustworthy as an analyst or commentator.

I was informed that Trump’s declaration was the way of the world in my first post-hiring meeting with the future head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the most gifted leader and manager I have ever encountered. “here’s what you need to understand,” Tom Donohue said. “If you do a good job, I look good, I get the credit, and I’ll take it. If you don’t do a good job, I look bad, and you might suffer for it.” I went through my own career as a manager and leader frequently conveying the same message to my staffs. Part of the job of a subordinate is to make the boss look good.

And may I add: Duh.

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Ethics Quote of the Day: Professor Jonathan Turley

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

“Colorado appears hellbent on maintaining its dubious status as the most anti-free speech state in the union. Citizens will continue to subsidize this effort to defend laws compelling or censoring speech.”

—Prof. Jonathan Turley, in “It’s Our Nature”: Colorado Doubles Down on New Assaults on the First Amendment

Professor Turley, whom conservative pundits like to describe as a “liberal academic” but who exemplifies the red-pilled progressive who suddenly realizes he had been on the wrong side of logic and ethics, has a full-on brief against Colorado up on his blog today.

He chronicles the continuing assault on the First Amendment in the state, which is now typical of the conduct of all the extremist Democratic states as well as the anti-democratic aspirations of the Democratic Party itself. A sample…

“Colorado is now arguably the most anti-free speech state in the union, pushing an array of measures attacking those with opposing social and political views…Now, the Democratic legislature and governor are back with new unconstitutional measures, including a requirement that lawyers not share information with federal immigration officials as a condition for filing with state courts…

In the last election, the state attempted to strip President Donald Trump from the ballot with the support of a majority of its Democratic-controlled state supreme court. (The effort was later declared unconstitutional in a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court. Colorado could not even get any of the liberal justices to support its actions).

The state is responsible for the efforts to force business owners to create products celebrating same-sex marriages. That effort led to the Masterpiece Cake Shop case and then the 303 Creative case. Even after losing earlier efforts against Masterpiece Cake Shop owner Jack Phillips, the targeting of its owner continued for years. That litigation proved to be a tremendous victory for free speech.

Colorado has also been leading the fight to limit the speech and associational rights of professionals and parents on “conversion therapy.” Recently, that effort led to another massive loss before the Supreme Court in Chiles v. Salazar, resulting in a resounding 8-1 rejection of Colorado’s position. It could only secure the vote of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

After that near-unanimous ruling against the state, Colorado responded by doubling down with legislation to expose any counselors engaged in conversion therapy to heightened legal liability, including waiving any statute of limitations. That case could also result in legal challenges as Colorado continues to spend a fortune on seeking to curtail free speech rights.

Now, the state is defending a new public accommodation law, HB 25-1312, that defines “gender expression” to include “chosen name” and “how an individual chooses to be addressed.”

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Meet Amanda Lynn Tully, Expatriate, Student Loan Delinquent, Sociopath, Fick

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Amanda Lynn Tully, pictured above and one of the subjects of a New York Times article (gift link!) about people so troubled by the legal and ethical requirement of living up to their student loan agreement that they move out of the country to avoid paying up. More than 40 million borrowers have federal student debt to pay back, and 7.7 million have defaulted on their loans, according to recent data from the Education Department. Anecdotal evidence and conversations on Reddit and other social media indicate that some borrowers, like the dislikable young woman pictured above, think moving to another country is a dandy way to solve their problems.

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Ethics Observations on the National Debt…

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

Citizen Free Press, the conservative news aggregator that grabbed the niche from The Drudge Report after the latter went Trump Deranged, is constantly highlighting the National Debt’s explosion. This is legitimate news. Here is an item that appeared today:

“10 years ago today Trump promised to eliminate the national debt.Instead it has doubled to $39 trillion.“

Meanwhile, over the weekend, the Nation Debt was suddenly important to the Axis again, as those who were horrified over the minuscule number of casualties in the Operation Epic Fury were desperately looking for some way to criticize the amazing rescue of the downed pilot in Iran. All of a sudden, the Left was grousing about Trump spending all that money to rescue a single soldier (The Axis has no integrity at all. I hope that’s clear by now) and citing the National Debt.

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