Journalism & Media

NOW Do You Get It, Bachmann Fans?

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Bachmann finally jumped it, as we knew she would!

When I called Rep. Michele Bachmann unethical for her repeated uses of erroneous information in her speeches—announcing that the Battle of Concord occurred in New Hampshire, declaring the Founders spent their lives fighting slavery (and later justifying this whopper by saying that Founding Father’s Son John Quincy Adams qualified as a Founding Father himself), the Bachmanites were furious. “Anyone can make a mistake!” they argued.

Not these kinds of mistakes. As I wrote in July: Continue reading →

Unethical Business Practices: Online Reputation Services

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Consider this just a polite request to remove that accurate but ucomplimentary post about my client.

The web has created some new business niches, and one that fascinated me was the emergence of online reputation defenders, who purport to make sure that Google searches and web research about individuals and businesses do not turn up negative information that can harm business prospects, career advancement, or reputations generally.

While I can see the appeal and potential profitability of such services, manipulating online content is an ethical gray area. It is as wrong to artificially make someone look good  on the internet as to artificially make them look bad. In general, anyone who has been out and about very long will find both positive and negative information about themselves on the web, of varying accuracy. People who have experience with web research understand this, so the impressions they get from checking out a potential employee or business partner will usually, though not always, be tempered with skepticism.

They can and should apply common sense: What is the source of the negative information? How old is it? Was this one incident or complaint that doesn’t seem representative of the individual or company as a whole? I would rather have all the information available, and be able to make my own decisions, rather than have the most favorable material elevated in visibility and the least favorable made difficult to find or removed altogether. These services promise to “bury” the negative material. Continue reading →

Dear Laura Ingraham: Shut Up and Read Your Own Book

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Laura Ingraham misses the Jetsons. I don't care.

In her 2003 conservative book/rant, “Shut Up and Sing!” radio talk show host Laura Ingraham condemned know-nothing entertainers (among others) who use their popularity to push political views on their audiences and others. I certainly agree with her primary point, which is the expertise and notoriety in the entertainment field does not confer any special perceptiveness in matters of government and social policy, and many, if not most, of the opinions being vocally expressed by these singers, actors and comics are ignorant at best and infantile at worst.

Thus it is puzzling that Ingraham has increasingly been using her radio show, which is supposed to be about politics and current events, to hold forth on the relative value of children’s movies and TV fare in 2011 compared to the films and television programming of the past. To say that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about is being kind. She also is displaying such wretched aesthetic taste and factually mistaken analysis that her comments amount to pundit malpractice. Continue reading →

Another Inherently Misleading Statistic

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“Ok, I’ve put on some weight, but that hippo must weigh a ton!”

Ethics Alarms readers know that  certain statistics reporters and pundits like to cite are guaranteed to set my head spinning around like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. One of them, that 50% of marriages end in divorce, is unethical because it’s imaginary. Another, the “women earn 75 cents for every dollar earned by men” line, is intentionally misleading as well as out of date. Lately, my head has been doing a 180 because of the popularity of citing Congress’s unpopularity, as measured by polls. In this case, the number is probably accurate and the implication of it is clear: the public doesn’t have much admiration for Congress. What is unethical is the misleading way it is typically used by journalists, to contrast with the President’s increasingly miserable poll numbers. Continue reading →

Perry, Insomnia, Leadership, and the Death Penalty

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

When should a leader lose sleep over a decision?

A lot of ink has been spilled over NBC’s Brian Williams’ question to Rick Perry regarding the death penalty, the Republican candidates debate audience’s strange reaction to it, and Perry’s response. Conservatives see Williams’ question—“Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times. Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?”—as a loaded query by a biased questioner who is pressing the progressive anti-death penalty agenda. Liberals see Perry’s answer as proof-positive that he is an unthinking, unfeeling, blood-thirsty monster. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Does This Show That The Media Is Getting Better, or Worse?

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Soon, the press may just make up ALL its stories (From Bad Reporting Comics)

Here’s a real head-scratcher. On September 9, the Associated Press ran this story, critical of Gov. Rick Perry:

Texas wildfire victims wondering where Perry is

BASTROP, Texas (AP) — Residents affected by a devastating Central Texas wildfire are growing impatient with state officials and questioning why Gov. Rick Perry hasn’t spent more time there.

 Some residents yelled at Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst when he visited the command center in Bastrop County Friday, asking where Perry is and why they haven’t had any housing help. Wildfires have destroyed nearly 1,400 homes about 25 miles from Austin.  Perry, running for the Republican nomination for president, interrupted his campaign and returned to Texas for two days before heading to California for a debate Wednesday. He is now fundraising in California.

Perry’s office said “everything that needs to be done to respond to these fires is being done.” Dewhurst said the White House hasn’t yet replied to a request for federal aid.

Then, Saturday morning, this appeared where the story had been: Continue reading →

Unethical Web Post of the Week: “Screw Civility” by Rick Robinson

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Tell Alexander Hamilton how much fun incivility is...

That an ethics dolt like Rick Robinson has spent so much time advising those in the Halls of Power speaks volumes about why our government institutions are dysfunctional and corrupt. His biography says he even ran for Congress. With ethical values like his—weak, dubious, and confused—it is a miracle he wasn’t elected.

In an essay for Tucker Carlson’s conservative news site The Daily Caller, Robinson defends the uncivil rhetoric of Jimmy (““Let’s take these sons of bitches out …”) Hoffa Jr and Rep. Joe ( “You lie!”) Wilson on the historically false and ethically idiotic grounds that “America was built on a solid foundation of uncivil political discourse.” It is ethically idiotic because this is consequentialism (“Everything turned out all right, so it was the right thing to do”) and a rationalization (“They did it, so we can too!), and it is historically false because no nation, indeed no functioning organization of any kind, was built on incivility….especially this one. Continue reading →

Obama’s Fractured History

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

"Don't know much about history..."

I have been, some say, too hard on Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Herman Cain, for their various gaffes related to our American heritage. The reason I believe that these politicians are especially blame-worthy for their fractured history is that they are all constantly evoking America’s historical past, especially its founding. If you are going to take on the responsibility of educating Americans about the Constitution (which Cain mixed up with the Declaration), Paul Revere (whose ride Palin mangled) and the Founders (to whose number Bachmann added John Quincy Adams), you better get your facts straight, because the public trusts what you say.

What then, is the proper and fair reaction when a President the media has anointed as brilliant states in a nationally televised speech before Congress that Abraham Lincoln was the “founder of the Republican Party”? Continue reading →

Affronts to Animal Dignity

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

"Boy, will you look at those idiots watching this? Where is their sense of dignity?"

The Washington Post recently published a photo of an oddball attraction at a minor league baseball game in Harrisburg, PA. A capuchin monkey, garbed in jockey attire, was riding a border collie—really, really stupid, though “really stupid” is the frequent standard of minor league baseball promotions generally. This means that when a club executive suggests, “Hey, howzabout we have some monkeys riding on dogs, like in little saddles?” and the response from the management team is, “That’s really stupid, Ed,” he’ll say, “Great! Then it’s a go!”

I found the picture rather grotesque, but it never occurred to me that the gimmick was unethical. Oh, I assumed that PETA would find it unethical, but PETA believes it’s unethical that animals aren’t allowed to vote.  Several indignant readers wrote to the Post, however, protesting that the photo was “offensive” because it celebrated unethical conduct, the conduct being, apparently,“insulting the natural identity of these animals.” “Monkeys riding boarder collies is just wrong,” wrote one of the outraged. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: ABC News White House Correspondent Jake Tapper

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Neat trick by Jay Carney: Speaking for the President, AND doing an uncanny impression of a weasel!

It shows the degree to which we now take bias and favoritism by the news media for granted that a reporter doing what once was regarded as his duty now appears heroic.  Sadly, that is where we are.

That is also why Jake Tapper warrants an Ethics Hero designation for pressing White House press secretary Jay Carney on the obvious disconnect between President Obama’s lecture on civility in January in the wake of the Giffords shooting, and his happy acceptance of the call by  Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. to “take these sons of bitches out” at a rally over the weekend. The exchange: Continue reading →