It is clear that the news media, and especially the entertainment and pop culture media, don’t want to lose their cuddly child performers. Thus when a former kid star like Corey Haim perishes at a young age, the victim of a dysfunctional childhood turned fatal by addictions to fame and drugs, the sad story is usually told as a cautionary tale about how one young actor’s early promise and talent turned to dust and destruction because of his own weaknesses and missteps. A responsible media would use such events to examine the larger, serious, and mostly ignored problem of child abuse and exploitation in the entertainment business, and its terrible toll of casualties.The media is not responsible on this topic, however, and in the case of Haim, seemed to go out of its way to falsely represent his fate as the exception, rather than the rule. Continue reading
Government & Politics
Shameless
There is apparently is little that a politician can do today that is so uncivil, embarrassing or undignified that partisans won’t cheer it, and that fundraisers and marketers unencumbered by things such as values, responsibility, and shame won’t try to use to raise money. Call the President a liar during his State of the Union Address? Fundraising gold! Shout “Baby killer!” on the floor of the House? Great!! Use it to get those checks flowing!
Now, not to be outdone by the shameless venality of the GOP, Democrats are using Joe Biden’s resort to gutter-speech, to the President, during a formal ceremony, on national television, as part of a new fundraising pitch. CNN reports that Democrat donors who give at least $25 to the cause will receive “a limited edition ‘Health Reform is a BFD’ T-shirt in a super-soft, fine jersey (men’s) or baby rib (women’s) cotton fabric,” according to a new fundraising page posted on the website of Organizing For America, the White House political group housed in the National Democratic Committee. Continue reading
The Westboro Baptist Church and Free Speech: When Cruel and Unfair Can Still Be Right
The United States, as currently constituted, is a utilitarian nation. We embrace the inherent virtue of certain “natural” rights, and tolerate the frequent harm that some citizens commit while exercising the rights that all of us cherish. I think that is the correct philosophy, but it requires us to grit our teeth and re-read the Bill of Rights when the formula produces a nauseating result that is nonetheless right in our democratic culture. It was right to let the Nazis march in Skokie. It was right to let the Klan hold their non-violent, white supremacy demonstrations. And it was right for the court to make Albert Snyder pay the court costs when he lost his lawsuit against a hate group that disrupted his son’s funeral. No, it wasn’t fair, or kind, or empathetic. It was only right. Continue reading
Ethics Test for Republicans and Conservatives
President Obama’s unexpected announcement that he will reverse the long-time ban on off-shore drilling for oil and natural gas resources should help us answer an important question: Has the GOP’s intractable opposition to President Obama’s policies been based on principle, or the purely political motive of obstructing his presidency in order to win votes and power from a disillusioned and impatient electorate? Obama’s conservative critics on talk radio will be presented with the same test. Rush Limbaugh famously said that he wants Obama to fail: will that extend to a new Obama policy that Limbaugh has advocated in the recent past?
Opening up off-shore drilling to exploit unused U.S. energy resources was a key plank in Republican John McCain’s campaign when he opposed Mr. Obama, and is anathema to many Obama supporters. If the Republican Party and its conservative media allies have a requisite amount of fairness and integrity, they will both praise the President and support him.
We shall see.
Climate Science Ethics: The Lovelock Interview
James Lovelock, 90, is a legendary scientist, environmentalist and futurist. He has just given a lengthy interview in which he opines about the recent scandals in climate science, the value of skeptics, the limitations of political solutions to big problems, and the inherent uncertainty of science. The interview is remarkable for what it reveals about this independent scientist’s honesty, integrity, respect for adverse opinions and understanding of human nature. It is also that true rarity, an assessment of climate change that is measured, reasonable, persuasive, and logical.
You can read the whole interview here, and the key statements here.
Unethical Website of the Month: Bloomberg News
Seldom does any news media organization make its absence of fairness and objectivity on a topic so obvious that there isn’t some room for argument, but Bloomberg managed to scale the heights with its headline to a story by reporter Heidi Przybyla. Her report covered the results of a Bloomberg poll designed to create a profile of the members of the Tea Party movement, which has been holding multiple demonstrations across the country to protest passage of President Obama’s health care reform bill.
The poll results themselves were unremarkable, given what we already have learned about the Tea Partiers’ objectives and objections. Over 90% of those polled by Bloomberg said that they feared that the nation was turning to socialism, with the federal government trying to control too many aspects of Americans’ lives. In answer to another question, 70% felt that Obama’s Administration needed to put more resources into job creation. So Przybyla, her editors and Bloomberg’s management chose to headline the report with this:
“Tea Party Advocates Who Scorn Socialism Want a Government Job” Continue reading
Dubious Ethics Studies, Part I.
Thanks to Malcolm Gladwell (Blink) and the one-word titled books he has inspired, we are being exposed to more social science research than ever before, much of it with relevance to ethics. I’ll admit to using some of these when they support my point of view, and that is the problem: what such studies supposedly signify often tell us more about the biases of the analysts than the behavior of the subjects. Two recent studies illustrate the point. Continue reading
NPR Abandons Abortion Issue Spin
It shouldn’t have taken so long for National Public Radio to join many other news organizations in concluding that the terms “pro-life” and “pro-choice” were deceitful misrepresentations expressly designed to allow advocates to de-emphasize the problems with their positions. Nevertheless, the decision of the organization to stop using the euphemisms was both welcome and correct. After a column on the subject by NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard called for the change, Managing Editor David Sweeney sent out a network-wide memo aimed at ” He continued:
On the air, we should use “abortion rights supporter(s)/advocate(s)” and “abortion rights opponent(s)” or derivations thereof (for example: “advocates of abortion rights”). It is acceptable to use the phrase “anti-abortion”, but do not use the term “pro-abortion rights”.
Next, the public should insist that advocacy groups and their obsequious political allies follow the same policy. The position of Ethics Alarms, for example, will be that any elected official who uses the deceptive terms “pro-life,” “pro-choice,” “anti-choice,” or “anti-life” is either intellectually dim or intentionally attempting to misrepresent the position he or she claims to be supporting.
Ethics Dunces: The Republican National Committee
Politico reports that the GOP, though the Republican National Committee and its Chair, Michael Steele, has refused to co-sign a statement created by the Democratic Party that calls on “elected officials of both parties to set an example of the civility we want to see in our citizenry,” and for “Americans to respect differences of opinion, to refrain from inappropriate forms of intimidation, to reject violence and vandalism, and to scale back rhetoric that might reasonably be misinterpreted by those prone to such behavior.”
The reason, we are told, is that the Republicans view the statement as “a trap,” because the Democrats could use the statement against them later. Huh? It could only be used against Republicans if Republicans did something that was inconsistent with the statement, such as, to take two ridiculous examples that would never happen, yell “You lie!” during a State of the Union message, or shout “Baby killer!” at a Congressmen.
The Republican’s obviously want to use uncivil and inappropriate rhetoric to stir up their base and raise funds. That is the only possible rationale for not signing the statement, and it is a blatantly unethical one.
Biden’s Incivility: No “Big Fucking Deal”?
For the most part, the media and the culture have given Vice-President Joe Biden a pass on his ebullient violation of a civil discourse taboo, on national TV and during an official ceremony, caught on a microphone for all to hear. That only makes the consequences of Biden’s inability to control his potty-mouth worse, though not for Biden. Biden has made so many embarrassing public utterances that he is treated by the media and much of the public as sort of a crazy uncle, someone we expect to do and say outrageous things because he can’t help himself (it stands as the smoking gun proof of the media’s bias against Sarah Palin that her verbal mistakes were—and are—pounced upon and used as evidence of her incompetence, while her Democratic counterpart’s career-long fondness for saying silly and outrageous things was —and is—excused.) But national leaders set cultural standards, and the shrugging off of Biden’s F-bomb permanently lowers our standards of civility as much as “Baby killer!” or “You lie!” So thanks, Joe, for making America just a little bit less gentile, just a little bit cruder. We knew you had it in you. Continue reading
