The Internet

The Washington Post Surrenders To Web Hoaxes

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

oreo

The Washington Post’s two year old column dedicated to flagging web hoaxes is shutting down, because…well, you read the story and explain it to me, because I read the column twice, and I still don’t get it.

I think Caitlyn Dewey, whose beat this was, is complaining that there are too many hoaxes to track now, because there are now whole websites devoted to hoaxes (as Ethics Alarms has documented), that hoaxes are fed by confirmation bias (well, yes, everyone knew THAT in 2014) and partisan bloggers are sending out hoaxes as fear-mongering tactics. Dewey then mentions two terrorism-related hoaxes. In fact, every example she uses suggests that the increase in hoaxes comes from conservatives. It’s all because conservatives are so eager to believe untrue things, you see. She can’t keep up any more.

Which is funny, because it was Hillary Clinton who stated…

“We also need to make sure that the really discriminatory messages that Trump is sending around the world don’t fall on receptive ears. He is becoming ISIS’s best recruiter. They are going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.”

There is no evidence whatsoever that ISIS is using videos of Trump. If a fake news site had a headline, “ISIS USES VIDEOS OF TRUMP FOR RECRUITMENT,” that would be an internet hoax, and though Hillary Clinton would apparently fall for it, Dewey claims what has suddenly made internet hoaxes uncoverable is all those gullible people who no longer trust “institutions,” as in “government.” You know who those people are.

Then there are Dewey’s colleagues, journalists, like the ones at CNN who broadcast that “Ethan Couch’s attorney convinced the judge that the teen suffered from “‘Afflienza,” which is factually untrue. If that were a headline, I’d call it a hoax. Continue reading →

Unethical Meme Of The Week: Democratic Underground

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Meme

I know I could batter internet memes all day, but this one, by the Democratic Underground, particularly annoys me, as has the “chicken hawk” canard that knee-jerk anti-war activists have been wielding for decades.

To begin with, it’s an ad hominem argument, and thus unethical on its face. The question is whether a military option is the best and most responsible solution to an international problem, not who is asserting that it is. It is also an incompetent argument, as in stupid. There  is nothing about typical military experience that conveys expertise in foreign affairs or international politics. Military service, as in training, marching, being deployed and shooting a gun, and military action, as a strategic tool of diplomacy and international politics, are two different things. Lincoln was a superb Commander in Chief, but he didn’t gain that ability from his brief combat experience fighting Black Hawk Indians.

In fact, what is  the statement above supposed to imply? No Commander in Chief has had to risk personal combat if he chose war. Because there has been no draft since the the Nineties, the only way a political leader would ever have military experience would be if he chose a military career, which would mean that the meme suggests that a military career is a prerequisite for national leadership. But Democrats don’t believe that; nobody believes that. In fact, Democrats are wary and suspicious of the military, which they believe, with some justification,  is biased toward military involvement. They don’t even especially respect military service: look at how James Webb was treated in his brief presidential run. Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes: The Community of Middlesborough, England.

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

COX_funeral_3524163b

Thomas Cox, a British World War Two vet who served in the Royal Pioneer Corps, died at the age of 90 with no known surviving relatives.

Hoping to give Cox the final salute he deserved, the Royal Pioneer Corps Association  posted an appeal on its Facebook page asking for people to attend his funeral. The plea was shared among veteran groups, military groups and others, and when the day came, hundreds of strangers to Cox were on hand to say farewell and thanks to the old soldier. Many of the mourners at the service in Middelborough, Teaside sent flowers and wreaths as well.

They didn’t do this for the family, for there was none, and Cox was beyond caring. They came out of respect for a generation, a pivotal moment in human history, and to assert that we are all part of a larger family, though we usually don’t behave that way.

There’s not a lot more to say, is there?

Mission accomplished.

Unethical Website Of The Month: The Daily Beast

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Broken Glass

On the Daily Beast’s “Cheat Sheet,” a list of short summaries of breaking news stories with links to other sources, the feature’s editor appends, above the headline, a brief comment, reaction or description. “Arson Suspected in CA. Mosque Fire” is under the Daily Beast’s “HORRIBLE.” “BUSTED” is the lead-in to “Ex-NY Senate Leader Guilty of Corruption.”

And the heading over “Anonymous: We Hacked a Trump Website”?

“WELL DONE”

WELL DONE!

Hold opinions that the almighty Daily Beast, in its infinite, Hillary Clinton-worshiping, Barack Obama-excusing wisdom thinks is unacceptable, and you deserve to be the victim of a crime, and The Daily Beast will salute the criminal. That’ll teach you, and others like you….anyone whose opinion doesn’t sufficiently conform to progressive cant, apparently…to toe the line.

WELL DONE.

What utter, low, despicable hypocrisy by the Daily Beast, which has joined the rest of the liberal echo chamber in comparing Trump to various Nazis, as they endorse the political tactics of Kristallnacht, destroying property to reflect official contempt and disapproval. Anonymous is a criminal group, and hacking a business website is a criminal act, the cyber-equivilent of breakiung windows and vandalizing store fronts.

WELL DONE?

Check this blog under “Donald Trump.” Nobody has expressed more contempt for the man than I, beginning years ago. He has not broken laws, however, and his offensive positions are well within constitutional limits.  Donald Trump, moreover, doesn’t hide behind fake names and masks, while Anonymous, in contrast, is a bunch of cowardly, lawless, arrogant thugs. It isn’t Donald Trump but The Daily Beast who is applauding a criminal response to mere political speech, and in doing so adopting the ethics of the Brown Shirts.

WELL DONE.

Now we know.

Unethical Quote Of The Month: Co-chair of the Colorado Springs American Civil Liberties Union Loring Wirbel

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“The thing is, we have to really reach out to those who might consider voting for Trump and say, ‘This is Goebbels. This is the final solution. If you are voting for him I will have to shoot you before election day.’ They’re not going to listen to reason, so when justice is gone, there’s always force, as Laurie would say.”

—Loring Wirbel, Co-Chair of the Colorado Springs American Civil Liberties Union, in a Facebook post.

As the post was circulated and criticism of Wirbel grew, he told the local paper that he was just joshin’.

Well, yes, I’d assume he wasn’t really going to start shooting Trump supporters. On the other hand, the ACLU is supposed to stand for freedom of expression, and an organization executive appearing to advocate violence to stifle unpopular political views is more than a little irresponsible. So is casually joking about shooting people in Colorado Springs.

What? Too soon?

“It was intended totally as a joke,” Wirbel said. “They are taking that stuff out of context. It’s smear politics.” No, actually it’s called “embarrassing your organization and calling its credibility into question.” He resigned today.

Good.

One does have to wonder, however, how thick the progressive bias and hatred for conservatives is in the ACLU’s culture, how it affects the organization’s judgment, and whether an organization led by people like Wirbel is really the best guardian of the First Amendment.

UPDATE: More on Wirbel, including some mind-blowing quotes, and the ACLU’s statement, here.

More Hoax Site Web Pollution

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
Not funny, jerks.

Not funny, jerks.

Conservative sites are mocking the New York Times for linking to a hoax site story about California instituting a ban on the future sale and ownership of all .45 ACP ammo. The link was included in an editorial calling for states to be more aggressive in banning types of weapons, magazines  and ammunition. “Ammunition” linked to the fake story on a site called “The National Report.” That particular story is neither particularly satiric, not is it funny; it’s just a lie. But I’m sure the staff is really proud of themselves, fooling the Times (though as Glenn Reynolds pointed out on Instapundit, the Times itself is looking more and more like a hoax  itself).

Admittedly, having never used The National Report before, whoever found the link should have vetted it. If they just scrolled down a bit from the story the Times used, they would have seen such obvious fake headlines as “Good Cop Will Speak Up Once He’s Witnessed His 15th Unlawful Killing,” “Koko the Gorilla Just Endorsed Donald Trump for President,” and “Starbucks Reveals Plans To Open New Chain Of Gun-friendly Cafés.” Or maybe they believed those too.

I’m not going to mock the Times: these hoax sites are all unethical unless they make their satirical status clear to all readers, on the home page, up front, unmistakably. The ethical objective is humor; the objective of fooling readers and hopefully legitimate news sources is neither funny, nor ethical.

Conservative sites that cheer such deceptions because they have ill will toward the liberal media victims are simply encouraging and enabling the unethical conduct.

Anonymous Illustrates An Important Ethics Lesson: Unethical Jerks Do Not Become More Ethical Because They Find Someone More Unethical To Oppose

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Anon

Anonymous, the  juvenile, arrogant and criminal ” hactivist collective” of self-glorifying anarchists, has finally identified a group undeniably more despicable than it is: ISIS. On the flawed theory that annoying the enemy of their enemies will be sufficient to make those enemies think the Anonymous vandals aren’t the destructive jerks they have proven themselves to be, the activist hackers are calling on the rest of us to follow their lead by making December 11 “ISIS Trolling Day.”  This will be a day, declares Anonymous, for Americans to mock ISIS with memes and disrespectful pictures of dead members of the terror group, to use the hashtags #Daesh and #Daeshbags while posting images of goats to with captions referring to the goats as ISIS members’ wives,

What a mature, clever plan. This may be even more effective in countering terrorism than this… Continue reading →

And Here’s Yet Another Unethical Use For Facebook…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

shaming

Senga Services, a Canadian cable company, recently web-shamed some of its  customers who were behind in their cable fees by listing their names and amount owed on Facebook. Of course, “it wasn’t the worst thing”—the company could have put up wanted posters

Naturally, the company had an excuse: Rationalization 2A, Sicilian Ethics.* “We always got excuses from everybody,” a rep for Senga told the CBC about the decision to publicly humiliate customers. “Promissory notes and everything, and it never arrives. So we found the most effective way is to publicly post the names.”

Effective, maybe. Ethical, never. Employing the threat of using humiliation to extract funds is indistinguishable from extortion. Yes, lawyers do it all the time, and mostly get away with it. It’s still wrong. It is particularly wrong when consumers have reason to believe that they are dealing with a business entity that respects their privacy and understands that their dealings, amicable or not, are not to be shared with the public. This is a dirty tactic, and in the U.S., an illegal one.  Section 551(c) of the Cable Communications Policy Act specifically prohibits cable companies from disclosing “personally identifiable information concerning any subscriber without the prior written or electronic consent of the subscriber concerned.” The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada maintains that Canadian law only “allows organizations to use or disclose people’s personal information only for the purpose for which they gave consent,” meaning that there ” is also an over-arching clause that personal information may only be collected, used and disclosed for purposes that a reasonable person would consider appropriate under the circumstances.” Senga, not knowing ethics from a tree frog, feels that public shaming for amounts as small as a hundred dollars is appropriate. Nonetheless, Senga agreed to pull the shaming posts.

Ban them from cable service, take them to court, work out a payment plan, charge interest…all of that is fair and reasonable. Using private information as a reputation-wrecking weapon, however, isn’t.

I think the debts of every Senga customer who the company treated this way should be cancelled.

 

*Note of Rationalization List change: Rationalization #2 was always two rationalizations in one. I finally split out the two, with the main rationalization re-named “Ethics Estoppel,” for the theory that Party A’s unethical conduct makes him unworthy of ethical conduct from Party B. The sub-rationalization, “Sicilian Ethics,” is just an excuse for revenge.

___________________

Pointer: Alexander Cheezem

Facts: Consumerist

Dishonest Headline and Story Of The Month: Breitbart And Reporter John Nolte

/ Jack Marshall / 65 Comments
"Trump Telling The Truth" is about as believable...

“Trump Telling The Truth” is about as believable…

When Andrew Breibart died, the conservative punditry world befouled it self with weepy odes to his bravery and dedication to right’s mission, whatever it is. In fact, he was a sloppy and unethical ideologically biased pseudo journalist, who made Fox News really look fair and balanced and MSNBC seem like the epitome of professionalism. Journalism with an agenda isn’t journalism, and Breitbart’s website never let nuances like facts get in the way of a good smear or a dubious accusation.

Earlier this week I read for the first time—since I avoid Breitbart like I avoid centipedes—that there were rumors that The Donald was sending favors the way of the website, and in return, it had grabbed the niche of pro-Trump media mouthpiece, thus setting itself up to run the Ministry of Truth when he gains power and begins rounding up the Unsuitables. THere’s no proof of this, but it could explain articles like this one today, titled Trump 100% Vindicated: CBS Reports ‘Swarm’ On Rooftops Celebrating 9/11.

To cut to the chase, nothing in the article vindicates  or supports Trump in any way, and certainly not “100%.” That’s pure linkbait, though the disgraceful story holds on to the like like grim death, tossing excuses, equivocations, deceits and logical fallacies at it as if this junk can turn lead into gold. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Day: Blogger Ed Morrissey

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Double standard“So let’s get this straight. When a lunatic shoots up a Family Research Council office, it has nothing to do with its political opposition. When an abortionist [ Kermit Gosnell ] runs loose because public officials are too intimidated to enforce the laws that do exist, it has nothing to do with political support for abortion. But when a lunatic shoots up an abortion clinic, it’s the fault of millions of Americans who oppose abortion, and who argue peacefully for limits on the practice and better oversight of those who operate in the industry?

“Even when “police have not yet identified a clear motive for the shooting”?

“The shootings in a clinic and the deaths of two people are horrific acts that everyone with a lick of sense and humanity abhors. But what the Washington Post and pro-abortion advocates are conducting in its wake is an attack on free speech and the political process, not to mention the unconscionable smearing of millions of Americans. It’s disgusting, manipulative, exploitative, and un-American.”

—–Conservative blogger Ed Morrisey, in his post, WaPo: Let’s hold free speech guilty for the acts of a lunatic, shall we?

Yes, it’s disgusting, manipulative, exploitative, and un-American—see yesterday’s Ethics Alarms post regarding how the manipulative part works—but it is also one of the clearest and most undeniable examples of mainstream media bias and of how journalists actively adopt and advance even the most blatantly dishonest Democratic Party talking points. (To be fair, they are almost all Democrats, and most of them aren’t very bright, so they often believe this stuff).

For “the Washington Post” in Morrissey’s quote, read The New York Times, CNN, “Meet the Press” and almost every major news media source. All I want from progressives and Democrats is an admission that this slanted distortion of journalism is wrong—bad for the democracy, bad for the civic literacy of citizens, bad for society. That’s all! What I get, even from otherwise fair and rational readers of Ethics Alarms, is rationalizations and denial, aping the protests of the journalists themselves. Morrissey is a very restrained and circumspect writer, but he’s obviously angry. So am I. The point is, so should be every American regardless of political bent who cares about the truth.

Other conservative writers have been in grand form on the politicization of Robert Dear’s murder spree. Here’s the always razor-sharp James Taranto, of the Wall Street Journal: Continue reading →