The Internet

Facebook Wars II: More School Abuse of Power and Privacy

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

"Hello? ACLU? Anybody there?"

In January, Ethics Alarms weighed in on reports from Illinois and New York about students being disciplined by their high schools for postings on Facebook about the sexual proclivities of female students in the community. The ethics verdict: the schools were abusing their power and the students’ privacy:

“When did schools suddenly acquire disciplinary control over what students do when they aren’t at school? There is no question that the websites involved were inappropriate, disrespectful, cruel and hurtful, just as the rumors and insults included in high school graffiti were, in those glorious days before the internet. Students so abused need to complain to parents, and parents need to talk to the parents of the offending students, and if they can’t or won’t address the problem, then the courts or law enforcement may need to become involved.”

The rationale offered by the schools at the time was that the students had violated rules against cyber-bullying, that ever-vague plague, although there is no more legitimate authority for a school to decree what a student can say about another student on a personal website than there is for a school to restrict what a kid can say at the dinner table.

Naturally, when an institution exceeds the natural limit on its authority, there is nothing to keep it from even more egregious abuse. Thus two Georgia students were just suspended and one another was expelled for negative Facebook postings about a teacher. Continue reading →

The Compassion Thieves

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

From The Guardian:

“Anyone following her updates online could see that Mandy Wilson had been having a terrible few years. She was diagnosed with leukaemia at 37, shortly after her husband abandoned her to bring up their five-year-old daughter and baby son on her own. Chemotherapy damaged her immune system, liver and heart so badly she eventually had a stroke and went into a coma. She spent weeks recovering in intensive care where nurses treated her roughly, leaving her covered in bruises.

“Mandy was frightened and vulnerable, but she wasn’t alone. As she suffered at home in Australia, women offered their support throughout America, Britain, New Zealand and Canada. She’d been posting on a website called Connected Moms, a paid online community for mothers, and its members were following every detail of her progress – through updates posted by Mandy herself, and also by Gemma, Sophie, Pete and Janet, Mandy’s real-life friends, who’d pass on news whenever she was too weak. The virtual community rallied round through three painful years of surgeries, seizures and life-threatening infections. Until March this year, when one of them discovered Mandy wasn’t sick at all. Gemma, Sophie, Pete and Janet had never existed. Mandy had made up the whole story.”

Apparently Mandy is a strange, but not so uncommon, variety of internet scam artist, one who uses the anonymity of the online community to steal, not money, not identities, but sympathy, compassion, and time from the most generous and trusting of people across the globe by pretending to be sick. Continue reading →

“An Army of Fake Personas”? I DO Trust the Military, I DO Trust the Military…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Why does the Air Force want to recruit these people?

Raw Story reports that a United States Central Command spokesman recently confirmed that the US Air Force had solicited private sector vendors for something called “persona management software.” The technology would allow an individual to “command” virtual armies of fake, digital personas across multiple social media portals.

The “personas” would have detailed, fictionalized backgrounds to make them undetectable as fake to outside observers, and there would be sophisticated identity protection to support the deception,  preventing suspicious readers from uncovering the real person behind the account. The program would also fool geolocating services, so these “personas” could be virtually inserted anywhere in the world, providing ostensibly live commentary on real events, even while the operator was not present.

Hmmmm. Continue reading →

Unethical Website of the Month: “University of Redwood”—Or Perhaps We’re Doomed

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

 

Oregon's Reed College...and, in Universe Beta, the "University of Redwood"

“University of Redwood” exists only in cyber-space, the mutated virtual clone, or perhaps evil twin, of Oregon’s prestigious Reed College. The imaginary institution consists only of a website, which rips off most of the features of Reed College’s website, with pictures of Reed’s faculty as the imaginary “Redwood” faculty, photos of Reed alumni as “Redwood” graduates and even a parallel universe history of the school. Reed’s history section begins,

 

“Reed College was founded in 1908, and its first classes were held in 1911. Reed is named for Oregon pioneers Simeon and Amanda Reed. Simeon Reed had been an entrepreneur in trade on the Columbia River; in his will he suggested that his wife could “devote some portion of my estate to benevolent objects, or to the cultivation, illustration, or development of the fine arts in the city of Portland, or to some other suitable purpose…”

Coincidentally, “Redwood” has a very similar background, according to its site: Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quote of the Week: Blogger Jeff Jarvis”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Karl Penny calls me to task here for yielding to another commenter’s premise (but not his conclusion from it) that celebrities lead more interesting lives than their typical fans. Since “interesting” has various meanings—in Charlie Sheen’s case, the ironic Chinese definition (as in “may you live in interesting times”) comes to mind, and I could argue that celebrities by definition lead lives that their fans find more interesting than their own, hence the fact that they are celebrities. Nonetheless, Karl’s point is critical, and I thank him for making it so eloquently. And Karl’s would have been the Comment of the Day even if he hadn’t mentioned my dad—but it didn’t hurt. Here is Karl on “Ethics Quote of the Week: Blogger Jeff Jarvis”:

“Now, Jack: “Nobody denies that rich stars have more interesting lives than their fans,…” Nobody? Hey, what am I? Chopped liver? But, seriously I do deny that celebrities lead more interesting lives than the rest of us. In my experience—and these days, I hear a lot from others about the details of their lives—everyone has a story to tell. Indeed, they have a narrative, and one that is way more interesting, and far more uplifting, than those of the celebrities whose stories are broadcast at us. Continue reading →

Breaking News: Journalistic Ethics Not Dead, Just Unpopular

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The Society of Professional Journalists issued the following release condemning the Buffalo Beast’s fake call to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, in which the BB’s editor attempted, spectacularly unsuccessfully, to trick the Governor into making inflammatory or embarrassing statements. All he managed to do was to prove that Walker had never spoken to David Koch in his life, effectively debunking conspiracy theories that the Koch brothers were calling the shots in the Wisconsin public unions showdown. It was still a low point in recent journalism—quite an achievement, really—as the SPJ made clear: Continue reading →

When Satire Is No Excuse: The Jeff Cox Affair

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Now if Cox came to work like this, I take it all back...

Indiana deputy attorney general Jeff Cox tweeted “use live ammunition” in response to a tweet by progressive magazine Mother Jones that riot police had been ordered to remove union supporters from the Wisconsin state Capitol in Madison. Mother Jones published the tweet as evidence of what it believes is the predominant conservative mindset, and the progressive blogosphere was soon using his tweet as a rallying cry.

Cox was fired Wednesday. Quite correctly, too. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Los Angeles Clippers Forward Blake Griffin

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Harry gave credit for HIS slam dunks!

My favorite Harry Truman quote, and one of my favorite quotes generally, is

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”

It is a fair assumption that Los Angeles Clippers forward Blake Griffin has never heard of it, or if he has, he has no idea what Harry was talking about.

The  2011 NBA Slam Dunk Contest over the weekend featured a spectacular  dunk by Griffin, jumping over the hood of a car and slamming the ball through the hoop after it was fed to him, mid-air,  through the sunroof. His contest winning dunk was a sensation, and Griffin can be expected to reap both publicity and dollars from it over and above his contest prize.

But fan Michael Scrivner is calling a foul on Griffin, telling the media that he gave the star the idea for the dunk and deserves some thanks and credit. And he is 100% right. Continue reading →

Worst Ethics Column of the Month: Michelle Goldberg’s “The Lara Logan Media Wars”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

There’s nothing so pointless as complaining about a phenomenon that is logical, natural, useful and just, on the grounds that it’s so darn mean. Nevertheless, that is the gist of a Daily Beast column by Michelle Goldberg, another in the increasingly ethics-challenged stable of journalists being assembled at Tina Brown’s slick website.

Ruing the fate that befell journalist Nir Rosen after he not only ridiculed the horrendous attack on ABC reporter Lara Logan by an Egyptian mob, but implied that as a ‘war-monger” she deserved it, Goldberg wrote…

“…it indicated that Rosen has deep, unexamined problems with women, particularly women who are his more-celebrated competitors. But it was also appalling to realize that this brief, ugly outburst was going to eclipse an often-heroic career. The media’s modern panopticon has an awful way of reducing us all to the worst thing we’ve ever done…Again and again, we see people who make one mistake either forced out of their jobs or held up for brutal public excoriation. But the more we live in public, the more we need to develop some sort of mercy for those who briefly let the dark parts of themselves slip out, particularly when they’re truly sorry afterward.”

Ah, yes, the old “one mistake” plea! Continue reading →

Ethics Carnage in Wisconsin: The Ethics Grades So Far

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The battleground

The story to date: Wisconsin’s Republican Gov. Scott Walker announced a budget-repair measure to address  looming budget deficits (in a state with a balanced budget mandate in its constitution) by requiring state employees to contribute a larger proportion of their pensions and health care plans, and  restricting their long-standing  collective bargaining rights. Wisconsin’s deficit is projected at $30 million for the remainder of the 2011, with a shortfall of $1.5 billion projected for next year. In response to Walker’s announcement and the near certainty of his plan being passed by the Republican dominated state legislature, 14 Democratic legislators fled the state to prevent a quorum and block a vote, teachers left their classes to protest in Madison, where they were joined by thousands of pro-union protesters, many of whom were organized and bused in by Organizing for America, a White House operated political group.

Let’s try to separate the ethics wheat from the chaff—amazingly, there is actually some wheat–and get an early line on the heroes, dunces, villains, and the rest as the Wisconsin budget battle threatens to become a full-fledged Ethics Train Wreck. Continue reading →