If the Guinness World Record for smugness and arrogance-holding creators of Lovely-Faces.com’s “logic” became acceptable, kidnapping President Obama would be a dandy way to demonstrate that the Secret Service was incompetent, and triggering a “fire sale” crash of technology-based U.S. systems would be a fine way to show that they are insufficiently protected. Paolo Cirio, a media artist, and Alessandro Ludovico, media critic and editor-in- chief of Neural magazine, claim that their goal of showing how Facebook makes identity theft too easy justifies their means of proving it: stealing 250,000 Facebook member profiles and organizing them into a new dating site—without the members’ permission, of course. Continue reading
Year: 2011
Alcoholics Anonymous and Ethics
With all the alcoholics in my life, and there are and have been many (some of whom I undoubtedly never knew qualified), today was the first time I ever actually attended a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Indeed, before yesterday I didn’t know I could attend. Many groups have periodic “open” meetings, however, to which friends and family members of alcoholics as well as “anyone interested in learning about alcoholism” are invited. I know a lot about alcoholism, learned the hard way. Now I know more. More important than that, I realize that Alcoholics Anonymous has a great deal to teach everyone…not just about alcoholism, but about ethics. Continue reading
Ethics Scoreboard Flashback: “Death on Everest”, a Real Life “What Would You Do?”
[ The discussion in the earlier post today regarding ABC’s revolting “What Would You Do?” convinced me that I should re-post this essay about a real-life “What Would You Do?”tragedy, which originally appeared on The Ethics Scoreboard in 2006. Entitled “Death on Everest,” It has been lightly edited to bring it up to date.]
As 34-year-old mountaineer David Sharp lay near death on Mount Everest, over 40 other climbers trudged past him on their march to the peak. All had oxygen with them, and a few even stopped briefly to give Sharp a few breaths. But still they climbed on, and Sharp perished. His demise on May 15, 2006 has gone into ethics lore alongside the infamous death of Kitty Genovese on March 13, 1964. Genovese was murdered outside her apartment building in Queens while thirty-eight neighbors watched and did nothing.
The two incidents stem from very different causes, however. While Genovese’s death was fueled by urban fear and apathy, a mass failure of courage and the willingness to assume responsibility in a crisis, Sharp was the victim of that universal ethics-suppressant, the powerful non-ethical consideration. Continue reading
“The Ethicist” Nails A Rationalization
I have often been critical of Randy Cohen, the New York Times Magazine’s longtime writer of “The Ethicist” column. This distorts, I fear, Randy’s performance, for he is right far more often than he is wrong, and he is usually right with wit, humor and clarity.
As an effort to balance the scales a bit, I want to salute “The Ethicist” for explaining, concisely and lightly, what is wrong with one of the commonly used rationalizations for unethical conduct: “If I don’t do it, someone else will”:
Responding to a man who felt that it was wrong to take a job facilitating his industry’s outsourcing of jobs overseas, Cohen assured him that there was nothing unethical about the assignment. He then added,
“That is fortunate, because your wife’s argument — if you don’t do it, someone else will — would not justify nefarious conduct. Someone else will do pretty much anything. I’ve met ‘someone else,” and he’s quite the little weasel.”
Well said.
ABC News’ Unethical, Dishonest and Biased “What Would You Do?”
ABC’s News’ periodic segment “What Would You Do?” is public opinion manipulation crossed with bad social behavior research, seeking the entertainment value of hidden camera shows. The segments stage outrageous public scenarios—a caretaker mistreating a wheelchair-bound senior, for example, to see how bystanders will react. Any potential benefit of the segments—might they encourage people to consider intervening when they see blatantly unethical behavior?—is swallowed whole by the more likely negative results. One is that the existence of a hidden camera show that stages such charades creates inevitable cynicism and skepticism. Most witnesses to crimes and other shocking public conduct have enough mental and social hurdles to clear before they can reach the decision to take action without ABC News giving them another. The thought “I wonder if this is fake?” may be just enough to still someone’s ethics alarms and cause them to discount the duties of rescue and confrontation. Indeed, several of the scenarios stages for the show have been unconvincing. “What Would You Do?” also provides a convenient rationalization for those who are inclined to ignore fellow human beings in peril: “This must be set-up.”
In addition, “What Would You Do?” often carries a more sinister feature, courtesy of the biased journalists at ABC. Sometimes the simulated conduct appears to be designed to portray the worst of human values, with the clear implication that such conduct is common in America. And sometimes, like last week, this is driven by a political agenda. Continue reading
Egypt Ethics: Integrity Deficit on the Right
It has been fascinating and troubling listening to conservative radio talk-show host Mark Levin lambast fellow conservatives who have been siding with the revolutionaries trying to end the 30 year rule of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Levin argues that such support is foolish and ignorant, because there is no way for the United States to be sure that the resulting new government, even if it is more democratic than the current one (hardly a difficult bar to clear), wouldn’t be worse for the interests of the United States. Continue reading
Ethics Hero: Marvin Kalb
The so-called mainstream media have an obvious leftward political bias, and have had for decades. Either disingenuously or naively, publishers, editors, network heads and reporters deny this, although the evidence is overwhelming. Sometimes, as when supposedly objective reporters are openly adversarial to conservatives while covering news events and there is no discipline by their bosses, the evidence is also embarrassing.
Fox News, which was launched to counter balance this tendency, has at least been relatively open about its conservative slant: “fair and balanced” was always intended to convey Fox’s efforts to balance the scales, not to suggest that Fox News by itself was balanced.
Nonetheless, it is rare to see any of the liberal-oriented news organizations, even the most undeniably biased of them, like NPR, admit its objectivity problem—never mind surveys that show that journalists are far more liberal than the U.S. population, and regardless of the media’s repeated tardiness in covering legitimate “conservative news stories” like the New Black Panthers controversy and the ACORN “sting”( CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC are in the process of ignoring the similar Planned Parenthood videotapes). The journalistic establishment has closed ranks on this issue, consistently arguing that the “myth” of liberal bias arises from a right-biased perspective.
Thus it was striking and refreshing to see Marvin Kalb, a member-in-good-standing of the liberal journalists’ club confronting the most prestigious and perhaps the most egregious of left-biased media, The New York Times, with the truth it routinely denies. Continue reading
The Status of Dismissed Gay Troops: An Ethics Test For The GOP
Stars and Stripes reports that a group of House Democrats has proposed that troops dismissed under the now repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell” law should be able to apply for honorable discharge status if it had been initially denied to them, thus permitting them to receive veterans benefits. Continue reading
Latest Political Correctness Bullying Victim: Kenneth Cole
If you can’t make a silly joke on Twitter, that on-line jungle of the trivial, incoherent, moronic, witty and self-promotional 140 word blurb, where can you make it? Designer Kenneth Cold sent out a tongue-in-cheek bit of satirical self-promotion, tweeting:
“Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KC.”
Horrors. Continue reading
The Sad Saga of the Ex-Drug Dealing Law Student
David Powers, a certified public accountant working at PricewaterhouseCoopers, standing third in his class at St. John’s University School of Law, was preparing to graduate this spring. Seeking to move from accounting to law (and who wouldn’t?), Powers was completely candid to the New York Appellate Court’s Character and Fitness Committee, disclosing an expunged 1999 conviction for drug possession on his record and the circumstances surrounding it. He wanted to know if the conviction would be a hurdle to his acceptance for admission to the New York Bar. But when he asked St. John’s to send the Bar a letter of support, it not only refused but rescinded his admission, reports the New York Post.
Now Powers is suing, since St. John’s taught him well. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 