Those polled were asked, “Please tell me how you would rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in these different fields — very high, high, average, low or very low?” Continue reading
Journalism & Media
What’s Going On Here? You Tell Me…[Corrected]
This isn’t an ethics quiz. It’s not ethics commentary. This is clearly an ethics episode, but, frankly, I’m exhausted. I’m fighting some kind of flu (no, not Wu-Flu); I have a pile of half-begun and half-thought out ethics stories on a cyber-pile, and I just feel overwhelmed and depressed. So I’m just going to present this weird event from the public [NOT ‘pubic,’ as I typoed once again] school chaos, and I invite readers to explain what ethics issues they see here.
Ready?
For the latest edition of the NPR’s podcast “Planet Money”, Shale Meadows Elementary School third grade teacher Mandy Robek was scheduled to read books reading “The Sneetches” to her class as part of about the theme of economics education from in children’s books. Amanda Beeman, the assistant director of communications for the Olentangy Local School District (in Ohio) prepared for the segment by choosing books from the school’s library. The district had stipulated that politics were off limits for discussion. “Pancakes, Pancakes!” by Eric Carle; “Put Me In The Zoo” by Robert Lopshire; a poem from “Where The Sidewalk Ends” by Shel Silverstein, and “The Sneetches” by Dr. Seuss were ultimately read to the class. Well…almost.
You know “The Sneetches,” right? Published in 1961, the story is about a community of long-necked birds that all look identical except that some have stars on their bellies and some don’t. The Plain-Belly Sneetches are traeted by the rest as inferiors, so entrepreneur Sylvester McMonkey McBean sells them stars so they can aspire to be Star-Belly Sneetches.The Star-Bellied Sneetches, resenting the intrusion on their select domain, then succumb to a scheme to have them pay to remove their natural stars. Now the once- Star-Bellied Sneetches will be Plain-Belly Sneetches, and can look down on the former Plain-Belly Sneetches all over again. Meanwhile, supply and demand makes the local capitalist rich.
“I don’t know if I feel comfortable with the book being one of the ones featured,” Beeman was heard saying on the podcast during the middle of “The Sneetches” reading by the teacher. “I just feel like this isn’t teaching anything about economics, and this is a little bit more about differences with race and everything like that.” As if on cue, a third-grade student soon piped up, “It’s almost like what happened back then, how people were treated … Like, disrespected … Like, white people disrespected Black people!” Continue reading
On The Biden Administration’s Proposed Gas Stove Ban
If this doesn’t make a lot of Americans understand the conservative agenda items seeking smaller government, less powerful government agencies and reduced federal regulation, nothing will.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission is opening a period of public comments on the “dangers of gas stoves.” An estimated 40% of the public uses gas stoves. Most restaurants use gas stoves; some foreign cuisines, like Chinese varieties, depend on them. Nobody has complained noticeably about gas stoves being deadly in the 200 years they have been in use. Never mind: CPCP commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. told Bloomberg News, “This is a hidden hazard. Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”
How are gas stoves “unsafe”? The EPA and WHO say they “emit pollutants including nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and fine particulate matter” above levels deemed acceptable. The sudden rush to ban the stoves appears to have been triggered by (or was waiting around hoping to find such a claim as) a single study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Of course, the Climate Nazis have been agitating about gas stoves on the sidelines for decades, which, they say, “jump-starts childhood asthma, increases the risk of respiratory problems, and emits planet-warming gasses.” Naturally, then, the mainstream media can be expected to cheer-lead the latest government effort to use the environment as an excuse to control American lives and choices just a bit more, because they know best. The Washington Post’s climate change propagandist gave her seal of approval yesterday.
Don’t worry about the extra costs of getting those electric ovens, she assures us. After all,
…the Inflation Reduction Act, a landmark climate bill passed last year, includes cash to help low- and moderate-income households move away from their gas stoves. Starting later this year, millions of Americans could get up to $840 off the cost of an electric or induction stove.
Inflation reduction! Landmark! Hand-outs for low- and moderate-income households, as long as they spend the money on what they’re told to! National debt? What’s that? Nah, the mainstream media isn’t pimping for the Democrats! Why would anyone think that?
Oh, Fine…Now I have To Defend George Santos
It isn’t as if there aren’t more than enough legitimate accusations one can make against Rep. George Santos, the phony, lying, none-too-bright Republican from New York who somehow faked his way into Congress Nonetheless, the Republican-hating news media still has to manufacture absurd accusations against this jerk to demonize the whole party, to wit: Based on the instant captured in the photo above, we were told…
- “In a now-viral photo, Santos is shown with his fingers forming an OK gesture, a symbol that the Anti-Defamation League calls a sincere expression of white supremacy.”[Vanity Fair]
- “Embattled Republican congressman George Santos faced criticism after he appeared to flash a white supremacist symbol while casting his vote on the House floor.” [Pink News]
- “Incoming Rep. George Santos appeared to flash a widely known white supremacist hand sign on the floor of the U.S. House on Thursday evening, according to images captured by photojournalists.” [Newsday]
- “Newly elected freshman Rep. George Santos (R-NY) makes White power gesture as he casts his vote for House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy.” [Intellectualist]
- “While raising his right hand to signal his vote in support of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for House Speaker on Thursday, Santos made an “OK” hand gesture with his left hand.It’s unclear why Santos made the gesture, but some right-wing trolls have increasingly used the “OK” symbol as a way to signal support for white supremacy…” [MSN]
And so on. All completely unfair and contrived, as this video shows: Continue reading
Two Unethical Headlines…
That’s a faked headline. No such op-ed ever ran in the Times, but it nearly got me. I saw it on several conservative sites, some quite reliable, but something in my softly pinging ethics alarms warned me that I should check it out before referring to it anywhere. Sure enough: “No such article exists. A fabricated headline about bullying was made to look like it came from an opinion piece by the outlet, a spokesperson with The New York Times confirmed.” It should be plain why any regular reader of the Times would assume that headline above was real. It is no more ridiculous than any number of Times op-ed headlines. A few years ago, one Times “expert” advocated allowing children—like sixth graders—to vote. A headline from 2021 read, “Yes, kink belongs at Pride. And I want my kids to see it.” Another: “Want to Get Rid of Trump? Only Fox News Can Do It.” Here’s one: “Trump’s Nacissiam Could Cost Us Our Lives.”
Add to the many examples of Times punditry bordering on lunacy the rampant Wuhan virus phobia and hysteria promoted by the Times itself (among others), and the widespread “ends justify the means” embrace the political Left has favored of late. In this context, a Times column advocating the position that we have to bully kids in order to save them is completely plausible. Continue reading
Oh, NOW Football Is Too Violent?
Kurt Streeter, the New York Times’ uber-woke, progressive sports columnist, had the nerve to post a column this week headlined, “We’re All Complicit in the N.F.L.’s Violent Spectacle.” Uh-uh, no sir, not me, baby. I have always found pro football repulsive and barbaric, and for many years have worked here and elsewhere to ensure that the NFL is accountable for crippling and killing its players for profit, which is what it does. A single player for unknown reasons goes into cardiac arrest mid-game this week, and suddenly people are discovering what a sick, unethical sport professional football is? “My prayer, aside from seeing Hamlin leave that Cincinnati hospital able to live a fruitful, productive life, is that we never watch a single snap of an N.F.L. game the same way again,” Streeter intones. Oh Kurt, you’re so sensitive. You won’t watch it the “same way,” but you’ll keep earning money covering it, won’t you? Continue reading
Stop Making Me Defend The National Football League!
In a new low for reflex race-baiting, Daily Beast columnist Ernest Owens, a reliable progressive hysteric, accused the NFL of being racist because the league took more than an hour to suspend and postpone yesterday’s Monday Night Football game after Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed after making a tackle. Hamlin, 24, went into cardiac arrest on the field and remains hospitalized in critical condition.
“One would have thought the game would have immediately been cut short. After such a drastic shift in energy and spirit, surely the game would be called without a doubt,” Owens wrote. “It would take an hour after Hamlin was first administered CPR for the NFL to officially postpone the game after first attempting to suspend it. Yes, after all of the chaos, the league thought it was practical to have the traumatized players continue to play….It would be one thing if Monday’s incident was a rare drop of the ball from the NFL, Instead, it’s another reminder of how incompetent this multibillion-dollar institution has been to its players, who are mostly Black.”
DINGDINGDINGDINGDING! There it is! The obligatory race-baiting! Hamlin is black, so the time it took to make a decision to end and postpone a nationally televised football following his medical emergency must have been motivated by racism, even though no NFL game had ever been suspended and postponed following an injury no matter how serious. The only games that have ever been cancelled and rescheduled at all since 1930 involved player strikes, and those games had not begun. One would think that a white player’s injury had previously caused a game suspension in the past for Owens to even suspect that NFL officials took too long to make their decision because of race.
No, he’s just a shameless, race-baiting asshole. It’s as simple as that. Continue reading
The Associated Press’s Stunning Corruption [Link Fixed]
The corruption, bias, and ethical void within the mainstream media is now difficult to overstate. The latest revelation is so damning, 95% of the media isn’t reporting it, since it points to the ethics rot of one of its most esteemed members. This is the news media’s recent tactic to avoid being exposed as the lying, manipulating propaganda agents they and their partisan allies in Big Tech and social media are. Hide the facts
The Associated Press, the august and once respected newswire service, accepts donations to fund its climate coverage. In 2022, the AP received $8 million in donations to fund its climate doom reporting, with money coming from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Quadrivium, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation, all climate change alarmists. The AP isn’t alone: what it calls philanthropy-funded news is a trend, with other news sources accepting charitable funds as well. The Salt Lake Tribune, The Seattle Times and the New York Times are also accepting grants from interest groups.
Yes, non-profits are interest groups.
The $8 million over three years allows the AP to hire 20 more “climate journalists.” AP News Vice President Brian Carovillano says without giggling that the money comes “without strings attached” and asserts that funders have “no influence on the stories conducted.” He’s lying. He’s unquestionably lying: if I give a publication 8 million dollars to hire ethics specialists to report on the importance of ethics, those hires are certain to influence the publication’s content. Is there any chance the “climate journalists” will write stories about how so much climate science is speculative, politically-slanted hooey? I think not.
Ethics Quiz: The Announcer’s Suspension
North Carolina State basketball and football announcer Gary Hahn, broadcasting the NC State-Maryland Mayo Bowl game, said at one point, “down among all the illegal aliens in El Paso it’s UCLA 14 and Pittsburgh 6.” Learfield Communications suspended the Wolfpack Sports Network play-by-play announcer “indefinitely” following the game.
Various media outlets have described the statement as “offensive,” but it was unquestionably factual.
illegal immigrants are crossing the border into El Paso, Texas at a record pace. The mayor has declared a state of emergency. If it was the politically incorrect term “illegal alien” that was deemed offensive, the description is still used on some official government websites, perhaps because that’s what they are.
There is some crucial information we don’t have yet, though. Does Learfield Communications have a policy forbidding its announcers from making political comments during broadcasts? It should. There is no justification at all for sports broadcasters to bring non-sports topics, opinions and commentary into their broadcasts. I regard doing that as offensive whether I agree with the commentary or not. It is unprofessional: I don’t care what a baseball of football play-by-play announcer thinks about anything other that the game he or she is describing, and using that role to make gratuitous comments on public issues and current events is an abuse of position.
Was Hahn warned about this in the past? If this was his first offense, even if there is a policy, an indefinite suspension is unethically severe, so I won’t even bring that factor into today’s employment ethics Ethics Quiz, which is…
Can suspending Hahn for making a gratuitous reference to El Paso’s “illegal aliens” be ethically justified?
Outkick points out that Hahn might be excused for thinking that such editorializing is acceptable today based on the conduct of broadcasters like ESPN’s Mark Jones. ESPN (that’s Disney!) seems to encourage Jones, who routinely injects his extreme, woke, biased opinions into his basketball game coverage, constantly slamming Donald Trump, denigrating conservatives, even at one point making the false claim that Jacob Blake was unarmed to jibe with Black Lives Matter propaganda. The problem with that excuse for Hahn is 1) ESPN has clearly given Jones, at least, a green light to be unprofessional 2) Jones is black, and as we have seen elsewhere (CNN’s Don Lemon), there are different standards of professionalism for some black broadcast journalists. 3)Making gratuitous statements that offend conservatives is okay; offending progressives, even with facts, is currently far more risky.
My quiz answer: Absent a written policy, Hahn should have been warned and nothing more. If he violated a policy, a brief suspension would send a valid message.
I, however, am not broadcasting football or basketball game. They are illegal aliens (or illegal immigrants), not “migrants” or the other euphemisms and cover phrases, and that’s what they should be called, so the public understands the issue.
David Brooks, A Trump Derangement And “Bias Makes You Stupid” Case Study
New York Times opinion columnist David Brooks should have that famous epitaph tattooed on his forehead.
He was once an independent, erudite, interesting essayist of conservative leanings. Then he accepted big bucks to be the New York Times’ token conservative pundit. Soon, after forced contact with Charles Blow, Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman, the Times version on the Stockholm Syndrome took over shortly before the election of Donald Trump, whom, to be fair, the tweedy and classist Brooks surely would have regarded as icky even before his re-education by the Times. Today’s model of David Brooks is incapable of objective analysis, He serves a neon-bright cautionary tale of what happens when bias eats away at one’s analytical abilities and credibility.
Take his latest column…please.
It is called “The Sad Tales of George Santos,” but it quickly devolves into one more gratuitous attack on Donald Trump. What it most reveals, however, is how far David Brooks has fallen.
Halfway through this mess, Brooks writes, after stating the obvious about Rep.-elect George Santos,
Ethics Alarms 