Journalism & Media

The Tricky Ethics of Trading Sex For Tuition

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

 

It's not generally known, but Anna Nicole Smith initially hooked up with billionaire husband J. Herbert Marshall so he could pay her tuition at MIT.*

Seekingarrangement.com is undoubtedly an unethical website. The question is how unethical, and that is why I’ve taken longer than usual to write about it, and the social phenomenon it and other websites are fostering.

The site is per se unethical because it facilitates adultery, infidelity and improper workplace conduct, by definition and unequivocally, convicted by its own words:

“Rich and successful. Single or married, you have no time for games. You are looking to mentor or spoil someone special — perhaps a “personal secretary”? secret lover? student? or a mistress for an extra-marital affair?”

Based on this alone, Seekingarrangement.com is Ashley Madison (the adultery website) all over again. Case closed, no appeal. A website is unethical when it endorses, encourages, and assists in dishonest conduct that is guaranteed to cause harm to third parties. The “consenting adults” argument doesn’t work, and doesn’t apply, when the adults are consenting to something that violates commitments, agreements and promises made to other parties who don’t have the option of consenting.

Seekingarrangement.com, however, became the topic of much debate this month for another reason: its use by desperate students, aspiring students or indebted graduates to pay their college tuition. In this it is like the more specialized Seektuition.com, which is solely devoted to matching horny, rich, developmentally retarded and presumably repulsive older men who can’t find real relationships to hot, poor, young women willing to exchange their bodies and dignity to  “help sponsor” their “ dorm rent, books, or provide assistance for tuition.” (“Perhaps even take you shopping for those new clothes you want to impress your sorority sisters!”). The Huntington Post broke the story, telling the tales of both students who “hook up” with wealthy, older men over the internet using Seekingarrangement.com and similar sites, have sex with them, and get tuition money or tuition loan repayment funds in return, while the wealthy men gladly pay big bucks to have an evening of passion with a co-ed and some Viagra. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “CNN, Burying the News to Protect Its Own”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

And since you brought it up...

In the Comment of the Day, Dwayne N. Zechman expands usefully on the Ethics Alarms post about CNN ignoring the developing story about its own talk show host, Piers Morgan.

  So I’ll return the favor and expand on his comment.

For every post on Ethics Alarms regarding unethical journalism or media bias, I could write ten. Believe it or not, I try hard to keep the topic to a minimum number of posts; it is a close second to politics among the daily temptations I have to resist in fulfilling the blog’s mission as a broad and eclectic, rather that narrow, examination of U.S. ethical issues and controversies.

Fresh distortions of the news by the media and its often jaw-dropping deceitfulness in reporting stories create potential topics for me every  day, and usually many times a day. Here’s an example from yesterday: I was shocked to find out that the FAA funding, which was held up in limbo while FAA workers missed paychecks, was stuck in the Democratic-controlled Senate, having been duly passed by the Republican-controlled House. The previous day, both President Obama and scores of news stories and TV news features had harshly criticized “Congress” for leaving D.C. for vacations while Federal workers were being stiffed. I assumed, as almost everyone presumed, based on the “hostage” rhetoric being used by pundits and columnists and the just-completed debt-ceiling deal, that it was the GOP-controlled House of Representatives that was causing the problem. And that, unquestionably, is exactly what the White House wanted the public to believe, as well as what the media went out its way to make certain the public did believe, by what its reporters and pundits didn’t report and didn’t clarify. Continue reading →

CNN, Burying the News to Protect Its Own

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Come on, CNN! Who do you expect us to believe---you, Piers Morgan, or Paul?

Here is a suggested rule of reason for integrity-challenged media organizations. If they are intent on being so venal and cynical as to hire high-profile low-lifes who inflate ratings at the cost of the organization’s credibility, they can at least make their new employees agree that in the event of the inevitable scandal or embarrassing revelation, the infamous/dubious quasi-journalist understands and agrees that his or her employers will cover the matter like locusts on a wheat field, and with just as much mercy.

Reason, however, like ethics, has very little place in American broadcast media these days. Even though Piers Morgan, the new Larry King on CNN, is awash in allegations of phone hacking from no less than the King Beatle himself, Paul McCartney, CNN itself is ignoring the story, using the pathetic excuse that it isn’t a story until there is smoking gun evidence or until Morgan actually has to testify in England.

Morgan, for his part, appears to be lying through his teeth. Continue reading →

Another Sexting Pol: Drawing the Lines

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

"ARRGH! I didn't consent to THAT!"

From today’s  New York Daily News:

“Garden State Democrat Louis Magazzu announced his resignation Tuesday after nude pictures he sent to a woman he had been corresponding with were posted on a Republican activist’s website. At least two of the photos showed the Cumberland County freeholder’s crotch, two showed him dressed to the nines in a suit, and a fifth showed him waist up without a shirt.“

Comments and observations:

  • Magazzu didn’t have to resign, but it was right for him to do so. Sexting is a problem among high school students, and it doesn’t help to have elected representatives indulging in it. He was humiliated by publication of the photos, and because the humiliation extended to his constituents and his party, resigning quickly was an appropriate, honorable, courageous thing to do—as it would have been for Bill Clinton, Sen. David Vitter, ex-Sen. Ensign, ex-South Carolina Governor Sanford, and others. He didn’t have to resign, however. Continue reading →

More Advice Column Incompetence: The Case of the Jealous Sister

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

"My wife is behaving irrationally. Is it me, or might she have a teeny problem of her own?"

Once again an advice columnist’s response has me considering whether there needs to be a standard of malpractice for the profession, especially when desperate, trusting people rely on them in times of crisis. I agree that anyone who is prepared to adopt the recommendations of a stranger that are based on a probably inadequate and incomplete description of a dilemma, especially when the columnist could well be a college intern, the janitor or a lunatic, is in desperate straits indeed.  Still,  if you are going to give advice, it had better meet some bare minimum of competence—even if you are just an intern.

A sad and remorseful man wrote “Annie,” the Boston Globe’s advice maven, about whether there was hope for his marriage, which recently and unexpectedly exploded. Continue reading →

The Ethics of Interviewing Kids on Camera

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

 

Art Linkletter was right: "Kids say the darndest things!"

When I initially learned about  Chicago TV station WBBM editing  an interview with a 4-year-old boy last month to make him sound like an aspiring gang-member when he actually said that he wanted to be a policeman, I decided to pass. I try to avoid making obvious observations, and nobody could defend the conduct of the station’s editors, who intentionally truncated the child’s remarks to the interviewer to make them sound chilling. The larger question of whether the child should have been interviewed at all, however, is more challenging. We see kids being interviewed on TV all the time, and it is far from certain that reporters are doing so ethically.

In the wake of  the WBBM incident, journalistic ethics expert Al Thompkins reprinted his guidelines for interviewing juveniles on the Poynter site. I’m an admirer of Thompkins, but I found his guidelines almost as chilling as the distorted interview itself. Here is his guidance on the issue of interviewing kids, with my reactions: Continue reading →

Word Use Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

"Super Glue doll? "Mucilage buddy?" "Fly-paper friend"

Ah, politics! Words that are dishonest are winked at by the media without objection, and harmless terms generate apologies that support ignorance and vagueness.

I. Colorado Republican Congressman Doug Lamborn apologized yesterday for using the term “tar baby” during a Friday appearance on a Denver radio program.  Lamborn said this: “Even if some people say, ‘Well the Republicans should have done this or they should have done that,’ they will hold the President responsible. Now, I don’t even want to have to be associated with him. It’s like touching a tar baby and you get it, you’re stuck, and you’re a part of the problem now and you can’t get away. I don’t want that to happen to us, but if it does or not, he’ll still get, properly so, the blame because his policies for four years will have failed the American people.” Continue reading →

No Winners, Only Losers in the Debt Ceiling Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I object to “a pox on all their houses” assessments on principle, because it encourages the lack of accountability. If everyone is at fault, nobody is at fault, or at least nobody will be willing to accept responsibility as long as he or she or they can point fingers at someone else. Reading all of the clichéd “Winners and Losers” columns in the media this morning as the debt ceiling crisis winds down, however, convinces me that there were no winners, only losers, in this sorry spectacle. In the latter group I include the writers of the “Winners and Losers” pieces, which are all just spin, obvious and biased attempts to extract a writer’s favorites from the train wreck using the rhetorical Jaws of Life.

They are all losers, all of them, together with the United States of America. The perfect storm of cowardly, irresponsible, reckless, stupid and arrogant leadership weakened the recovery, weakened the economy, weakened foreign faith in American investments, weakened American prestige, split the Republican Party, revealed the Democratic Party as hell-bent on chasing the European-style nanny state even as their model is crumbling abroad, exposed the Tea Party as a unmannerly mess of deluded doctrinaire ideologues with no grasp of political or economic realities, and most disastrously of all, showed the American President to be hopelessly, pathetically, frighteningly weak, devoid of leadership skills and leaderly instincts. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Washigton Post Reader Elizabeth Grover

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“Sun wrote: ‘Most doctors will not perform abortions beyond 22 or 24 weeks for various reasons, including legal concerns, social stigma, inadequate training or inexperience.’ She left out perhaps the biggest reason: Most doctors believe that late-term abortions are morally wrong.”

—-Elizabeth Grover of Washington, D.C., in a letter published in the Washington Post “Free for All” section. Reader Grover was commenting on a glowing Post profile of Maryland physician Dr. LeRoy Carhart by feature writer Lena Sun, extolling his willingness, indeed eagerness, to perform late term abortions, which are illegal in several states. Dr. LeRoy dismissed state restrictions on abortions of any kind as “ridiculous.”

Grover was absolutely correct to flag the bias and misrepresentation in Sun’s article. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Larry Flynt

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

BLECHHHH!

I know, I know. “In other news, the Earth spins, and the Atlantic ocean is wet!” Nevertheless, it is occasionally worth the trouble to remind ourselves what an unprincipled sleaze Larry Flynt is, especially with people still around who argue that he’s a hero.

Flynt announced on Nancy Grace’s show last night that talks are ongoing with Casey Anthony to have her nude and tattooed bod featured in Hustler magazine for $500,000 up front plus 10% of all profits. Flynt said he decided to make the offer after concluding there was a big market for seeing the acquitted child murder suspect in the buff. Continue reading →