Journalism & Media

As News Media Sinks To New Ethics Lows, Some Friendly—And Urgent— Advice

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

One of many news story warning labels devised by Tom Scott (http://www.tomscott.com/warnings/)

The profession of journalism has now sunk to a point of incompetence and untrustworthiness that constitutes a serious threat, not only to itself, but also to the United States, which must have honest and reliable news sources to function and thrive. As currently constructed, the profession of journalism does not possess the tools or the will to address its crisis. Two recent examples should suffice.

The Saturday before Joe Paterno died, a tweet from a Penn State student-run website erroneously announced that Paterno was already dead. The tweet was immediately picked up by CBS Sports, and subsequently by the news web sites The Daily Beast and the Huffington Post. Howard Kurtz, supposedly the preeminent  media ethics watchdog, re-tweeted the false news himself. Many other journalists did the same. But it was all based on a hoax.  Paterno was still alive. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Wolf Blitzer

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Watch out, Newt! It's SUPER-WOLF!!!

Once again Ethics Alarms finds itself in the sad position of calling conduct heroic that should be routine. Unfortunately, however, competent and responsible broadcast journalism isn’t routine, and if I was looking for a bold and quick-witted journalist to exceed the standard practice, it certainly wouldn’t be CNN’s plodding, timid and often befuddled Wolf Blitzer. Last night, however, as moderator of the latest GOP candidates debate, he did what few journalists ever have the confidence or courage to do: he challenged a politician on an absurd and hypocritical statement.

And yes, I confess…if Wolf fell slightly short of true Ethics Hero status by a couple of points, the fact that the politician involved was New Gingrich the Unethical put him over the top. If that be bias, so be it. Continue reading →

Photography Ethics on Trial

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Two photography technology ethics cases erupted this week.

The Case of the Fake Amputee: A recently unveiled New York public health campaign warning against Type 2 diabetes uses a photo of an overweight man who is missing his leg.  The man, however, had both legs when the photo was taken. One was digitally removed to make it appear that his right leg had been amputated. The American Beverage Association, fighting the city’s efforts to reduce consumption of sweetened soft drinks and fast food, seized on the photo to press its case. “Clearly, the straight facts don’t support their singular attacks on our products, so they keep falling back on distortions and scare tactics that are over the top,” association spokesman Chris Gindlesperger said in a statement. “That’s disappointing.”  Well, diabetes does increase the risks of amputations, and a fake amputee is no more scary than a real amputee. Real amputees do exist; having a graphically-created one doesn’t change the accuracy of the ad’s message one bit. What does the association’s argument have to do with the photo-manipulation? Nothing. Continue reading →

Post-South Carolina Confession

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Sunday morning, I am duty bound to play roulette with the talking head shows on the networks, watch “Reliable Sources,” Howard Kurtz’s weekly journalism ethics critique on CNN, and scour the Washington Post, all in search of contentious or interesting ethics topics.

But rather than listen to endless rehashes of the South Carolina Republican primary, endure Newt Gingrich’s gloating, and again hear so-called experts repetitively apply their imaginary expertise to musings about what will happen in the next primary, Florida—-last week’s consensus: Romney had South Carolina wrapped up– I am watching “MVP: Most Valuable Primate” on Encore Family. It’s about a hockey-playing chimp (named Jack, appropriately enough).

It’s not bad.

Screw it. A man can only take so much.

The Marianne Gingrich Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Ugh. What a mess.

The ethics miscreants:

Marianne Gingrich: Seething with hate for Newt, she decided to try to metaphorically stick a shiv in his back by airing dirty laundry from their marriage right before the South Carolina primary, a do-or-die for him. Her interview with ABC was unfair and an act of pure revenge. You couldn’t call it whistle-blowing, since anyone who doesn’t already know what a likely sociopath Gingrich is has been watching too many re-runs of “NCIS.” Gingrich’s character, or lack of it, was established and in the books by 1998. Marianne should have not had to say a word, but everything she did say, she had said before, in an interview in 2010 in Esquire. Continue reading →

Stephen Colbert’s Comedy Terrorism

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

This was a lesson for me. I fell into the trap of looking past unique unethical conduct because it resembled harmless conduct I had seen many times before, a close cousin of using “everybody does it” to excuse and invalidate the inexcusable. Thank goodness Washington Post columnist Colbert King was paying attention.

In King’s column today, he catalogues the activities of Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert’s faux presidential run. I had already commented on Colbert’s gag earlier this week, but the target of my criticism was George Stephanopoulos, who devoted a ridiculous amount of time to a pointless interview with the comedian at the expense of real news. I assumed Colbert was just another in a long line of comedians who have used a presidential election year as a prop, and thus harmless….and I stopped paying attention to his antics. But as King ( his first name is pronounced KOHL-bert; the comedian’s name is Kohl-BARE) points out, Colbert has moved beyond satire into something akin to comedy terrorism, actively attempting to warp and influence the presidential selection process for laughs, and casualties be damned. King writes: Continue reading →

Occupy Brain Pans

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Allow me to translate: "Duh!"

The latest, dumbest and most telling of the endless Occupy group protests occurs today, as 111 Occupy Wall Street spin-offs across the country engage in “Occupy the Courts,” a protest to mark two years since the 2010 landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which held that the government cannot ban organizational spending on political campaigns. Move to Amend, the group that is sponsoring the protests, says that the goal is to build support for a constitutional amendment that would abolish corporate constitutional rights, such as the right to free speech, and declaring that political campaign spending is not a form of speech protected by the First Amendment.

If I were optimistic and naive, I would assume that this nonsense would finally shame the imprudent members of the media, Democratic Party and Obama administration who cynically hitched their wagons to the Occupy Wall Street anvil, hoping that eventually the groups would do or say something that justified all the attention and expense lavished on them. Instead, the Occupy movement has featured rapes, robberies, beatings, riots, obscenity, anti-Semites, homeless hangers-on, demonstrators defecating on cars, a woman placing her baby on railroad tracks, another child being abandoned to shiver in a tent, a pseudo-bomb being thrown at the White House, a demonstrator shooting a rifle at the White House, violated permits, squalor, disease and rats….all while the news media showed its stripes by maintaining with a straight face that this display was no different or worse than the comparatively dignified, focused and streamlined Tea Party demonstrations. Nonetheless, the facilitators of this embarrassment in the annals of civil protest seem determined to keep the faith until it blows up into a genuine tragedy or slinks away. If Occupy the Courts won’t convince the pols and journalists that they made an epic mistake, nothing will. But at least it settles the matter. These people have no idea, none, what they are doing. Continue reading →

Republican Nomination Ethics Points, 1/18/2012

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I’m sitting here watching the GOP Final Four debate. Here are some brief ethics observation on a lively day in the race:

  • At the opening gun, Newt Gingrich gave a bravura performance of indignation personified when moderator John King asked him about the looming ABC interview of his ex-wife, Marianne, in which she impugns Newt’s character and claims that he asked her to agree to an “open marriage.” He told King it was a despicable question and said that the issue was not worthy of mention. Good act, but of course the question of character is relevant, and of course Gingrich, who has none, wouldn’t think so. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Greta Van Susteren

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Newt: ” Honey, I’m divorcing you to marry the woman I’ve been cheating on you with for the last 6 years.” Marianne: “Fine. Just wait til you run for President. I’ll be ready.”

Newt Gingrich’s second (of three) wife, Marianne Gingrich, has said in the past that she had it within her power to  end her ex-husband’s career with a single interview. This is not as remarkable as it sounds; just consider how many political spouses past and present have or had that power regarding their own power partners. Let’s see: Eleanor Roosevelt…Jackie Kennedy…Coretta Scott King…Lady Bird Johnson….Pat Nixon…Hillery Clinton, of course…Bill Clinton…Laura Bush…Tipper Gore. That’s just for starters. I have no doubt that Marianne Gingrich might be able to tell tales that would make any of these women feel fortunate by comparison, but on the other hand, what could she say that would be a surprise? Anyone who doesn’t know by now that Newt is about as miserable an excuse for a human being as one can be and avoid being shot or imprisoned hasn’t been paying attention.

This is the problem, however. People don’t pay attention, and have the memories of Eric Holder under Congressional questioning about Fast and Furious. After Gingrich’s deft response to Juan Williams’ accusatory race-baiting question at the last South Carolina debate sparked a standing ovation, you would have thought that he was the new star on the scene to hear callers on conservative talk-radio rave.* Yes, yes, Gingrich is smart and articulate. So were Richard Nixon, Tom DeLay, Huey Long and Joe McCarthy. So were Professor Moriarty and Goldfinger. We know Newt is smart; we also should know other things about him by now, like the fact that he’s an untrustworthy narcissist and a cur.

Apparently Marianne Gingrich has decided to do America a favor and to remind amnesiac Republicans once and for all who they were cheering this week. She has taped a two-hour spill-the-dirt interview with ABC News. The Gingrich camp is in a panic, and supposedly there is an ethics debate at ABC about whether the interview should air before the critical South Carolina primary, possibly Newt’s last chance to stop the Mitt Romney juggernaut, or after. Fox host and legal analyst Greta Van Susteren comes down on the side of holding the interview in the can until Monday. On her blog, she writes: Continue reading →

Mitt’s Gift

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

South Carolinian Ruth Williams says she was praying for divine guidance as to how she would pay a late electric bill when she found herself in the crowd around the Mitt Romney campaign bus. When she told the Republican presidential front-runner about her plight, he reached into his wallet and handed Ruth around $50 to help her keep her power on.

That bastard!

He only did it for the publicity, of course. (Though there were no cameras present.) Or he did it to show he was better than her. Romney gave her the money because he’s such a rich SOB that it was throwing crumbs to a peasant. Yesterday on CNN, a Democratic operative cited the incident as proof of how out of touch Romney is with the needs and feelings of regular Americans. After all, she said, he just carries all this cash around with him—it was like his betting Rick Perry that $10,000. (Williams says Romney emptied his wallet and gave him everything he had. Wow…the tycoon carries 50 bucks around.)

Over on MSNBC, where every act by a Republican is evil personified,  guest Joy-Ann Reid, a blogger for theGrio.com, was furious; she said that the hand-out proves Romney is a racist. Continue reading →