The Internet

Ethics Quiz: Which Reporter Would You Fire?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
If this box of hammers can do their jobs as well as they can, should they really be journalists?

If this box of hammers can do their jobs as well as they can, should they really be journalists?

Stipulated:

  • The U.S. media establishment is in horrendous shape.
  • Its news coverage is untrustworthy, because so many of its members are untrustworthy.
  • The field of journalism is polluted with shallow, self-righteous, biased, narrow-minded hacks, and whatever genuine insight, ethics and talent the profession contains is usually overwhelmed by mediocrity.
  • Any hope of addressing the current grim state of the news media must begin with ejecting prominent reporters and journalists who have proven beyond a reasonable doubt the lack of temperament, standards, skills or values to practice responsible journalism.

With this as background, behold today’s Ethics Quiz, which is…

Which journalist, CBS News reporter Major Garrett, Washington Post reporter Suzi Parker, both, or neither, deserves to be asked to seek a career elsewhere? Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Chelsea Welch (The Applebee’s Train Wreck, Part Deux)

/ Jack Marshall / 53 Comments
Chelsea Welch 2

Chelsea Welch: Hire at your own risk. You have been warned. By Chelsea, in fact…

I really, really didn’t want to revisit the tale about the cheap pastor, the self-righteous waitress, and Applebee’s. The comments on the original post here were illuminating, not in a good way, and were profoundly discouraging. The fact that so many people are incapable of getting past their biases against any business that has to enforce basic common sense policies on their employees is depressing; the fact that they embrace wholeheartedly the idea that a minor instance of poor judgment and conduct warrants permanent vilification on the web is alarming; and the widespread rejection of the principles of the Golden Rule is scary.

Unfortunately, Chelsea Welch, the fired waitress whom I once had some sympathy for despite the fact that her firing was 100% justified, has apparently seen fit to publish a letter, although there is no way to tell that it is really hers—the way this whole scenario has gone, it probably was written by the pastor who started the whole mess to make Chelsea look bad. If that was the objective, the pastor was wrong again, for a ridiculous percentage of the commenters think the letter is perfectly reasonable, meaning, of course, that they have the ethical sensibilities of 5th graders. The cruel reader who brought this to my attention actually read the comments on one site and tallied them: 1538 supporting Chelsea, only 20 that didn’t.

<Sigh!>

Nonetheless, Chelsea Welch reveals herself as an A-1 prime ethics dunce, the kind of person who will blunder along through life behaving unethically, causing little and large harms and discomforts to those she encounters, always thinking she is in the right, because she doesn’t have the foggiest notion of how one goes about determining what  right is.

Her letter is a classic of rationalization. Some highlights (the entire letter is at the end)… Continue reading →

Carla McKinney, Proud “Naked Teacher,” A.K.A. Ethics Dunce

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments
This isn't Carla. But it's not far off, either...

This isn’t Carla. But it’s not far off, either…

The ever popular “Naked Teacher Principle” category is almost completely filled with school instructors who either placed their naughty bits online before teaching became their calling, had others do so without their knowledge or permission, or took some measures to ensure their embrace of questionable modesty and conduct would not come to the attention of their students. Not 23-year-old math teacher Carla McKinney, though! The Overland High School (in Aurora, Colorado) role model is a wild child and proud of it. Her Twitter page contained half-naked photos, and her tweets were filled with sexual innuendo, approving comments about drug use ( “Naked. Wet. Stoned”),  and even a boast that she had pot with her on school grounds.

“Watching a drug bust go down in the parking lot. It’s funny cuz I have weed in my car in the staff parking lot,” she tweeted happily. Another tweet reported that McKinney was high while grading her students’ class work. Yes, she is an idiot, and one who lacks the common sense, responsibility and character to train terriers, much less children.

The school has placed her on administrative leave, and if she isn’t fired, the administrators there fit my description of McKinney.

Again invoking and paraphrasing the immortal words of Faber College’s Dean Wormer, I say, “Naked, wet and stoned is no way to go through life, Carla.” But if that’s your choice, you have to do it as something other than a teacher.

_________________________

Facts: Daily Caller

Note To Matt Drudge: He’s The President. Show Some Damn Respect

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This will be short.

This week a fly was buzzing around the President’s head at a White House event this week, and  photographers got multiple shots of the insect as it lighted briefly on various parts of the President’s face. One comic use of such a photo is, I suppose, to be expected; we all know a fly on President Bush would have been all over the media. But Drudge has used the photos for two days now. (No, I’m not showing it, and I’m not sending Drudge links for being a sophomoric jerk.) It’s not funny. It’s unfair, mean-spirited, rude and disrespectful, and would be for any President.

Cut it out.

The Saga of the Entrepreneural Legal Mentor

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments
"OK, now pay attention. I'll teach you to hunt, but it will cost you..."

“OK, now pay attention. I’ll teach you to hunt, but it will cost you…”

Attorney Kenneth Beck is reeling from a barrage of criticism he has received for placing this ad on Craig’s List:

ARE YOU RECENTLY ADMITTED TO THE BAR, OR AWAITING BAR RESULTS, BUT NEED EXPERIENCE FOR THAT FIRST JOB?

General practice attorney with more than twenty years of experience is willing to train a small number of recently admitted attorneys, or those awaiting bar results. For a monthly fee, you will be able to shadow the experienced attorney, and learn by watching the day to day practice of law. Observe the following types of proceedings, as they occur; Civil Short Calender motion arguments, foreclosure mediation’s, pre-trial conferences, Workers Compensation and Social Security hearings, real estate closings, discovery proceedings and compliance, research and general office operations. …

The unprecedented ad, now pulled, prompted nasty e-mails from his target audience and a lot of ridicule on various legal blogs. Beck hit a nerve, obviously, in fact several: the perceived venality of the profession, the desperate plight of recent law grads in a tight market, the lack of practical training students receive in law school. Some even suggested that the ad rose, or rather fell, to the level of professional misconduct. “Will this kind of revenue producer be censured by the state bar association?”, asked the blog Law and More.

That one is easy: no, because nothing about the ad raises legitimate questions about Black’s trustworthiness or honesty, and there is no clear violation of any existing rules inherent in his proposition. Still, the question lingers: even if this doesn’t nick the Rules of Professional Conduct, is it ethical? Continue reading →

Man Bites Dog! Students Trick Teacher Into No-Tolerance Violation On Facebook!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

How stupid can schools get?

duct tapeWell, let’s see: lets mix several themes that have surfaced on Ethics Alarms lately for a potent recipe:

  • Careless Social media posts
  • Overly protective parents
  • Misfired humor
  • Kids being kids
  • Brain dead school administrators
  • No-tolerance mindset

Melissa Cairns, a middle school math teacher at Akron, Ohio’s Buchtel Community Learning Center, is on unpaid administrative leave and facing terminationafter she  posted a photo on Facebook of some of her  students with duct tape covering their mouths. “Finally found a way to get them to be quiet!!!”she wrote. Nobody disputes what happened: a student who had been given duct tape by Cairns to repair a damaged book placed a piece of tape over her own mouth as a joke. Several other students did the same, and Cairns was urged to take a photo of the silly result. Then she posted it.

Harm: none.  Possible benefits: quite a few, if it helped Cairns connect with her class in a notoriously dry subject. Reaction of the school board: ridiculous. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: “How To Gratuitously Offend Millions of People and Prove Yourself To Be An Ignorant Jackass in 140 Characters or Less” By Travis Okulski

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Gawker editor tweet

Presumably I don’t have to explain why the tweet above, sent out by Gawker writer and editor Travis Okulski, and eventually deleted by him after someone drilled into his skull and planted some sense there, is cruel, disrespectful, callous, ignorant, offensive and wrong.

Here’s your Ethics Quiz, and it requires you to use the previous post, which you can find either beneath this one, or here:

Would you fire Okulski if he worked for you?

The question would be easy if I asked if Gawker should fire him, since that website is shameless and largely behaves as if ethics were a unicorn or the Kraken, a mythical creature only suckers and fools believe in.

Would you give him another chance, or would you conclude that any ass who would even think this can’t be trusted to brush his teeth in the morning?

I’m very curious.

___________________________

Pointer: Fox News

Fair and Unfair Facebook Post Firings

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

frustrated-at-workWhen is it fair for an employer to fire an employee for the contents of a personal Facebook post?

  • When the post harms the business, impugns the integrity of its staff or business practices, or otherwise affects the reputation of the company in the community.
  • When the post indicates that the poster lied to a superior.
  • When the post raises legitimate doubts about the poster’s fitness for a job, either in the minds of potential client and customers, or in the judgment of employers.
  • When the post is sufficiently  disreputable and offensive to the community at large that it raises the question of whether any company that hires or has such an individual in a position of authority can or should be trusted.
  • When the post shows poor judgement of such a degree that it reaches signature significance, and legitimately causes an employer to doubt the stability, sanity, or trustworthiness of the poster. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Slate Crime Blogger Justin Peters

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments
Read the Slate crime blog, and you could end up like this in seven days...

Read the Slate crime blog, and you could end up like this in seven days…

Slate triggered a mini-ethics train wreck by hiring a non-lawyer for what any fool could surmise would be an assignment that would often require knowledge of the law: covering the broad issue of crime for Slate’s readers. Note: to all those scambloggers who insist that there are no good jobs in which having a law degree would be an obvious asset: here’s an example. Their note back to me: “Oh, yeah? This why didn’t Slate hire one of us?”

Touché! I presume, however, that this was because the journalist Slate did hire, Justin Peters is an editor at the Columbia Journalism Review and has pals in Slate’s management…or, in the alternative, the online magazine has a death wish. I don’t think Slate has anything against lawyers. Peters is unethical, because ethical professionals don’t accept jobs they are unqualified to perform. Then again, journalists increasingly are unaware of the concept of ethics, so now we are back to Slate, and why they would hire someone to opine in a law-strewn field without knowing shinola about the law. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Petter’s Sex For Facebook Likes Deal

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Sex for Likes

First Stan Musial dies, and now this.

 Petter Kverneng is an awkward  Norwegian teen. He wants to have sex with Cathrine, the love of his young life, and she 1) doesn’t or 2) wants to make him earn the privilege by showing how much he wants her or 3) wants to humiliate him first and then if she has to have sex, well, whatever. The story goes that she told him she would have sex with him if he could score 1,000,000  “likes” on Facebook. A large internet message board decided to either help out Petter or stick it to Cathrine, and now the pimply-faced youth has  1.2 million “likes” on his Facebook page.

Get ready, Cat.

Let us take an ethics inventory, shall we? What is interesting about this stupid story, if indeed it is true, is that many of its turns could be seen as both ethical and unethical. Continue reading →