Professions

Ethics Blindness: Why Is The Media Minimizing the Etheridge Assault?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The Bob Etheridge street mugging story seems poised to join the coverage of Van Jones and ACORN as another depressing example of the mainstream media’s abandonment of objectivity, responsibility and ethical priorities.

Today, the day after a video surfaced showing North Carolina Congressman Bob Etheridge grabbing, restraining, and wrapping his hand around the neck of a young man who dared to ask him a question on a Washington D.C. sidewalk, “The Daily Beast’s” #4 story was the revelation that former Ebay CEO and current G.O.P. candidate for governor of California once shoved an Ebay subordinate in a moment of anger and paid six figures in damages. The story about a sitting U.S. Congressman assaulting a U.S. citizen without provocation on a public street doesn’t appear anywhere in the liberal-leaning news aggregation site’s news summary. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: North Carolina Rep. Bob Etheridge

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

This video is remarkable and disturbing.

Rep. Bob Etheridge, (D-N.C.) was walking down a Washington street when he was approached by a student holding a cell phone camera. The young man asked the Congressman about his views on President Obama’s agenda. Etheridge angrily demanded to know who the student was, tried to snatch the phone, and then assaulted and battered him. Continue reading →

The Ethics of Helen Thomas Awards

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

When does an honor start honoring the wrong values? This tricky ethical problem is now in the spotlight thanks to the sudden self-destruction of Helen Thomas, who blurted anti-Semitic sentiments to a Rabbi, on camera, in an impromptu interview.

There are journalism awards named after Thomas, including The Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement given by the Society for Professional Journalism. Now that Thomas has included among her life time achievements a demand that the Jews “get the hell out of Israel” and go back to Germany and Poland—you know: “where they belong,” what does her name on the award mean to future recipients? Is accepting it a tacit endorsement of her views? Or should individuals be assessed on the totality of their careers, and not solely identified with their inevitable missteps. no matter how reprehensible? The latter was a common theme of eulogizers at President Richard Nixon’s funeral. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: South Carolina Democrats, Voters and News Media

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Mystery man Alvin Greene upset a respectable, accomplished and well-known opponent in the Democratic primary that decided who would try to unseat South Carolina G.O.P. Senator Jim DeMint in November. Even before the vote, it was widely reported that Greene was unemployed, with no political experience. After the vote and the stunning results, it came to light that in 2009, the victorious Democratic Senatorial nominee asked a young college girl to look at some pornography he had downloaded, leading to an obscenity charge that is still pending. Embarrassed, chagrined and confused by the fact that their standard-bearer appears to be a goof or worse, Democrats are accusing everyone in sight, especially Greene and Republicans, convinced that there must have been a plot, a scam, anything to explain what happened without focusing blame where it belongs: on the Democratic candidates who couldn’t defeat Greene, and the South Carolina voters who elected him. Continue reading →

The Ethical Significance of Pete Rose’s Corked Bat

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

To cut to the chase: there is now irrefutable evidence that Pete Rose, Major League Baseball’s all-time hit leader who is currently banned from the game for betting on baseball, used a corked bat. How often he used it, how many other bats were similarly doctored, and what results he got from the illegal bat (s) are all unknown, and probably unknowable. The long, interesting and well-researched article about Rose’s bat on the website “Deadspin” points out that:

  • Corked bats (which have been doctored with a hollow chamber that is filled with cork, on the theory that it lightens the bat without sacrificing power) are forbidden by the rules of baseball, and their use constitutes cheating.
  • Their use is almost impossible to detect; only a handful of players have ever been caught using one, but it is believed that the cheaters are many and notable. Amos Otis, a star for the Kansas City Royals, admitted after he retired that his bats were corked for the majority of his career. Norm Cash, who won a shocking batting championship in 1961 with an average far above any he posted before or after, attributed his career year to a corked bat.
  • It is quite possible that corked bats don’t have any positive effect at all, and might even be worse than regular bats.

The last point cuts no ice with me. Continue reading →

Debrahlee Lorenzana, Looks, the Workplace, and Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

The Debrahlee Lorenzana controversy raises important ethical issues, even though we may yet discover that it was wholly manufactured by Debrahlee.  Right now, this ethics train wreck in progress is a classic “employer said/ ex-employee said” dispute in which all the facts have yet to be sorted out.  Lorenzana, the former employee, alleges that she was terminated by Citibank for being so va-va-voom! attractive that she distracted her otherwise staid bank coworkers and supervisors. Citibank, the employer, has told the media that “Ms. Lorenzana has chosen to make numerous unfounded accusations and inaccurate statements against Citibank and several of our employees.  While we will not discuss the details of her case, we can say that her termination was solely performance-based and not at all related to her appearance or attire.  We are confident that when all of the facts and documentation are presented, the claim will be dismissed.”

The timing of her lawsuit certainly seems too good to be accidental.  Stanford Professor Deborah Rohde’s recently published book, The Beauty Bias, argues that attractiveness is such a powerful factor in hiring that the nation may need tough new laws to combat “lookism.” Just as the bloggers and op-ed writers were starting to argue about whether we need yet another protected class of Americans and, perhaps, quotas of ugly people in the workplace, here comes a victimized beauty claiming that discrimination cuts both ways. As John Travolta’s character says in “Face-Off,” “What a coinkydink!” Continue reading →

Helen Thomas, Bias, and the Demon Pazuzu

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Let me be clear: there is nothing wrong with superannuated newswoman Helen Thomas believing that the Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and return to Germany and Poland. An if she believes it, there is nothing wrong with her saying so, as she did to a questioning rabbi. It’s good to know. Since we now know her biases on the matter, we can better assess her credibility when she writes about Middle East politics.  As Joe Gandleman writes on “The Moderate Voice:

“Just saying “Go back to where you come from” is the same as the misguided, empty-headed Americans who shout “Go back to Africa” to blacks or “Go back to Mexico” to American born Latinos when they know they are American born Latinos. It shows her so hopelessly biased and lacking realistic perspective that stories written by her beg to be skipped over…. on the Middle East story, how can anyone think that when she asks questions she is seeking information to flesh out a story (unless it was a special on airfares so Jews can fly out of Israel)?”

As I said: good to know. What is wrong and dishonest, however, is Thomas’s “apology” after it began to sink in that her candidly expressed and crude bias could be a career-ender. So, emulating that eminent anti-Semite, Mel Gibson, Helen released this: Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Detroit Pitcher Armando Galarraga

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

When Umpire Jim Joyce apologized to Detroit pitcher Armando Galarraga, the man whose perfect game he destroyed with an erroneous “safe” call on what should have been the 27th and final out, he gave him a hug and graciously accepted it without rancor. In interviews, Galarraga has said, “What else could I do?” A great many of his colleagues would have had some alternatives, and they would have not been pleasant. Galarraga is handling his disappointment, frustration and bad luck with superb grace and kindness, in the best tradition of the Golden Rule.

“Nobody’s perfect,” he told ESPN, accepting Joyce’s mistake as human and not malicious. But Armando Galarraga was perfect, both on the mound in Detroit, and in his noble response to misfortune.

Ethics Pop Quiz: “What’s Unethical About Auctioning Intern Positions?”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Are you ready to exercise those ethics brain cells?

The News Alert blog is reporting that the Huffington Post auctioned off an intern position for $9000, and another  internship —three weeks of it with Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways, and three weeks with hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons — was auctioned off for $85,000, to benefit Simmons’s charity, Rush Philanthropic.

Question: Is there anything unethical about this, and if so, what?

[Play the “Final Jeopardy Theme” while you think this over…] Continue reading →