Journalism & Media

The Fourth Annual Ethics Alarms Awards: The Best of Ethics 2012

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

nonpartisan

One of the reasons there are always more negative stories than positive ones on Ethics Alarms is that ethical conduct is still much more common than unethical conduct, and thus has to be more spectacular to be worthy of comment. At least, that’s my rationalization this year….

Here are the 2011 Ethics Alarms Awards for the Best in Ethics:

Most Important Ethical Act of the Year:

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s public display of appreciation to President Obama for the rapid Federal response to Super Storm Sandy. Naturally, Christie was subsequently called a turncoat and blamed for Mitt Romney’s loss.

Outstanding Ethical Leadership

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts’ decision to confound conventional wisdom and to vote to uphold the constitutionality of  the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, reaffirmed the ideological independence of the Court while giving due deference to the will of Congress. Roberts was derided by Republicans and conservatives, while liberals and Democrats patted themselves on the back, presuming that they had intimidated him into rejecting the so-called conservative wing of the Court by their (irresponsible, dishonest and unethical) accusations that the Court put politics ahead of law and justice. Roberts, in truth, just interpreted the law, which is what his duty required.

Heroes of the Year

Seniors at Lexington (Ky) Catholic High School. When a gay couple was told by school administrators that they were not welcome at their senior prom, a significant number of their classmates moved the prom to the parking lot, where a good time was had by all. Courage, respect, fairness and kindness. These seniors are ready for the real world, which needs them more than they need it. Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes: The Baseball Writers Association of America

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments
Nope.

Nope.

In the Baseball Hall of Fame balloting announced today, those who elect baseball’s greats to its shrine of heroes failed to give anyone the requisite 75% ballots required for election. That’s too bad: Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines and Mike Piazza are deserving candidates.

The writers also did not elect unrepentant cheater, record thief and game-corrupter Barry Bonds, however, who was on only 36.2% of the ballots, slightly less than suspected steroid cheat Roger Clemens (37.6).

Good.

Ethics Quiz: Two Lame Excuses

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments
Donald Kaul. In his dreams,

Donald Kaul. In his dreams.

 

A newspaper columnist and an ESPN commentator both reaped the wild wind last month after statements in a column and on a televised panel that many, including me, took as irresponsible, unprofessional and worse. I wrote here about the column, a diatribe in Iowa’s Des Moines register by veteran Donald Kaul against guns, gun owners, the NRA and any politician who supported them. The panelist was ESPN’s Rob Parker, whom I didn’t write about simply because his racist rant against Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin was so obviously wrong that there was nothing much to say about it. If you missed it, African American Parker questioned Griffin’s bona fides as a black man because, among other offenses, he appeared to be a Republican and has a white girlfriend. I would have had a lot to write about ethical double standards if ESPN hadn’t finally fired Parker after suspending him, but he was let go yesterday.

Both Kaul and Parker now claim they were misunderstood, and thus treated unfairly. Kaul, who has been backed by his paper in an editorial, claimed in a recent column that his universally derided piece was obviously satire, and implying that anyone who didn’t catch the twinkle in his eye is illiterate:

“Gun owners seemed particularly upset at the suggestion that Boehner and McConnell be dragged [ by “a Chevy pickup truck… around a parking lot until they saw the light on gun control” ].The tactic, which dates back to the days of lynch mobs, became a more modern nightmare in the wake of the 1998 dragging murder of James Byrd by white supremacists in Texas. Many of the people I heard from said I should be arrested for threatening federal officials, and one said he had personally reported me to the FBI. Let me say this about that: That wasn’t a suggestion to be taken literally. I don’t believe Boehner and McConnell should be dragged. I was using it as a metaphor for making politicians pay a price for their inability to confront the gun lobby. It’s a literary device.

“Think of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” written 200 years ago, in which he suggested that the Irish famine could be relieved if babies of poor families were confiscated at 12 months and sold to rich people, who could eat them. Swift, an Irishman, didn’t mean that literally. It was a satiric device to underline the misery that had been visited on the Irish by their English landlords. So too with my dragging of the Republican leaders.”

Yes, this hateful hack just compared himself to Jonathan Swift.

Parker, meanwhile, takes a different route: he tries that old stand-by, “it was taken out of context.”  He told an interviewer he was shocked at the uproar his comments caused, saying,

“I mean, looking back at some of the comments, I can see how some people can take it out of context and run with it, but the response, and what happened over the past 30 days and everything was just shocking.”

Really. Well, here is the video of Parker’s attack on RG III. Tell me in what context such remarks would be considered appropriate, and not racist and mind-blowingly stupid:

Your Ethics Quiz Question:

Which of the two defenses, Kaul’s “It was satire!” or Parker’s “It was taken out of context!” is more unethical, unethical in this case meaning, “a pathetic lie and an insult to the intelligence of everyone who hears or reads it”? Continue reading →

The Fourth Annual Ethics Alarms Awards: The Worst of Ethics 2012 (Part 2)

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

reid

The 2012 Ethics Alarms Awards for the Worst in Ethics continues (you can catch up with Part I here , and the Best is here), and yes, it gets worse…

Worst Friend and Relative

Lori Stilley, who faked cancer to get sympathy, favors, parties and money from those who cared about her.

Most Unethical Advice

Emily Yoffe, Slate’s “Dear Prudence,” wins for a year of bad advice in kinky situations, the bottom of the barrel being when she advised a daughter who observed her mother illegally filling out her invalid grandparents’ 2012 absentee ballots to reflect the mother’s electoral preferences to do nothing about this combination of elder abuse and voter fraud.

Shameless Bad Character Division Continue reading →

The Fourth Annual Ethics Alarms Awards: The Worst of Ethics 2012 (Part 1)

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Trayvon

Welcome to the Fourth  Annual Ethics Alarms Awards

Recognizing the Best and Worst of Ethics in 2012!

This is the first installment of the Worst. (Part 2 is here, the Best is here.)

2012 inspired over 1000 posts, and Ethics Alarms still missed a lot. And the last week of 2012 was sufficiently ethics packed that the Awards are late this year. My apologies.

In a depressingly unethical year, these were the low points:

Ethics Train Wreck of the Year

Was there ever any doubt? The Trayvon Martin- George Zimmerman fiasco, naturally, which is far from over. This year’s winner may be the worst ethics train wreck since Monica and Bill were dominating the news.  So far it has involved dubious, unprofessional or clearly unethical conduct by, among others, Martin’s parents, their lawyer, Zimmerman, his wife, the police, Zimmerman’s first set of lawyers, the prosecutor, the Congressional Black Caucus, NBC (which repeatedly broadcast an “accidentally” truncated tape of Zimmerman’s 911 call that made him sound racist), the rest of the broadcast media, conservative talk radio and bloggers (who decided their contribution would be to try to show that Martin deserved to be shot), Spike Lee, Rosie O’Donnell, the New Black Panthers, and President Obama, who ratcheted up the hate being focused on Zimmerman by implying that the killing as racially motivated, and by connecting himself to the victim. Runner-up: The 2012 Presidential campaign.

“Incompetent Elected Officials of the Year” Division Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Stanford Law Prof. Pamela Karlan, Pulling A McLuhan

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

One of the funniest moments in Woody Allen’s Academy Award-winning comedy “Annie Hall” is the classic scene in which Woody squelches a pompous know-it-all standing in line behind him at a movie theater. The man is holding forth on film criticism and finally begins pontificating on the theories of Marshall McCluhan, a Sixties media scholar most famous for the quote, “The media is the message.”  Woody acts out everyone’s fantasy who has had to listen to strangers blather on about topics they aren’t qualified to discuss by magically producing the real McCluhan to confront the man. “You know nothing of my work!,” McLuhan tells the shocked pedant.

Today Stanford law professor pulled a McCluhan on none other than George Will, who, she pointed out in a letter to the Washington Post, recently used her law review article to bolster his position by substantially misrepresenting—or misunderstanding–what it actually said:

“Mr. Will’s column distorted my Harvard Law Review article in details both large and small. Yes, the Framers of our Constitution intended to limit the federal government’s power to protect liberty. But they also crafted the new Constitution to empower the government to deal with critical problems. For much of our history, the Supreme Court recognized congressional resourcefulness as a source of our nation’s strength. By looking only to James Madison and 1787, Mr. Will ignored the post-Civil War 14th Amendment, which explicitly authorizes Congress to enforce guarantees of liberty and equality.

“As for my discussion of the court’s Citizens United ruling, I did not attack “spending by outside groups,” as Mr. Will wrote. Rather, I pointed out only that there has been a significant increase in such spending (much of it in forms that leave voters in the dark as to who bankrolled the messages they hear) and that reasonable people can disagree about whether this is good for democracy.

“Finally, for someone who prides himself on his linguistic precision, Mr. Will’s attack is particularly tone-deaf. “Disdain” means “scorn” or “contempt.” Nothing in my article expresses scorn or contempt for the court or for judicial review. I — like many other Americans, including some of their colleagues and many of their predecessors — simply disagree strongly with the approach some justices have taken and the conclusions they have reached in some recent cases.”

Take that, George! Continue reading →

Some Ethics Observations On A Ridiculous Sean Hannity Segment

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Last night, Fox New host and conservative radio talk show star Sean Hannity moderated what purported to be a debate on the topic of —guess what?— gun control on his cable TV show. The  guests were “civil rights attorney” Leo Terrell (I’ll explain the scare quotes in a second) and conservative lawyer Jay Sekulow. The two adversaries—and Hannity, who was hardly neutral—discussed The Journal News’ recent decision (Covered and criticized on Ethics Alarms) to publish the names and addresses of pistol permit holders in two New York Counties. The ensuing dialogue, if you can call it that, was painful to watch (but you’ll have to watch it to know what I’m referring to.)

Some observations on the miserable ethics of a nauseating episode: Continue reading →

Are Musicals Reviewed By Ignoramuses?

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments
STEPHEN SONDHEIM

OK, but Stephen: compared to you, everyone is an ignoramus!

Stephen Sondheim completed his personal memoirs about his career in American musicals more than a year ago, but they are so thoughtful, detailed and dense that I keep discovering new treasures, provocative observations by a first-rate mind. Yesterday, I found one that was buried in a footnote, in the middle of a technical tangent that most readers, like me in my first tour through the books, probably skimmed.

Sondheim pointedly did not use his erudite analysis and reflections in his two retrospectives (“Finishing the Hat” and “Look! I Made a Hat!”) to settle scores with critics, a group that obviously annoyed and to some extent handicapped him over the course of his long career. In this brief footnote, however, the composer/lyricist delivers a withering verdict:

“The sad truth is that musicals are the only public art form reviewed mostly by ignoramuses.”

At the end of the note, he repeats the indictment, this time changing the description to “illiterates.” Sondheim is accusing theater critics of engaging in professional conduct they are incompetent to perform, rendering expert opinions that are not really expert, and as a result, misinforming the public and undermining the efforts of serious artists, like him.  If he is right, not only are the critics unprofessional and unethical, the media organs that hire and publish them are unethical as well. Continue reading →

Now THIS Is Irresponsible Opinion Journalism

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
Oh, yeah, this will help a lot...

Oh, yeah, this will help a lot…

During the Ethics Alarms debates on various threads here about the response to the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, the ever-reasonable commenter Ampersand wrote,

“I think that if you want a responsible discourse, you should seek out intelligent opposition and highlight it, rather than exclusively highlighting what you see as stupid and unethical opposition.”

I agree that this is usually a good course. The current public policy debate, however, isn’t being led or dominated by intelligent opposition to gun possession, but by emotion-driven, often hateful and hysterical diatribes from activists, demagogues and journalists who have decided that this, of all issues, is one that excuses them of their ethical obligation to be objective and to give views they don’t agree with due respect and fair analysis. Thus it is important to highlight the worst examples of these, not only because they are the most blatantly unethical (“Ethics Alarms,” you know) but also because it is dangerous to allow them to slant the discussion without calling attention to what’s wrong with them.

This brings us to the recent rant of Des Moines Register columnist Donald Kaul. Kaul is an extreme  progressive, which is hunky dory, and he is respected as a serious commentator from that side of the ideological spectrum. He also writes for a newspaper with a tradition of serious and professional reporting. He is not Dave Barry, Chris Rock, Ann Coulter or even Lawrence O’Donnell: he is not a jester, a performance artist, or a shameless firebrand.  Many reasonable people take what he says t0 heart.

Thus it is worthy of note that such a professional opinion journalist believes that it is appropriate to write a column that says things like this: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Howard Kurtz

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“Gun owners often say they want the government to leave them alone; why then are some clamoring for Gregory to be prosecuted?”

—-CNN Media ethics watchdog Howard Kurtz, in a column defending “Meet the Press” host David Gregory’s on-air violation of a D.C. gun law

Wait...WHAT???

Wait…WHAT???

This is quite a spectacle, a real time unraveling and self-discrediting of a media ethicist because of biases he either cannot resist or doesn’t detect. Kurtz’s core ethical fallacy in ridiculing calls for Gregory to be held to account for a knowing, intentional, blatant and broadcast breach of a criminal law is so obvious it is stunning that he cannot see it. Kurtz is arguing that the law shouldn’t be enforced against law-breaking journalists “practicing journalism,” because they are special and deserve to be privileged, and because journalism is so important that it trumps the law. This is offensive to fairness, equality and justice, but because Kurtz is himself a journalist, he cannot see how intrinsically unethical his position is. He cannot see the most basic conflict of interest of all, self-interest, in himself. Continue reading →