Ethics Train Wrecks

The “Get Trump!” Files: The Washington Post Weaponizes “The Streisand Effect”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Of course it did.

Some, or many, Trump-haters out there…or the Democratic National Committee—after all, Democrats cheat—sent out into social media the above fake photos of the President kissing White House aide Natalie Harp, the young aide who has been targeted by the Angry Left as a possible object of Trump’s sexual attention. This went “viral,” The Washington Post claims, though if my fanatically Trump-Deranged Facebook friends didn’t peep about it, and they believe anything if it can be interpreted a barely negative about the President, I am dubious.

So the Washington Post decided to make certain that as many people see the photos as possible. Althouse’s immediate reaction was “WaPo wants you to know it’s fake… but you’ve got to see this, got to get it imprinted on your fragile brain.” Bingo. The Post even introduces the fake photos with “‘Hoaxes like these are “death by a thousand cuts’ that chip away at people’s trust, one expert said.” And here’s another cut! I wonder if the Post staff stood around in a mob while the article was being prepared, chanting “CUT! CUT! CUT! CUT!”

The Post did include references to BBC journalist and fact-checker Shayan Sardarizadeh’s nine-part thread on X, explaining his process for determining that both images were resolutely fakes. That arrives deep into the article however.

In 2003, Barbara Streisand sued to force an aerial photographer to remove a photo of her Malibu cliff-top mansion from a website. The lawsuit made the photo into global news, and hundreds of thousands of views and downloads when the photo had only been downloaded six times, twice by Babs’ lawyers, before the controversy. Techdirt later coined the term “The Streisand Effect,” which has come up many times on Ethics Alarms. Frankly, I’m surprised that the Axis of Unethical Conduct hasn’t been using AI-generated fake photos far more than it has so far. “CUT! CUT! CUT! CUT!” Of course it is an unethical and despicable practice, but as Harry Reid will remind us from the Lake of Fire in Hell, “It works!”

From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

A stand up comic exposes how bizarre and indefensible the woke values of Lindsay Clancy-supporting progressives are. It is also a wonderful demonstration of how the cognitive dissonance scale works…

<Sigh!> The White House Axis Press Ban Is Unconstitutional, Which Doesn’t Mean It Isn’t Justified

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Can’t do that!

“Journalists” from MSNOW, CNN and Politico had their access to the White House grounds denied today, after President Donald Trump said on social media that he had banned the news outlets over what he called their “constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS.”

He’s not wrong. And MSNOW, CNN and Politico are not by any stretch of the imagination the “independent” news organizations they say they are, or even genuine journalists, since it is remarkably obvious that they are really “Democratic Party surrogates with press credentials,” as one wag accurately describes them. And they are, as the President stated in one of his most audacious, bold and correct assessments, “enemies of the people.”

It is also true that as pivotal mid-terms approach, those three outlets and many others are throwing a major portion of the weight of the news media into spinning, concealing, misrepresenting and and prioritizing news stories in the manner most likely to push votes to Democrats and Socialist/Communists, not based on facts, law, common sense, logic or the best interests of the nation, but based on an ideological agenda.

Never mind. Trump’s actions here are futile, and I assume he knows it; if he doesn’t, then he has a bunch of lawyers to fire. He’s doing this to focus attention on the Axis news media’s unethical and corrosive efforts to manipulate elections, as it did in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Yes, it’s unethical for a President to deliberately violate the Constitution knowing that his actions will be struck down. It’s also unethical for journalists to use First Amendment protections to abuse their power and undermine democracy, but there is nothing in the Constitution that stops them from doing it

“The White House belongs to the American people and the decisions made inside are funded by our tax dollars,” MS NOW said in a statement posted on X. “MS NOW intends to take any and all steps necessary to defend our First Amendment rights and the essential role of independent journalists in our democracy,” it added. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press.

Yada yada. That’s all the right rhetoric. Too bad it’s such a scumbag organization using it.

“We have a right under the U.S. Constitution to do our reporting without hinderance or interference from the government and this ban is an illegal assault on this fundamental right,” CNN said in a statement posted on X. “We will not be deflected from our duty to hold the government and other public bodies to account, and we will continue to report on the actions and processes of this administration without fear or favor,” the statement added.

Of course, CNN made virtually no effort to hold the Obama and Biden administrations “to account,” but were, instead, complicit in their unconstitutional behavior. The Constitution, however, doesn’t say what biased and unethical news organizations can’t do, just what the government can’t do to them.

Politico Press, the publication’s communications team, said that “POLITICO will continue to fairly report on this White House and future ones. We will vigorously defend our First Amendment rights against any attempt to restrict them.”

The funny word in that statement is “continue.”

Nevertheless, President Trump doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on, making the metaphorical ethical leg mighty weak as well.

Too bad.

Ethics Meme of the Year

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I wish I had the gust to post this on Facebook. And the fact that I know that it would upset so many of my long-time friends is itself an indication of how ethically warped the political Left has become. In fact, “ethically warped” is a euphemism for a far more damning and accurate term.

[This one is pretty funny too, but it’s not really an ethics meme…]

Ethics Observations on the Walmart Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

An awful event that could have been avoided in many ways if even one of the key players had just behaved responsibly and ethically, or knew what behaving responsibly and ethically is…

Bert Atienza, 77, was shopping at Walmart with his wife after church a week ago when store a 17-year-old store employee rushed down the aisle narrowly missing Josephine Atienza with a cart. Bert sharply admonished the young woman, saying, “You almost hit my wife with your heavy cart, and you did not even say excuse me or apologize to her,” according to his wife in interviews after the event. The African- American staffer argued with him briefly and then tossed a can at the couple as they walked away. Minutes later Travis White and Erika Mitchell attacked Bert as their daughter, the reckless employee, watched according to store surveillance video. [Note: Accounts say they “allegedly” attacked him. It it’s on video, it happened, unless the claim is that the video is a “deep fake.” I hate that reflex news media characterization. (‘John Wilkes Booth allegedly shot Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theater in front of hundreds of witnesses…’) Even the attorney for White and Mitchell doesn’t dispute the attack].

The two parents shoved Atienza from the back, one punched him in the face, then they pushed him into the shelving unit. After he fell to the ground, as one of the attackers kicked him. “While he’s on the floor, they’re still kicking him and I told them stop. My husband has heart problems,” Josephine said.

Oh! We’re sorry, if we knew the 77-year-old man had heart problems, we never would have attacked him!

Bert Atienza lost consciousness before help arrived and he was rushed to a hospital where he died the next day. White and Mitchell were arrested days later and charged with second-degree murder. Their daughter (described as “no longer employed by Walmart”—ya think?) has also been charged with assault and battery, aggravated malicious wounding and conspiracy to commit a felony. Her name has not been released to the press because she is a minor.

Well! What a nice story! Let’s see..

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Esteemed Progressive Law School Dean Boasts About His School’s Illegal “Good Discrimination” In Faculty Hiring. Surprised?

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Ethics Observations:

1. These people cheat. They are proud of their cheating: it’s “the ends justifies the means” exemplified. This is a law school dean—at a prestige law school!— openly admitting and rationalizing violating the law.

2. He also says that he’ll lie under oath to deny what he said.

3.Dean Erwin Chemerinsky has a long and disgusting EA dossier (at the link) but is always—always, no exceptions—represented in the mainstream media as respected legal scholar. I don’t respect him: he’s an Ethics Villain, and undeniably so.

4. Notice that he says “diversity is important” but he never says why it’s important. This is just an article of faith with the Left. It is important because it just is, that’s all, and they say it is, so there.

5. I’m playing the Learned Judge tonight in a law school production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Trial by Jury” (1875, and as funny and sharp now as it was on opening night.) The Foreman of the Jury, a bass-baritone role, is being played by tiny female student, a soprano, who is inaudible and who can’t remember her entrances. She is easily the least able member of the chorus. Why was she cast in that role? She is the only “student of color” who auditioned, and the student organization has by-laws requiring “diversity” in casts. As a result, the show sounds worse, looks worse, all of the cast members who are qualified for their roles will get fewer benefits from their work and dedication as a result, the audience will enjoy the show less, and the exploited student, who is a very nice young woman, will be embarrassed in public. If I had to describe a perfect example of what’s wrong with DEI logic, I doubt that I could come up with a better one. Yet ideologues like Chemerinsky still use their authority to assure the world that discriminating against white males in pursuit of diversity is an “unalloyed virtue, as Gilbert might say.

6. Our cast—all of them (but me!) list their “pronouns” in their program bios— had a rehearsal in the faculty lounge. There are only two newspapers there for faculty perusal: The New York Times and the Washington Post. Nah, U.S. law schools aren’t Leftist indoctrination centers! What a ridiculous conspiracy theory…

7. Do let me know if any Axis news media outlet breathes a word of this incident. My bet: there won’t be any.

“Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Update

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Hey, thanks, Washington Free Beacon!

The conservative news and investigative reporting site saved me a post by highlighting how the increasingly despicable New York Times is soft-peddling or ignoring the most revolting proclivities of radical Democratic candidates for Congress while routinely publishing essays like this one…

…which I flagged last week as the partisan hypocrisy it is [Item #6]. The Free Beacon’s list of Democrat and Democratic Socialist fanatics that the Times is or was working hard to cloak in respectability includes..

  • The now appropriately infamous Graham Platner, regarding whom the Times’s opinion columnist assured readers that the guy with the Nazi tattoo was “no Nazi.”
  • Francesca Hong, who lost the primary for Governor of Wisconsin and who wanted to ban Thanksgiving. “Views of the holiday have grown more complex,” the Times said, insisting that the reaction to her insane tweet was “emblematic of a broader reckoning among many Americans with the country’s checkered history.”
  • Adam Hamawy, running for the House in New Jersey, complained about his GOP “opponents” constantly raising his connection to the Blind Sheikh, the radical Islamic cleric who inspired the 1993 World Trade Center attack and was convicted for plotting to bomb other targets in New York City. “Republicans pounce!”
  • Yes, the Times even stoops to white-washing Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan US Senate candidate. When it interviewed the candidate in August, the Times asked him questions like “Can I ask you about young people? How have progressives from New York City to Ann Arbor succeeded in inspiring volunteerism?” They also called his anti-Semitic campaign surrogate Hasan Piker a “provocative streamer and critic of Israel.” Piker has written that the U.S. “deserved” the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, that Mao was “one of the great leaders of this world,” and that he would “vote for Hamas over Israel every single time.”

There are more, but that’s evidence enough of how low the Times is stopping to flip Congress.

Ponder, Consider, and Discuss:

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

White leftists are the only groups that considers the natural human preference for one’s own ethnic group to be wrong, toxic, racist and a mark of bigotry.

This certainly shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been paying attention for the past, oh, 50 years or so.

Now what?

My reflex instinct is to presume that a group that vilifies those who display natural human characteristics that are not only permitted for everyone else but extolled (“I want to see performers/ elected officials/ judges/ Cabinet members/ etc. who look like me!”) is an unethical group.

Is that instinct wrong?

More Lindsay Clancy Trial “Res Ipsa Loquitur” Horror….

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

As EA noted from the beginning of the Lindsay Clancy Ethics Train Wreck, the trial presents an excellent argument for why women should be subject to peremptory challenges in voir dire when their biases are likely to result in jurors like this woman.

The prosecution isn’t supposed to show “compassion” for accused murderers. Nor are prosecution opening statements supposed to be warm and fuzzy toward a defendant. The state’s concern is with the victims, as well as the fabric of society wounded by terrible crimes.

Moreover, no “character witnesses” need testify that a woman who murders her own children is a “bad mother.” In a sane world, a woman who strangles her own children is by definition a bad mother. Presuming that a mother must be insane to do this is a pre-existing bias that should have disqualified this juror and any juror.

Yes, Football Is Still The Most Unethical Sport and Supporting It Is Unethical Too.

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Item: From the New York Times…

New data provides a sobering indication: At least one in four of all the people who have played in the N.F.L. might expect to end up with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, according to a study of hundreds of cases over a recent six-year period.

Researchers considered every former N.F.L. player who died from 2016 to 2021. There were 878. Some died in their 20s, some in their 80s, most in between.

The study’s main finding was simple math: At least 215 of those 878 former players — 24.5 percent — had C.T.E.

The actual prevalence could be far higher. The roughly 25 percent rate does not consider the 643 brains that were not examined. Some of those, maybe many of them, likely had C.T.E. too.

C.T.E. is a progressive neurological disease caused by repeated impacts to the head. It can be definitively diagnosed only by examining the brain after death.

Studies have shown that the rate of C.T.E. in people who have not sustained repeated impacts to the head is nearly zero.

If the new study’s statistics were applied to today’s players — 1,696 on the league’s 32 regular-season rosters, not including more than 500 members of practice squads and those ineligible due to injury — at least 400 of them would be diagnosed with C.T.E.

Experts say that the rate of brain disease represents an occupational safety hazard with little comparison in the American workplace.

I have written this before, and had this story on the EA runway for a long time because it makes me angry. People who cheer on football are literally encouraging young men to cripple themselves for their entertainment. It is unethical, and indefensible.

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