Business & Commercial

Now THIS is a Euphemism…

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

"Hey, where'd you get that lovely paperweight?"

While we’re on the topic of euphemisms, I want to show you one of the most intriguing.

The purpose of euphemisms, as in the case of the two in the recent Ethics Alarms Quiz, is often to avoid legal consequences. The Bush Administration didn’t want to brazenly violate the treaties it has signed banning torture, so it came up with a description of torture that made it seem like something else. President Obama doesn’t want to be accused (though he is anyway) of joining a war without Senate consent, so his Administration is calling the Libyan adventure a “kinetic military action.”

But they are both amateurs compared to the on-line marketers of brass knuckles, those  deadly metal devices one puts over one’s fingers to give an adversary the beating of his soon to be shortened life. Brass knuckles are illegal in many countries, and in most states here; their sale is also prohibited in various ways, and as weapons, they are subject to other regulations. The companies that sell them on-line, however, get around all this by calling them…

Paperweights! Continue reading →

One More Reason To Defund NPR, or “Boy, Did I Ever Go Into The Wrong Profession!”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

The primary reason to end funding for NPR and PBS is that the government shouldn’t be funding competitors of private broadcasting organizations.

The second reason is that anything public broadcasting does that is sufficiently popular and valuable  (“Sesame Street,” “The Prairie Home Companion,” “Car Talk,’ et al.) will be picked up by commercial stations, and those programs that are not should not be underwritten by taxpayer dollars.

The third: NPR’s audience is narrow and affluent, and doesn’t require a public subsidy, particularly when cutting down the budget deficit is a national priority.

Finally, NPR can’t be trusted with public funds. It claims to be objective, but isn’t; it is mismanaged, and isn’t appropriately frugal with taxpayer funds.

This comes under the final category. The salaries of the top NPR talent do not reflect restraint in expending precious resources.  Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes: NFL Owners

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The less THIS happens, the better.

I was wrong about the N.F.L.

On Tuesday, the N.F.L. owners voted to move kickoffs back to the 35-yard line, where it was until 1994. The new rule will make the game less exciting but more safe. I didn’t think they’d do it.

The league has a problem—I mean, other than the impasse in labor negotiations that threatens to disrupt the coming season and lose owners and athletes millions. Its game is more popular than ever, but little by little, the evidence is mounting that it is also lethal. Playing pro football injures the brains of a higher percentage of the athletes than anyone suspected, and far worse than suspected. Players are quite literally sacrificing their lives, or at least two or three decades of them, for the Sunday entertainment of America. Continue reading →

Rating Judge Kozinski’s Lies

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The Ninth Circuit declined the opportunity to reconsider its controversial (and wrong) decision earlier this year that declared the Stolen Valor Act unconstitutional.  That means that according to the Ninth Circuit, pretending to have won a Purple Heart or a Silver Star is protected speech, and Congress’s law making it a felony to wear such a medal when you haven’t done anything to deserve it is an infringement of free speech. I discussed this issue here.

This post, however, is about some interesting dicta in this week’s decision, courtesy of the Ninth Circuit’s most colorful jurist, Judge Alex Kozinski. The Judge has flip-flopped on this question now twice—he was against the Act, then for it, then against it again.  But this time around, he graced us with some provocative thoughts about why lying isn’t always wrong.  He wrote: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Detroit News Business Editor Sue Carney

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

"The new model is so ugly that...What's that? They give us HOW much ad money? Uh..hey, what a GREAT looking car!

“We made several changes to the online version of Scott’s review because we were uncomfortable with some of the language in the original. It should have been addressed during the editing process but wasn’t. … the changes did not fundamentally change the thrust of Scott’s piece … a car dealer raised a complaint and we took a look at the review, as we would do whenever a reader raises a flag. The changes were made to address the journalism of the piece, not the angst of a car dealer.”

 

—Sue Carney, business editor of The Detroit News, lying her head off to rationalize a disgraceful instance of a newspaper changing its content—a car review— to serve the interest of an advertiser.

How often does an ethical news publication publish an article then go back after it has run and change the text, over the objection of the reporter who wrote it, not correcting an error but softening an opinion? Answer: never, by definition. Continue reading →

CBS: Ethics Corrupter

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Rehire Charlie Sheen?! What could CBS be thinking?

Barry Bonds goes on trial for perjury today. He is one of our society’s prime corrupters. Bonds cheated, lied, broke the law and helped drag major league baseball’s integrity  into the depths, all with the objectives of breaking records by players better and more honest than he, and becoming rich and famous. He accomplished all of these things, with no appreciable negative consequences; as of now, his career and life carry the lesson that cheating works, and anyone who lets things like rules, laws, or ethics stand in the way of success is a fool. Perhaps the trial will change that. I can dream.

Now CBS has stepped up to be a prime corporate ethics corrupter. Reportedly, it is negotiating with Charlie Sheen to get him back on the air, either in his now defunct show “Two and a Half Men,” or in something else. Continue reading →

To Wisconsin Unions, a Depressed Woman’s Suicide Is Just Another PR Weapon

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

"Oh, no. Poor ..hey, wait a minute! We just might be able to use this!"

“The ends justify the means,” for better or worse, has always been the modus operandi of the American union movement. Back at the beginning of the 20th Century, this often translated into violence, as union leaders used bombs and murder to counter equally vile tactics—or worse—by their industry foes. Union violence is more common today in the threatening than in the actual execution, but the public unions battling Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin have made it increasingly clear that ethics, fairness and truth are not going to stand in the way of their objectives, particularly the objective of winning the battle for public support.

A new low may have been reached with the effort to blame Walker for the suicide of Jeri-Lyn Betts, a 57-year-old teacher suffering from chronic depression, who apparently committed suicide last week.  Continue reading →

Air Passenger Etiquette: Who Gets the Armrests?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

A site called Neatorama polled various ethicists, travelers and air flight experts regarding who should get the armrests when all three seats in a row in coach are occupied.

Actually, the graphic accompanying the column suggests that it also discusses two other flyingetiquette issues as well: do you recline your seat, and if you have a window seat and need to use the rest room when the other two passengers are asleep, what do you do?

Ah, air travel. Such a pleasure.

I can’t find any answers to those in the column, though, and that’s fine I know them already: Continue reading →

Blogger’s Ethical Dilemma: The New York Times’ New Plan

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

I'm gonna hate to lose you guys!

The New York Times announced yesterday that it will begin charging for content on its website. After 20 articles have been read by any user within a month, that user will be required to purchase a $15 a month access fee, or forgo the “Grey Lady,” online at least. (Subscribers to the paper will have still have unlimited free access to the digital version.)

For bloggers like me, who rely on hundreds of on-line sources for my ethics commentary, the new Times plan poses an ethical dilemma. Continue reading →

Unethical Crime Victim of the Month: Kamofie & Co.

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Next time, Lindsay, pick a classier store to rob.

Lindsay Lohan, in addition to having stunningly bad judgment, multiple addictions, lousy parents, sycophantic friends, and an army of paid enablers, also has rotten luck. When she walked out of a jewelry store wearing a $2,500 necklace, she picked an ethically dubious enterprise, Kamofie & Co., that may have  grossly over-priced the necklace, turning the shoplifting into grand theft. But that’s just the beginning.

Lohan, who is on probation and facing jail time for the incident, was caught on a surveillance tape in January as she strolled out of the store, with the unpurchased jewelry around her neck. Some establishments, recognizing the alleged thief as someone who is famous, troubled, and in need of some kindness, would have privately contacted the actress, accepted her (probably) false excuse that the act was inadvertent, and allowed her to return the item with involving the police.

Not Kamofie, however, which apparently saw the incident as an opportunity to make itself a household word. Continue reading →