Journalism & Media

Comment of the Day on “Girl Talk and Bigotry Ethics…”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

We had it coming, apparently...

This comment, from new visitor Linda, exemplifies the kind of thinking that too many Americans believe pass for “ethics.”  In response to my post about a Christiane Amanpour-led  panel on her Sunday morning public issues show that celebrated male-bashing and gender bias, Linda’s response is essentially…

1. You “men” have done worse to us.

2. We have the right to get even.

3. You can dish it out but you can’t take it.

4. We have the right to be bigots too.

Indeed women do have the right to be bigots, but journalists like Amanpour abuse their own First Amendment rights when they use the freedom of the press to advance naked bigotry, and women like her panelists disgrace their own principles when they move from seeking fair and equal treatment for themselves to asserting superiority and advocating gender bias. Continue reading →

Girl Talk and Bigotry Ethics: Celebrating One-Way Gender Bias on ABC

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Christiane Amanpour just led a jaw-dropping roundtable discussion on her ABC Sunday morning talk show, “This Week with Christiane Amanpour,”as three female guest commentators ( Torie Clarke, the former assistant secretary of defense for public affairs in the Bush administration: Cecilia Attias, the former first lady of France and founder of Cecilia Attias Foundation for Women, and ABC’s Claire Shipman)
and Christiane discussed how the convergence of  Former IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s attempted rape charges and Rep. Anthony Weiner’s travails has created a possible tipping point, in which the nation will finally come to the realization of a fact that these women have known all along: women are just plain better than men when it comes to leadership, management, decision-making, and conflict resolution.

The sweeping generalities, stereotyping, and flat pronouncements of male inferiority were unrestrained. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz For Rep. Weiner Defenders: Would You Still Think He Shouldn’t Resign If He Did THIS?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Just add his daughter's head, and you have Rep. Gerber's fantasy date.

The Sixth District Court of Appeal in San Jose just ruled that Joseph Gerber, a California man who used his computer to create sexually explicit photos by pasting images of his 13-year-old daughter’s head onto the fully mature, naked bodies of porn performers in lewd poses, was wrongly convicted of possessing child pornography. After all, the pictures didn’t show minors engaging in sex acts, just fully legal adults with his daughter’s head, which apparently really turned Dad on.

The decision is unquestionably correct from a legal standpoint: no children were harmed to create the photos, and they did not depict child porn of any kind, except in Mr. Gerber’s fatherly mind.

Thus the Ethics Alarms question for Alec Baldwin and the reported 56% of New Yorkers who say that sexting, lying Representative Anthony Weiner should not resign his position because of his personal habit of sending smiling photos of his penis and other body parts to porn actresses, scheduling skype phone sex while his pregnant wife is away, and other similar activities, lying it all the while until lies became impossible: Continue reading →

Dan Savage’s Curse on Rick Santorum: Funny! But Wrong.

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Former Senator Rick "Frothy Mix"

Rick Santorum, the former GOP senator and stalwart of social conservatives, recently announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Santorum’s chances of becoming president are somewhere between Newt Gingrich’s White House prospects and an ice swan’s odds of being a centerpiece in Hell, but they aren’t helped any by the results of a devastating prank inflicted on his image by syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage.  When you Google “Santorum,” the first result listed is this:

Santorum 1. The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. 2. Senator Rick Santorum. Continue reading →

To Jon Stewart, Ethics Hero: I’m Sorry I Doubted You.

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Impossible conflict of interest? No problem!

I’m also glad that I waited before posting my article labeling Stewart, the much-revered cultural force who chairs Comedy Central’s satirical news hour, “The Daily Show,” an Ethics Dunce for wimping out in his initial tepid take on the Rep. Weiner scandal.

Stewart is a good friend of the sexting, lying New York Congressman, and for most comedians, leaving a high-profile friend in trouble off of their comic hit-list would not only be acceptable, but admirable. A comedian only has the obligation to be funny, and if he  chooses to be funny without slicing up a close friend in crisis, that just makes him a kind and loyal friend. Stewart, however, can no longer claim to be just a comedian. He has built a reputation as a truth-teller, leaning to the left, perhaps, but still willing to skewer idiocy, corruption, hypocrisy and dishonesty whenever and wherever they surface in current events. This means he is trusted, and that he has a duty to make  his audience laugh while displaying integrity, fairness, wisdom and good judgment. It’s a high standards to meet, but it is also the one Stewart set for himself by reaching it again and again. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Melanie Sloan, Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The fact that David Vitter is still stinking up the Senate means that it makes sense to let Anthony Weiner stick around and stink up the House. Yes, that's really the best the Democrats can come up with.

“It’s hard to see what the Ethics Committee would hang its hat on here to say that this conduct would violate the ethics rules. Others have said maybe it’s the lying. What! So no politician has ever lied to us before? That’s the kind of thing we see all the time. So he did behave discreditably (!!) but I don’t think it’s enough for a full-fledged ethics censure. David Vitter is still there.”

—-Melanie Sloan, Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, making excuses for Rep. Anthony Weiner on Lawrence O’Donnell’s MSNBC liberal love-in show.

As“Ethics Bob” writes, “If you’re a Democrat and you want an ethics pass, go see Melanie Sloan.”  Bob muses on what kind of behavior Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington “would consider irresponsible or unethical.”

It sure wouldn’t be Sloan’s own conduct, though she infamously used CREW to promote the client of a lobbying firm that she later jumped CREW to join (also conduct that is seen in D.C. “all the time,’ though not usually by heads of so-called ethics watchdog groups).* The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics does some good work, but it has always leaned heavily toward criticizing Republicans. Sloan’s statement to O’Donnell, however, is a new low, a disgrace for anyone who purports to take ethics seriously. Continue reading →

The News Media’s Unethical Political Word Games

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Reasonable people can disagree about the prudence and fairness of the various get-tough state and local laws targeting illegal immigrants, such as the recent law passed in Alabama (I like it, by the way). They can even disagree—though I personally don’t see how—about the wisdom of state-sanctioned incentives for illegals to smuggle their children into the country, like Maryland’s batty “Dream Act.”

What reasonable people should not accept and must not accept is the increasingly routine practice among many news outlets of dropping “illegal” from the phrase “illegal immigration” and “illegal immigrants” when discussing such measures. The practice is no less than a lie, an effort to misrepresent as bigotry legitimate objections to providing the benefits of American citizenship to those who willfully violate U.S. immigration laws and procedures. The papers, reporters, columnists and bloggers who do this inevitably follow the misrepresentation by denigrating anyone who doesn’t think scofflaws should be celebrated as heroes and handed the keys to the country as “nativists.”

I resent it, because my maternal grandparents were immigrants, the legal kind, and I would no more oppose the progress and success of law-abiding immigrants in the country than I would saw off my arm. I condemn it, because the tactic—and it is a tactic— is unethical journalism, an example of intentionally muddying an issue by imprecision so that the apathetic, the lazy or the none-too-bright—a sizable group, that—are confused about what is the real issue. Continue reading →

Chicago Flash Mobs, Political Correctness, and the Arrogant Press

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

What kind of people made up the mob? You don't want to know.

Chicago has been beset by several incidents of “flash mobs” that were of not the terpsichorean variety, but rather cell phone-organized marauders who struck suddenly, beating bystanders and robbing them. The Chicago media has adopted an odd policy in reporting the incidents: it has not reported the fact that the mobs were made up of African-American youths.

There is no excuse for this. It is manipulative, dishonest, and incompetent journalism, political correctness expanding into news censorship. It constitutes dishonest reporting, and a lack of respect for the public.  It is the ultimate in arrogance and abuse of their professional duties by people who have neither the credentials nor the right to decide what facts we are fit to know.

A Chicago Tribune writer named Mary Schmick attempted to justify her paper’s conduct, and was spectacularly unconvincing, writing in part… Continue reading →

Those Military Baggage Fees: Bad Journalism and Bad PR, Not Bad Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

The 24 hour news cycle and blogger feeding frenzy often produce snap ethical judgments that defy the facts, logic, and fairness. Today’s example: the supposed “outrage” of Delta Air Lines making Army reservists returning from combat in Afghanistan pay excess-bag fees. A Colorado soldier posted a YouTube video complaining that their unit had to pay $2,800 for extra checked bags, and you would have thought the airlines made the soldiers fly while strapped to the wing. “You’re not going to believe this!” said “Fox and Friends” goof Steve Doocy, introdoocying the story as if it was an act of domestic terrorism. There were similar expressions of horror on CNN’s Headline News and on the local news in Wilmington, Delaware, where I was staying yesterday while doing a musical ethics program for the Wilmington Bar. And yet…

Delta did nothing wrong or inappropriate.

The staff followed policy. What were they supposed to do, spontaneously waive thousands of dollars in luggage fees out of respect for our soldiers…and have to make it up out of their own pay? The military already gets a substantial break on checked baggage; the soldiers were complaining about having to pay for bags that exceeded Delta’s limit for waiving the fees on soldiers’ bags. But if the flights are related to the soldiers’ duties, why are the domestic airlines responsible for paying their expenses? (By the way, what the soldiers don’t pay for gets passed in costs to the non-military passengers.) Simple answer: the domestic airlines are not responsible, and should not be.

When I travel on business dictated by a client or employer, the client or employer pays my costs…just like the U.S. Government pays the travel expenses of soldiers flying to and from deployments. That’s right: soldiers get reimbursements from the military for additional costs if their orders require the expense and they submit receipts. Why, then, was it Delta’s responsibility to pick up the tab for these soldiers’ extra bags, and proof of evil corporate America’s unpatriotic greed that they asked the soldiers for the already-discounted fees for excess luggage instead?

I repeat: It wasn’t. A couple of soldiers didn’t know their own expense reimbursement procedures, used YouTube to make a misrepresentation go viral, and the media indulges its reflex reaction to fault businesses and fall worshiping at the boots of our young warriors. Nobody bothered to think, much less check facts, before condemning the Delta. Terrified, as ever, of any negative publicity, deserved or not, Delta abjectly apologized (for doing nothing wrong), and was followed by other carriers in eliminating bag fees to avoid getting the stink-eye from Bill O’Reilly. Delta said it would allow four bags for free. United said it had increased the number of free military checked bags from three to four. American said it will allow five free bags instead of three for military personnel. This is nice enough, of course, but it is pure public relations nonsense.

These airlines will charge seniors traveling by necessity to an assisted living complex for every bag they check, and the military isn’t going to pay their expenses once they gut the receipts. Do the airlines let military veterans check their bags for free?  Priests and nuns, who have taken vows of poverty? Handicapped travelers, who are unable to carry on heavy bags? The disabled only get two free bags, at best, before they are charged 50 bucks per additional piece. How about pregnant women? The unemployed, relocating to a new city to look for jobs…any breaks for ? Ethically, there are much more compelling arguments for giving breaks to any of these flyers than active duty soldiers, who are going to be reimbursed by the military anyway, and should be.

I am not sure even that would be appropriate, however. I don’t think that the airlines should be in the business of charging different fees to travelers in different circumstances; it requires value judgments that I do not trust the airlines to make fairly or rationally. Next we’ll be seeing waived bag fees for registered Republicans, attractive blondes and vegans, or whoever screams the loudest or has the most vocal lobby. The proper, ethical and fair way to do business is to have the same rules for everyone.

Except Steve Doocy and the rest of the media. Charge them double.

The Strange, Unethical Saga of Junius Puke

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Junius Puke

This week seems to mark the end of a perfect storm of ethical misconduct that almost drowned a young student in legal persecution for the non-crime of exercising his First Amendment rights. An insufferable and humorless bully with a professorship collided with an irresponsible prosecutor wielding an unconstitutional law, and it has taken eight years to undo the carnage.

A man named Junius Peake was an economics professor at the University of Northern Colorado,  who due to his parody-inviting name and undoubtedly also the character traits that he was soon to display so prominently, found himself being lampooned in a student satire blog called “The Howling Pig.”  The editor-in-chief of the blog was facetiously identified in the newsletter as the obviously fictional “Junius Puke,” who was portrayed with an outrageous photograph of Professor Peake altered to include sunglasses, a different nose,  a Hitler-esque mustache, and, on occasion, Kiss make-up and a Gene Simmons tongue.  Junius Puke, with tongue. “Junius Puke” wrote prose like this:

“This will be a regular bitch sheet that will speak truth to power, obscenities to clergy, and advice to all the stoners sitting around watching Scooby Doo. This will be a forum for the pissed off and disenfranchised in Northern Colorado, basically everybody. I made it to where I am through hard work, luck, and connections, all without a college degree. Dissatisfaction with a cushy do-nothing ornamental position led me to form this subversive little paper. I don’t normally care much about the question of daycare since my kids are grown and other people’s children give me the willies.” Continue reading →