Journalism & Media

The GOP Out-Newtowns The Democrats…Impressive! Also, BLECHHH!

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments
"Anything you can do I can do better...!" An appropriate accompaniment, and, ironically enough, from "Annie Get Your Gun"!

“Anything you can do I can do better…!” An appropriate accompaniment, and, ironically enough, from “Annie Get Your Gun”!

Further proving my conviction that there is no ethical difference between the two political parties at all (they are both habitually dishonest, corrupt, incompetent, hypocritical and Machiavellian), the Republicans opposing immigration reform are in the process of proving they can play the Newtown game too, only more shamelessly. This is why neither party can ever maintain the moral high ground in any issue, ever. While one party is using unethical arguments and tactics, it is just a matter of time before the other party, despite all its protests when it is the target of  them, will employ exactly the same measures—and argue that it’s not, of course.

Blechhh.

The Newtown game, if you didn’t get the reference, is when apolitical  party cynically seizes on a human tragedy and draws a specious and tendentious connection between it and a desired policy initiative. Gun control was never about stopping elementary school massacres, since what occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary was unprecedented, but suddenly the old, old debates about semi-automatic weapons and background checks were cynically recast as test of whether lawmakers cared about kids or not. Which is more important, an archaic Bill of Rights provision about militias, or saving toddlers from being mowed down in cold blood? Why, if only one child is saved, isn’t it worth limiting our right to arm ourselves? Have you no heart? Gun supporters, Republicans, conservatives and fair minded citizens  capable of thought were properly offended at these tactics, while, naturally, the integrity-free mainstream media adopted the same “save the children” mantra.

None of this stopped the Republicans who continue to oppose unavoidable measures necessary to clean up the mess left by decades of bi-partisan negligence regarding illegal immigration from using the latest high-profile tragedy—the Boston Marathon bombing—as a tool to derail the  push for immigration reform.  Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: Bismarck, N.D. Supporters Of A.J. Clemente, The Obscene Ex-Newscaster

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
A.J. Clemente.

A.J. Clemente.

In an earlier post I referenced A.J. Clemente, a newscaster for KFYR-TV in Bismarck who debuted in his new role by saying “…fucking shit!” on the air, because he didn’t know his mic was on. Not surprisingly, he was fired. Now, apparently, many viewers have come to his defense and are admonishing the station for being too harsh.

The station is not being too harsh. The station is upholding correct professional standards, and removing an unprofessional employee whom they do not trust and have no reason to trust. The episode showed him to be careless, reckless and, obviously, subject to obscene outbursts, which only are appropriate if you are David Ortiz. Ah, but some of the good citizens of Bismarck, displaying the same entrenched ethics cluelessness that led to the nomination of the ridiculous Mark Sanford, ex-Romeo governor, to lose a GOP House seat in South Carolina, don’t comprehend accountability, trustworthiness or responsibility, because to them, the only values that matter are forgiveness and compassion. The technical terms for such people are “patsies” and “marks.” They would cripple society, business and government with their mindless, deadly niceness. Examples: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce + Incompetent Elected Official = Censorship In North Carolina

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments
Thank-you. I see no reason to believe that your funding is in any jeopardy, by the way."

Thank-you. I see no reason to believe that your funding is in any jeopardy, by the way.”

Central Carolina Community College pulled the plug on a public affairs  talk show airing on its radio station after a legislative assistant for State Rep. Mike Stone complained about an online post by one of the show’s hosts, criticizing the  Sanford, N.C. Republican.  Susan Phillips, Stone’s legislative assistant, wrote the school’s president, T.E. “Bud” Marchant, with pointed questions about the program’s affiliation with the school, funding sources, and budget.  Central Carolina Community College is one 58 community colleges in North Carolina that depend on the  legislature for funding, and Stone’s message was received loud and clear. Marchant shut down the show, known as “The Rant,” two days later. He also denied that Stone’s interference had anything to do with it.

Sure.

There shouldn’t be any question over what happened here. An elected official in a supposedly democratic nation decided to abuse his position and power as well as violate his oath of office  by using veiled threats and intimidation to stifle Constitutionally protected criticism of his job performance, and a craven educator caved to his pressure, violating his duty of respecting academic freedom and standing against efforts by the state to stifle free speech and political dissent. Marchant, if he had even a rudimentary backbone, would have told Stone’s minion to back off and reported this clumsy attempt at extortion to the area’s news media. Stone, if he had any integrity or respect for the founding principles of the United States, would have taken “The Rant’s” host’s criticism like an adult and a believer in free speech, and responded with a defense or a rebuttal, not by leaning on the radio station’s management. As for Marchant’s incredible claim that Stone’s complaints and the show’s demise were unrelated, even if that were true, his creating the appearance of censoring campus speech in response to government disapproval would be nearly as offensive as censorship itself, because it would still have the effect of chilling First Amendment rights.

I’m certain, considering what appears to be the generally low quality of state legislators across the country (which figures, given the abysmal quality of national legislators), that this kind of thing occurs far more frequently than we know. Let’s see if Stone’s bedrock, conservative supporters are sufficiently offended by his efforts to use government power to muzzle adverse opinion, and send him on a new career path. My guess? This incident won’t make any difference to his election chances at all, if voters like Stone’s politics and believe the radio host is a nettlesome lefty. We are constantly told how much of the country is willing to dispense with the Second Amendment, as if that proves that amendment is archaic. Sincere public support for the First Amendment is similarly shaky.

All right, let us agree that both legislator and college president are unqualified for their positions by virtue of their abandonment of their ethical obligations in their respective roles—Stone’s duty to respect free speech and observe proper limits on government power, Marchant’s duty to protect academic freedom and oppose government efforts to stifle free expression. That still doesn’t justify the elitist coverage of this story by Jonathan Turley, whose blog post first alerted me to it. For some reason, the noted civil rights expert and law professor believes that it is Stone’s wan academic credentials and humble work experience that explain his bullying tactics. Why else would Turley feel it is germane to note that Stone lists his education as ‘“Attended, Accounting, Central Carolina Business” and lists his experience as “Business Owner, O’’Connell’s Grocery Store”’ ? Why is any of that relevant? The law school professor is evidently a bigot, and believes that one’s ethical instincts and character are directly proportional to one’s degrees and work experience.

Rep. Stone is a citizen of the United States, and like every citizen, should be presumed to know about the Four Freedoms whether he graduated from Harvard or the School of Hard Knocks. There are plenty of well-credentialed bullies, fools and ignoramuses in elected office. It is sufficient to judge Stone by what he did; Turley’s implied ridicule of his educational and work background is a cheap shot, and reflects badly on the commentator, not his target.

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Pointer: Res Ipsa Loquitur

Facts: NC Policy Watch

Graphic: Pozniak

The Ghostwriting Ethics Scale

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

ghostwriting

The ease with which former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ op-ed denigrating opponents of the Manchin-Toomey background check provision was accepted as her words and sentiment has prompted me to focus again on a persistent ethics issue of long-standing: ghost-written articles, op-eds, articles and other printed statements. This is the epitome of a slippery slope issue, because finding the dividing line between what is acceptable ethically and harmfully deceptive is so difficult, most people don’t even bother to try to make ethical distinctions. We have to, though, and the Giffords piece shows why.

A published opinion piece by a prominent individual can have several uses, intentional and otherwise: Continue reading →

Let Me Explain It To You, Ruth: It Is All About Trust

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

zombies-anti-gun-560x335

Washington Post editorial writer Ruth Marcus gave us a jaw-droppingly arrogant and willfully obtuse lament yesterday. She is in despair. Why would such a sensible, unthreatening gun control measure as the Manchin-Toomey background check amendment fail to pass the Senate? Poor Ruth just can’t understand it. The Senators voting against the bill were so “impervious to logic.” It just didn’t make sense!

What is ruefully amusing and telling about Marcus’s “how dare anyone disagree with us?” rant is that her essay answers its own question.  It is stuffed full of the elements that completely justify Senators or anyone who respects gun-ownership, the Second Amendment and guns opposing any proposals at all that come out of the post-Sandy Hook exploitation campaign by Marcus and her political compadres. It all comes down to trust, Ruth, and you are one of those who is untrustworthy on the topic of guns. Your column proves it, just as President Obama’s petulant outburst of contempt against gun rights absolutists proves his untrustworthiness. Continue reading →

Gabrielle Giffords:The Helpless Pawn On The Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments
Pawn

Ex-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords

 

James Taranto, the witty conservative commentator on the Wall Street Journal’s “Best of the Web” blog, properly takes aim at the New York Times op-ed supposedly authored by former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, and shoots it full of holes, quite accurately finding the piece guilty of almost every ethical violation that has characterized the shameless, and deservedly unsuccessful, effort to exploit the Sandy Hook massacre for gun reform. “Giffords’s 900-word jeremiad should be included in every textbook of logic and political rhetoric, so rife is it with examples of fallacious reasoning and demagogic appeals,’ he writes, noting that she is a “practitioner of incivility and unreason.”  Some of Taranto’s indictments:

  • “The argumentum ad passiones, or appeal to emotion. She leads with this one: “Senators say they fear the N.R.A. and the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a hail of bullets. The fear that those children who survived the massacre must feel every time they remember their teachers stacking them into closets and bathrooms, whispering that they loved them, so that love would be the last thing the students heard if the gunman found them.” Continue reading →

Why The Gun Bill Deserved To Lose, and Why We Should All Be Glad It Did

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments
A bad day for Machiavelli is a good day for America.

A bad day for Machiavelli is a good day for America.

Consequentialism rules supreme in Washington, D.C.; that is the tragedy of our political system. If unethical conduct is perceived as having a positive outcome, few in D.C. will continue to condemn the means whereby those beneficial and lauded were achieved. Worse, the results will be seen as validating the tactics, moving them from the category of ethically objectionable into standard practice, and for both political parties

Thus we should all reluctantly cheer the likely demise of the Senate’s gun control bill yesterday. The compromise background check provision that failed wasn’t perfect, but it would have been an improvement over the current system. Nevertheless, the post-Sandy Hook tactics of gun control advocates, including the President and most of the media, have been so misleading, cynical, manipulative and offensive that their tactics needed to be discouraged by the only thing that has real influence in the nation’s Capital: embarrassing failure.

The tainted enterprise begins with the fact that it should not have been a priority at this time at all. Newtown did not signal a crisis; it was one event, and that particular bloody horse had left the barn. The supposedly urgent need to “prevent more Sandy Hooks” was imaginary, but it apparently served the President’s purpose of distracting attention from more genuinely pressing matters, notably the stalled employment situation and the need to find common ground with Republican on deficit and debt reduction. Meanwhile, the conditions in Syria have been deteriorating and North Korea is threatening nuclear war: why, at this time, was the President of the United states acting as if gun control was at the top of his agenda? It was irresponsible, placing political grandstanding above governing. In this context, Obama’s angry words yesterday about the bill’s defeat being caused by “politics” were stunningly hypocritical. The whole effort by his party was about nothing other than politics. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Marc Lamont Hill

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
Marc Lamont Hill---biased journalist, honest man.

Marc Lamont Hill—biased journalist, honest man.

While much of the mainstream news media has been floating rationalizations and excuses for its failure to cover the Gosnell trial, a cynical process nicely dissected by James Taranto here, at least one liberal commentator has the integrity to admit the obvious. He is the Huffington Post’s Marc Lamont Hill, and on a live webcast, he said this:

“For what it’s worth, I do think that those of us on the left have made a decision not to cover this trial because we worry that it’ll compromise abortion rights. Whether you agree with abortion or not, I do think there’s a direct connection between the media’s failure to cover this and our own political commitments on the left. I think it’s a bad idea, I think it’s dangerous, but I think that’s the way it is.” Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Tom Hawking

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

“It’s not the role of our media and our journalists to shield us from truth; it’s their job to confront us with it. In this respect, the plurality of imagery is both a blessing and a curse, because in the sort of panic that follows an event like yesterday’s bombing, anything could be real. But equally, it’s also the volume of images and coverage — graphic and otherwise — that help us get a clearer picture of reality than we ever did in the days when our opinion was shaped by one journalist and a few photographs.”

—- Tom Hawking in his essay “The Ethics of Disaster Photography in the Age of Social Media,” discussing the controversy over whether graphic images from catastrophes like the Boston Marathon bombing ought to be published by the mainstream media, or should be toned down, edited, or withheld altogether.

Boston Marathon ExplosionHawking’s conclusions are spot-on, and you should read the entire essay here. Obviously horrendous photographs shouldn’t be thrust in readers’ and viewers’ faces; we should all have the opportunity to avoid seeing images we know would upset us. ( I have not looked at any of the graphic images from Boston. The text descriptions are plenty for me, thanks.) Leaving it to editors and journalists to decide how much realism we can stand, however, is folly. To be blunt, there is no reason to trust them. One of the blessings of the web and social media is that the traditional media no longer have the power to withhold information based on their biased and paternalistic judgement, which they are thoroughly unqualified by intellect, education  to render.

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Source and Graphic: Flavorwire (Tom Hawking)

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

Tiger Woods Cheated! Who’s Surprised?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
Marital fidelity was a previous rule Tiger thought was stupid. Nike must be so proud.

Marital fidelity was a previous rule Tiger thought was stupid. Nike must be so proud.

The fact that Tiger Woods finished fourth in the Masters was a stroke of moral luck that will allow, in all probability, the memory of his lack of sportsmanship and the PGA’s lack of integrity to cause a bit less harm to professional golf, at least until the next time Tiger tries to cut ethical corners. He is, after all, a shameless cheater with a deeply flawed character. It was just a matter of time before he managed, as the sport’s biggest name, to corrupt it. Now, he has.

During the tournament, Woods improved his lie after a stray shot by taking an illegal drop, and did so in such a blatant and obvious manner that TV viewers noticed it. Based on his experience and the rules of golf, Tiger should have known that what he was doing was a violation; based on his later statement to ESPN, in which he admitted that he placed his ball “2 yards”  behind where it belonged to give himself a better shot at the green, he did know. USGA rule 26-1 says a golfer must “play a ball as nearly as possible at the spot” from which he or she originally hit it. As Christine Brennan correctly explained in USA Today, previous golfers who have committed far less serious infractions have withdrawn from competition to preserve golf’s status as the last major sport that expects competitors to police their own conduct. Golf has an honor code. There is nothing honorable about Tiger Woods. Continue reading →