Journalism & Media

Ethics Dunce: Criminal Defense Lawyer Gerard Marrone

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

If defending the Constitution means you can't look in the mirror, you're in the wrong profession.

Levi Aron was charged this week for abduction and death of Leiby Kletzky, an 8-year-old Brooklyn boy who disappeared while walking home from a Jewish day camp last week. Surveillance video showed the child  asking a stranger, alleged to be Aron, for directions and then getting into his car. A city-wide search for the missing child ended when police found the boy’s body parts, leading to Aron’s arrest.

Now Gerard Marrone, one of the two lawyers defending Aron, has withdrawn from the representation. There is, in theory, nothing wrong with that. A lawyer can withdraw from any representation for good cause, as long as the withdrawal doesn’t harm the defendant. Marrone’s withdrawal, however, was done in such a way that it almost certainly harms the defendant, because the lawyer told the press why he was withdrawing.

“I have three little boys,” he told the Daily News,“You can’t look at your kids and then look at yourself in the mirror, knowing that a little boy, who’s close in age to my eldest son, was murdered so brutally.” Continue reading →

Something For the Casey Anthony Lynch Mob to Think About

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

So they cut some corners....

The New York Times reports that John Bradley, a software designer who testified at the Casey Anthony murder trial that Anthony had visited a website regarding the use of chloroform 84 times, now says that he made a mistake, and that in fact Anthony only accessed the site exactly once. The finding of 84 visits was used by prosecutors repeatedly during the trial to suggest that Ms. Anthony had planned to murder her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.

The designer realized his mistake after reworking his software.  Bradley told the Times that he immediately alerted a prosecutor, Linda Drane Burdick, and Sgt. Kevin Stenger of the Sheriff’s Office in late June to make them aware of his new findings. Yet the prosecutors never corrected the record or alerted the defense, as they are required to do under the law.

What does this mean? Continue reading →

James O’Keefe—Still Faking, Still Recording, Still Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

This is all your fault, Allen Funt!

The latest James O’Keefe Candid Camera stunt is supposed to show corruption in the Medicaid system. As in his earlier video hit-jobs on ACORN and NPR, O’Keefe’s colorful crew of community theater rejects pose as outrageous and unsavory stereotypes—this time, drug-smuggling Russians with the worst accents since “Rocky and Bullwinkle,” who are pimping out their “sisters” for sex. The O’Keefe Players manage to find a jolly, badly-trained, none-too-swift Ohio Medicaid worker who giggles away their confessions of wanting to defraud Medicaid and dealing illegal drugs. The video of the dumb encounter—dumb charade, dumber government employee—has been posted on YouTube. More of the same, presumably, is on the way.

If you’re as bored with this as I am, please tell O’Keefe to stop. Of course his act is as unethical as his “Russians'” accents are embarrassing: Continue reading →

Eight Glasses of Water and the Climate Change Bullies

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Never mind.

A surprising new report announces that the well-established health standard that we should all drink at least eight glasses a day is a myth, with no data to support it.  Moreover, the report says, drinking so much water may actually be harmful.  Meanwhile, widespread acceptance of water and hydration as a health benefit has led directly to the explosion in the use of bottled water, wasting money and creating an environmental crisis with so many discarded plastic containers.

I would hope that such news, and we get these kind of sudden “never mind!” stories with fair regularity, might convince some of the more insulting critics of global warming skeptics to temper their contempt.
The ideologues and conspiracy theorists who refuse to accept that the world is warming—though nobody really knows how much or how long—and that the effect is likely caused by mankind—though nobody can say with certainty that mankind can reverse or stop it—are rightly derided, up to a point. But those who question the astonishing certainty with which some climate change scientists, Al Gore, and a passel of pundits, columnists and bloggers who barely passed high school chemistry claim to know what the effects of global warming will be, even though doing so requires extensive estimates, extrapolations and assumptions, are being no more than prudent, considering how frequently far simpler scientific conclusions have proven to be flawed, exaggerated, or as may be in the case of  the eight glasses of water, just plain wrong. Prudence is especially appropriate when speculative science transmuted into doctrine calls for huge expenditures of scarce resources and the re-ordering of national priorities, effecting nations, commerce, businesses and lives. Continue reading →

Conservatives, Rotting Children’s Brains On Principle

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Why can't today's TV pass on good taste like this to our children?

Perhaps I am over-reacting, but I was recently horrified. Sometimes conservatives allow their ideology to lead them into places that make it impossible to take them seriously, or  to view them as rational and responsible. This is especially true when it comes to the arts.

Yesterday, radio talk show host Laura Ingraham was bemoaning the coarsening of the culture, and the way she feels that television is poisoning the minds of children. She spoke nostalgically about how entertainment in the golden past was family-friendly, and reliably conveyed the values of humor and wit that enriched children’s minds, their taste, and their understanding of “good entertainment.” Those days are no more, Ingraham said. Television is vast slime-pool, and concerned parents can only look to past gems of the comic arts to teach their children “humor and wit.”

So what show did Laura Ingraham, accomplished writer, former Supreme Court law clerk, and author of political satire extol as epitomizing these lost values? What classic TV show’s complete set of DVDs did she reveal that she had given to a colleague so he could save the minds and souls of his children?

“Gilligan’s Island.”

“GILLIGAN’S ISLAND!” Continue reading →

Fact Checker Ethics, Part II: Validating Deceit, and Practicing It Too

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Et tu, Fact Checker?

In its review of Washington Post “Fact Checker” Glenn Kessler’s shameful refusal to call the Democratic dissembling on Social Security, Ethics Alarms saved the best—which is to say, worst—for last.

Beginning with a statement typical of Obama Administration and Democratic leadership positioning on the subject, Rep. Xavier Becerra’s (D-Calif.) “Social Security has never contributed a dime to the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt…not one penny to our federal budget deficit this year or any year in our nation’s history,” Kessler gives a brief history of Social Security, why it has no more money, and concludes with this nonsense:

“Becerra is sincere in his convictions and his statement is true, so far as it goes. Yes, Social Security in the past has not contributed to the nation’s debt. But it’s basically a meaningless fact and actually distracts from the long-term fiscal problem posed by the retirement of the baby boom generation and the shrinking of the nation’s labor pool.” Continue reading →

Fact Checker Ethics: Alibis For Obama, Part I

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The Washington Post “Fact Checker,” Glenn Kessler, is among the most biased of the breed. On the issue of the Obama Administration’s outright dishonesty on Social Security, however, he is embarrassing his paper and the entire Fact-Check community.

Lately, his strategy has been to bury obvious dishonesty by the Obama Administration and Democrats regarding Social Security in technical details, excusing straightforward misrepresentation (how’s that for an oxymoron?) and encouraging readers to shrug, give up, and move on

How nice for the President to have political allies posing as objective truth-tellers. Continue reading →

Barn Doors + Anger + Ignorance + Irresponsible Legislators = “Caylee’s Law”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

When someone first mentioned the wave of support for “Caylee’s Law,” proposed legislation so far pending in four states making it a felony for a parent not to report a child’s death within an hour or a missing child within 24 hours, I responded that it “sounded like a good idea.”  Lots of dumb things sound good to me before I think about them. “Caylee’s Law,” is in fact a terrible idea, and about 10 minutes of quality thought illuminates why.

The law is the result of multiple factors more related to human nature than sound law enforcement. When something unpopular and frustrating happens, like the death of Caylee Anthony and her mother’s subsequent acquittal of murder charges, the response is often to try to fix the problem with a law. Such laws are often formulated in the heat of emotion and sentiment rather than careful reasoning and consideration, and the result is  bad laws that cause more problems that they solve.

These laws also embody the Barn Door Fallacy. Society passes broad-based measures to stop an unusual occurrence that has already done its damage, and that may be extremely unlikely to occur again. Nevertheless, society and the public saddle themselves with expensive, inconvenient, often inefficient measures designed to respond to the rare event. One shoe bomber, and millions of passengers have to remove their shoes to go through airport security. One adulterated bottle of Tylenol, and every over-the-counter drug bottle requires a razor blade and the manual dexterity of a piano virtuoso to open. Two sick boys shoot up Columbine, so third graders get suspended for bringing squirt–guns to school. Continue reading →

The Shannon Stone Tragedy Ethics Quiz, Part II

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Don't try this if you're not a firefighter

 Many commenters were upset with me for characterizing the tragic death of Shannon Stone, who fell to his death while trying to catch a ball during a Texas Rangers game, as the result of his own bad judgment, suggesting that I was impugning the character of a dead man. (I wasn’t.) That reaction sparks the second Ethics Alarms quiz question relating to the incident.

NBC baseball blogger (and lawyer) Craig Calcaterra put up a post this morning headlined “Idiot nearly falls from the stands chasing a ball at the Home Run Derby”:

“Just days after Shannon Stone died from a fall while reaching for a baseball at a Texas Rangers game, a fan at last night’s Home Run Derby nearly fell out of the outfield stands while lunging for a home run ball hit by Prince Fielder.  He was spared serious injury or death only because his friends grabbed him by his feet, held him and then pulled him back as he dangled over the railing above a concrete deck 20 feet below…His name is Keith Carmickle, and common sense is not his forte. His fall came after he stepped up onto the narrow metal table which abutted the railing — the kind you stand in front of and set your drink on while watching the game — and then, while still standing on it, reached down low to catch the ball as it came in…He missed the ball, but his momentum carried him forward and he fell headfirst over the rail. If it wasn’t for his brother’s and his friends’ quick action, down he would have gone. Despite his idiocy, he (a) escaped this dangerous situation of his own making unscathed; and (b) was allowed to stay at the Derby by security. Both of these factors have been added to the “evidence that there is no God and/or that He is not just and fair” side of the big ledger I keep on my desk and in which I tally the wonder and folly of Humanity as I encounter it…”

Your questions to answer, if you dare: 1) Is it fair for Calcaterra to call Carmickle an idiot, and Stone just a random victim of circumstance? 2) Why or why not? Continue reading →

Wanted, Desperately Needed, and Lacking: Professionals, Adults and Values in the Media

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

What? Is there something wrong?

There is not a lot to say about the graphic above, other than:

  1. It is crude.
  2. It is funny.
  3. It is intentional.
  4. It is inappropriate for a general audience newspaper
  5. A competent editor should have caught it, and
  6. The graphic artist needs a warning and a reprimand.

The media, its staff, celebrities and assorted vulgarians and boors seem to be determined to make public square America as uncivil as a locker room, as crude as a peep show, and as juvenile as a junior high school farting contest. Professionals, including USA Today editors and publishers, can either do their duty and discourage this intentional rudeness in their products and services, or shrug it away. Similarly, our culture needs to decide if we are going to just define our deviancy down some more, and accept gratuitous sexual innuendo that will gradually make the whole population into a bunch of snickering Beavises. Continue reading →