A large part of being ethical involves being aware of your biases and minimizing their impact on your conduct. As I recently was reminded, this sounds easier than it is in practice.
Searching yesterday for an Ethics Alarms topic, I came across an interesting, if not earth-shaking, issue of legal ethics that had obvious applications to other professions. Tracking down the source of the story, I discovered that the original idea was posted by a lawyer-blogger who in the past has gone out of his way to denigrate me professionally and personally on the web. He has also insulted me directly. Outside of that, though, he is by all accounts a terrific lawyer, an astute commentator on the legal profession, and, I’m sure, the salt of the earth.
Still, I don’t feel like sending readers to his site. Not only did the guy, unfairly, set out to harm me professionally, but he probably would do so again. I have no reason to do something that benefits him, nor is there any reason for me to try to curry favor with him: he owes me an apology, and I know I am never getting it.
I could link to one of the blogs and websites that picked up and elaborated on his post, but that would be unfair: I try to link to the originator of a useful ethical discussion as a matter of fairness and recognition.
My main obligation, however, is to Ethics Alarms readers. If I serve you better by posting on an issue and linking to a royal son-of-a-bitch, I should do it, and the fact that I grind my teeth to dust in the process is irrelevant. If the underlying ethics issue was an especially important one, I’m pretty sure—I hope—that this would have been my call. It isn’t that important, though. It was only one of many options for a relatively short and moderately interesting post.
I ultimately solved my dilemma by referring to the Golden Rule. Would I, in my foul-mouthed colleague’s place, want him to send his readers my way? The answer is, surprisingly, no. If I’ve made it clear that I neither respect nor like someone, as this lawyer did to me, I don’t want him doing me unsolicited favors and saying nice things about me. As I would only be irritated by his sudden generosity if he were writing Ethics Alarms, the Golden Rule tells me that I shouldn’t behave in a way that would be likely to irritate him.
The problem with that resolution is that it doesn’t avoid this inconvenient fact: if it wasn’t for my bias—a justifiable bias, but still a bias–against this attorney, I would have posted my commentary on the topic, and linked to his site.
Yes, what took its place was probably just as good. Nevertheless, in this case, bias carried the day.
Ethics Alarms 
I think there’s a bigger problem with your resolution. You seem to have concluded that people who share a mutual animosity shouldn’t be nice to each other, because kindness within that relationship would be off-putting. Is that really acceptable to you?
If that was a universal ethical rule, wouldn’t antagonistic relationships always reinforce themselves, and leave us with a world devoid of conflict resolution?
It’s a fair point, but not applicable here I have no obligation to be “nice” to someone who is abusive to me Fair, respectful, honest, I’ll give you. Nor should I have to go out of my way to bestow favors on an antagonist as opposed to, say, a stranger. There’s athin line between being magnaninous, and being a sap.I have no obligation to be a sap.
But you made it clear that you weren’t going out of your way to bestow favors on him. Quite the contrary, what took you out of your way was the detour you took by not making the original post, which was an effort to specifically not do him any favors. Didn’t this bias result in you actually modifying your behavior for the sake of being less kind?
This is where bias lock comes in. For anyone post, I have multiple options, and there is no way to eliminate the bias factor in picking that one. If I had chosen it, part of the reason would have been to specifically go against my natural inclination NOT to build a story with a credit due to someone who treated…indeed, treats…me like crap on a stick. So by definition, it’s going “out of my way.” But if I DON’T use the story, I have to admit that it is, at least in unknowable part, due to the bias. The bias will influence my decision, one way or the other.
Jack; I think you just proved your inherent sense of ethics by posting this in the first place. We all have our biases. Nor is that necessarily a bad thing. Biases tend to reflect a general lesson of life that tells one to be wary under certain circumstances. Sometimes, those biases arise from bitter experience. But, while bias is not always wrong, prejudice is… being the unthinking extreme of bias.
Your bias against this man (not prejudice) was born out of resentment of a personal wrong that has caused you to question his character. That being the case, you are naturally reluctant to point your readership in his direction, despite his professional expertice. And rightfully so. If you’re convinced of his lack of ethics, then there is the ever present possibility that that lack has tainted his professionalism as well. That’s a decision for you to make, as the host of this blogsite.
Interestingly enough, I find this story has an ironic parallel with your story about the station executives at KVOA in Arizona, which I just commented about.
I face this same quandary all the time. It is a tough problem.
There are three classes of people, generally, that fall into the category you have described — people who have personally attacked me, people who have merely offended me with their unreason or intemperate behavior, and people who work for sites or companies that I personally dislike for some reason. All three of these groups can be the source of wisdom, and I am often faced with a decision of whether or not to send them traffic.
My analysis goes like this: I have no ethical duty to link any of these people, regardless of their wisdom. With that said, I have an obligation to point out and provide for discussion matters important to my readers. So in furtherance of the obligation I have, my first recourse is to locate a source with whom I have no problems who provides a similar take, and comment on that. That is usually easy enough, but not always.
Assuming I cannot find a suitable non-offensive source, I have a decision to make — whether or not linking the offensive source has more value to my readers than not doing so. So my analysis goes like this:
1. Will my duty to my readers be compromised by not linking?
2. Will linking to such a source damage my credibility?
3. Except for my bias, is not linking to this source a valid decision? What would be the defensible basis?
4. Can I improve the situation causing the bias by making the link, and still retain my self-respect?
One thing I always consider is my duty to myself to be honest about why I am having this conundrum. Who caused it? How much was I at fault for the situation that causes me pause? Should the rift be cured? Finally, and probably most importantly, am I being fair to myself, and would my actions create a situation where I was being fair to everyone but me?
Obviously, this type of introspection is difficult due to the biases we all have about our own actions and rationale. I find, however, by asking these questions I can come to a conclusion. Most often, the answer is that the angle raised by the offensive source is not inherently valuable enough to survive the threshold analysis of 1. or 2. above. In that case, I just forget about it and move on.
But when it does get past 1. or 2., then the answer becomes more difficult and a bit more agonizing. It is hard, due to our humanity, to blame ourselves for being responsible for such rifts. We always want to believe it was the actions of the other guy. But when we are “true to ourselves,” even if we can’t be objective, we can at least ask ourselves to answer the question honestly. Sometimes, that helps get to a conclusion we can live with.
And sometimes, all that effort winds up with, “I’ll never link this jerk, and ethics be damned.” Personally, that rarely happens, but I can’t say it hasn’t. Usually I will link them with the caveat, if the reason for the rift is less personal than ethical, that their views should be examined through the lens of their prior conduct. If I think a link will help cure the rift and curing it is desirable, I just link it and praise it (if it’s praiseworthy) and swallow my pride.
Alas, there is no perfect answer. Our human foibles can’t easily be set aside. But just as you have done here, it never hurts to at least examine it and maybe give it a try.