I fear that I am becoming a broken record on this (Note to those under the age of 40: the phrase “becoming a broken record” refers to the archaic devices called “records” which once were used to convey music via another archaic device know as a “phonograph.” If a record was broken, as in cracked, the phonograph’s needle, which…oh, never mind. We really need a new phrase for “saying the same thing over and over again.”), but the popular position that only the pure and blameless have the right to condemn misconduct by others threatens our culture’s ability to discuss and distinguish right and wrong. It has to be refuted, discredited, and buried. For subliminal support for this unethical stance to be injected into a supposedly straight news item—in the sports pages, of all places—is alarming, for it shows how our cultural attitudes can be warped without our even being aware of it. Continue reading
Journalism & Media
Final Ethics Alarms on the Coakley-Brown Race: Fairness and Honesty Take a Holiday
Some concluding Ethics Alarms from the Brown-Coakley Senate race, many with the same dispiriting lesson: hyper-partisan zealotry is causing many Americans to abandon their senses of fairness, proportion, and common sense : Continue reading
Ed Schultz Shows How to Be Wildly Unethical in Fifty Words Or Less
The pattern is distressingly clear now. Fox News finds an arrogant, doctrinaire talking head on the Right, Bill O’Reilly, and soon its Left-tilted rival, MSNBC, has recruited an even more arrogant, doctrinaire talking head on that side of the spectrum, the assaultive Keith Olbermann. O’Reilly uncivilly calls those he disagrees with “pin-heads,” while Olberman calls them “the Worst Person in the World.” This motivates Fox to find a commentator on the Right who makes O’Reilly seem modest and measured, Glenn Beck. This, naturally, pushed MSNBC to look under every rock to find a liberal host who can out-Beck Beck.
The bad news: they succeeded, and found Ed Schultz, who is louder, cruder, more uncivil and less fair than any of the above-mentioned blowhards. The worse news: if you out Beck Beck, no responsible station should put you on the air. Continue reading
Ethics Quote of the Week
“Loyalty is being outbid. There’s no money in political loyalty, but there’s money in being disloyal.”
—Former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey, quoted in the New York Times regarding the anonymous revelations of political aides included in “Game Change,” the gossipy back-story of the 2008 election by Mark Halperin and John Heilermann. The book has already plunged Sen. Harry Reid in political hot water.
Former aides and political appointees who embarrass their previous bosses with the content of conversations made under conditions presumed confidentiality and trust have no ethical defenses, unless they are divulging confidences to report or prevent criminal activity. For them to do so anonymously and without being personally accountable for the revelations adds cowardice to the breaches of loyalty, trust and confidentiality.
Was Brit Hume Unethical?
I’ve been thinking about Brit Hume’s controversial remarks on Fox News about Tiger Woods for two weeks now, trying to identify what was wrong with them. Not whether I agreed with them, or whether I would have said something similar myself, but what was wrong with them: did his comments suggesting a Christian path for the troubled golfer constitute a breach of professional ethics, or ethics generally? Continue reading
Obamacare Ethics: Prof. Gruber’s Conflict and Democratic Deceit
Professor John Gruber, meet Armstrong Williams. Obama Democrats, meet the Bush Republicans. The names and faces may change, but the unethical tricks remain the same. Continue reading
On Hoaxes, Avatar, and More Late Night Ethics
Hoax Update
- Singer, model, television personality and inexplicable celebrity Tia Tequila announced in December that she was engaged to the heiress to the Johnson and Johnson fortune, Casey Johnson. The troubled Johnson turned up dead in squalid circumstances in January, prompting a grief-stricken online statement from Tia in which she spelled her beloved’s name wrong. Shortly after this, it was revealed that the engagement was a publicity stunt by Tequila, who barely knew Johnson. Fake romances for publicity purposes are as old as the Tudors, but this sort of thing further trivializes truth for an entire generation. Continue reading
Mark McGwire’s Steroid Confession, Part 2: Neyer and the Rationalizations
The worst thing about Mark McGwire’s belated confession is that I once again have to listen to and read the absurd, hackneyed, illogical and ethically obtuse arguments for ignoring his conduct. Like… Continue reading
Mark McGwire’s Steroid Confession, Part 1
Former slugging first baseman Mark McGwire finally admitted yesterday that he indeed was a steroid-user while playing. Telling the truth, even, as in McGwire’s case, when it is done too late and in a self-serving manner, is a good thing. Nevertheless, his admission should have no bearing at all on the judgment of him as unworthy of post-career honors. McGwire cheated, and his use of steroids damaged his fellow players and the game. Nothing he said changes any of that. Continue reading
The Ethics of Voluntary Mortgage Default
Friend and reader Loren Platzman alerted me to the article, “Walk Away From Your Mortgage!” in the Sunday Times Magazine ( the magazine was, in fact, sitting unopened by my desk at the time. Some days, I just know that reading Randy Cohen’s “The Ethicist” column is going to ruin my weekend.) The thrust of the article, an installment in the “The Way We Live Now” series, is that American cultural tradition has reinforced the belief that there is something unethical and shameful about voluntarily letting the bank foreclose on a property when falling property values have placed the mortgage “under water,” meaning that the home is worth less than the amount still owed on it. Continue reading
