Welcome to the first annual Ethics Alarms Awards, recognizing the best and worst of ethics in 2009! These are the Worst; the Best is yet to come. Continue reading
The Internet
TMZ’s JFK: Fake Photo, Same Ethics Questions
I love this, I really do. Yes, the JFK photo found by TMZ and trumpeted elsewhere, including here, is a hoax.
Since the photo conveys no new or false information about JFK’s proclivities, its main significance is that TMZ was sloppy, and since it is well established that it traffics in gossip and rumor anyway, this means Ethics Alarms and others were gullible and careless.
I apologize.
A few points:
- All the questions raised in the post stand.
- This reaffirms my conviction that postng a hoax of any kind on the web, whether photo or otherwise, without clearly designating it as such, is unethical.
- Let us all give thanks for “The Smoking Gun.”
Conservative Stories, Liberal Stories: Isn’t a Drunk Senator Just Plain News?
A Youtube video shows Montana Senator Max Baucus (D) giving a rambling rant of a speech from the Senate floor, waving his arms and slurring his speech like Uncle Billy in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” as he condemns Republicans for being overly partisan in the run-up to the health care bill vote. Was he drunk? It sure looks like it to me, based on some considerable experience with such things, but no, the real reason he looks drunk to me must be my right-wing political bias, because only conservative blogs and media seem to see anything intoxicated about the good senator’s speech at all.
This isn’t just silly; it is harmful. Continue reading
JFK the Philanderer: What Does It Mean?
Honest, I’m not picking on the Kennedy’s. That this surfaced today is a coincidence. But if you cross Ted Kennedy and Tiger Woods, you get Jack Kennedy, and what should appear on the web this morning but a surprising photograph:
TMZ, the celebrity trash website that likes to publish paparazzi photos of supermodels with spinach between their teeth, has a genuine scoop: it has gotten its cyber-hands on a photograph that appears to show a bevy of naked women frolicking on a yacht as a young Senator Jack Kennedy lounges nearby. [UPDATE: As explained by The Smoking Gun here, and discussed in a later Ethics Alarms post here, the photo was a hoax. The ethical issues raised by it and discussed below are still valid, however.] Continue reading
Farewell to the NY Times’ Ethics Blog
Well, the New York Times has spoken: it apparently doesn’t think ethics commentary blogs are worth the trouble: it quietly deep-sixed Randy Cohen’s “The Moral of the Story” blog less than a year after launching it. Continue reading
Ethics Notes: Santa, the Senate, and Snow
Some random thoughts on ethics matters as I try to simultaneously finish the Ethics Alarms 2009 Best and Worst lists and deal with a series of bad extension cords running up my Christmas tree…
The “Rock the Vote” Sex Extortion Video: All’s Fair in Health Care
A new YouTube video by the supposedly civic-minded group “Rock the Vote” is so wrong, so objectionable in its attitude and unethical in its spirit in so many ways that it almost justifies the screaming rants that it is certain to provoke on talk radio and from excitable cable commentators like Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck. Continue reading
Rep. Alan Grayson: “How Dare You Imitate Me?”
Florida Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson is what is clinically called “a piece of work.” He yields to no one in his defiance of basic civility in discourse, not even Rep. Joe “You Lie!” Wilson. Grayson is the Congressman whose explanation of the GOP position on health care was that “they want you to die.” He said that Dick Cheney speaks with “blood dripping from his teeth.” His mode of debate and persuasion, in other words, is insult and hyperbole. Respect for opposing views: zilch. Civility grade: F. Continue reading
Proof of Dead Ethics: Attacking Your Adversary’s Family
It is a standard threat in movies about the Mob and TV dramas about thugs: “Do what I tell you, or your family’s dead.” The tactic of going after loved ones as a particularly awful form of revenge is a calling card of the truly despicable. That is why the Valerie Plame scandal so damaged the Bush Administration’s popularity, even though it was never clear (and still isn’t) that anyone there really did try to “out” Plame’s CIA status to get even with her obnoxious husband’s fueling opposition to the Iraq invasion. Just the plausible suggestion that Vice President Cheney’s gang may have committed such an ethical outrage was too much to bear.
You would think, then, that those who most revile Cheney’s no-holds-barred approach to political combat would be the least likely to emulate him. You would be wrong. Continue reading
“Operation Chokehold” and the Protest Ethics Checklist
Some disgruntled iPhone users are trying to organize a protest by paralyzing the ATT network with a flood of data this Friday. The mastermind is the so-called “fake Steve Jobs,” Dan Lyons, who calls his protest “Operation Chokehold.”
Blogger Lauren Weinstein [special thanks to Gabe Goldberg for the tip] has effectively identified this juvenile plan for what it is, namely “childish, stupid, irresponsible, and potentially extremely dangerous.” Continue reading
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