U.S. Society

Why NPR’s Wrongs Don’t Make James O’Keefe Right

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

James O'Keefe, Ethics Corrupter

And the NPR Ethics Train Wreck continues…

Between union hysteria in Wisconsin, carnage in Libya, and tsunamis, the fact that James O’Keefe’s fake Muslim billionaire act exposed more NPR integrity issues was drowned out by shouting, gun shots and water. In fact, the second victim of O’Keefe’s sting may have taught us more about NPR than the first.

In the surreptitious audiotape of  NPR’s continued encounters with the fake potential big bucks donor, NPR’s director of institutional giving, Betsy Liley, is heard advising the supposedly wealthy Muslim donor how the network could help “shield” his group from a government audit if it accepted the $5 million he was offering. It seems pretty clear from the tape that this was not what the sting was set up to prove: what the “Muslim donor” really wants is to get a promise from NPR that it will slant the news content the his way if the gift is big enough. Liley stood her ground on this core journalistic principle admirably—so much for the claim that George Soros bought NPR’s advocacy with his recent gift—but fell into another trap of her own making.

NPR spokeswoman Dana Davis Rehm said in a statement that Liley’s comments on the tape “regarding the possibility of making an anonymous gift that would remain invisible to tax authorities is factually inaccurate and not reflective of NPR’s gift practices. All donations—anonymous and named—are fully reported to the IRS. NPR complies with all financial, tax, and disclosure regulations.” That’s undoubtedly correct; Liley was not merely ethically wrong but also literally wrong, for what she was suggesting almost certainly couldn’t happen. However, the fact that she would say such a thing believing it could happen, or think it was acceptable if it did happen, or try to acquire a large donation by persuading a donor to believe it could happen, all point to the one conclusion: NPR’s culture is ethically compromised, and the organization’s leadership has failed to meet its obligations to create an ethical culture  there. The sting is more disturbing than the earlier one that caught an outgoing NPR executive taking extreme partisan positions that belied NPR’s position that it is objective and unbiased. The comments of Ron Schiller just confirmed what many, including me, thought was already apparent in the tone of NPR’s work. I had also always assumed, however, that the place was professionally and ethically run (excepting the tendency to fire employees for expressing politically incorrect opinions on Fox News).

So this settles it, right? O’Keefe is a hero?

No, he’s not. James O’Keefe, in fact, is an ethics corrupter, an individual who weakens the public’s ethics by encouraging it to accept his dubious values. Continue reading →

So Let me Get This Straight: Tera Myers Has To Quit, But This Jerk KEEPS His Job?

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

"You gave your students WHAT????!!!"

I write this not only aware that the story might be a hoax, but hoping against hope that it is.

Teacher Frank Rozanski gave the students in his advanced placement psychology class at Dwyer High School in Palm Beach Gardens what he called “The Sexual Tension Quiz.”

The test, which was given to the class for a grade, is a sophomoric gag quiz in which sexually suggestive questions have innocent answers. Har. Har. As humor, it is something that one might expect to see in a college magazine (for a not-so-great college), or maybe Playboy in a weak month. Continue reading →

Unethical Vanity Plate of the Year

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Maybe it was Mr. Peabody! No, wait, he's not from Alaska...

It was an Alaska plate, and I followed it all the way into Washington, D.C. this morning, gritting my teeth all the while. It read:

HIGHIQ

What kind of person puts a message like this on his or her car? It isn’t witty. It isn’t cute. It is gratuitously boastful, immodest, and lacking in humility. The message is very likely to annoy other drivers, as it did me, for its sheer bad taste and arrogance, and because displaying such a message is stupid in the extreme, it is also deceitful. The driver may indeed have an objectively high I.Q., but if so the message is literally true but misleading—-since anyone who would think this fact belongs on a license plate is an prima facie idiot.

Besides…if he’s so smart, why is he driving a 2003 Camry?

Ethics Dunce: The Delaware State Human Relations Commission, et al.

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Justice finally prevailed in a disturbing Delaware case that took hyper-sensitivity to racial bias to absurd extremes. You can read the court opinion here. In essence, the Delaware State Human Relations Commission found that a theater manager who supplemented an on-screen request for patrons to turn off their cell phones, not talk during the film and not mill around in the theater with his personal announcement to the same effect was engaged in racial discrimination, because most of the audience was black and some felt that his tone was condescending. Continue reading →

Illinois’s Death Penalty Ban: Defensible Decision, Indefensible Reasoning

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Justice.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn  signed legislation abolishing capital punishment in the state and commuted the sentences of the 15 inmates still on death row to life in prison without parole.

I disagree with the decision, and have stated my reasons for not abolishing the death penalty here and here. Never mind: this is a topic on which ethical and reasonable people can disagree with honor. But if one is going to abolish an important law enforcement tool, the official justification for it ought to be coherent and persuasive, and not just facile rhetoric. That, unfortunately, is what Gov. Quinn gave us.

Here is the relevant segment of Quinn’s statement after signing the bill into law during a private ceremony: Continue reading →

The Missing Ethics Alarm: Spending Other People’s Money

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

How did I get HERE??

I confess: I honestly don’t understand this problem. From the first time I had an expense account, it never occurred to me to use it for my own pleasure. If I had to eat out on the road, I picked an inexpensive restaurant. I didn’t charge hotel room movies to my employer—he wasn’t sending me there to be entertained. I flew coach, and paid for any personal long-distance calls. Why? Because it wasn’t my money. I was a fundraiser for a non-profit, and I knew that whatever the donors were giving money for, it wasn’t for me.

It became apparent over the years that few of my colleagues or bosses saw it that way, when it came to their own expenses, and that elected officials and corporate officers not only readily use other people’s money extravagantly, but also that few people object when they do. The conduct is clearly irresponsible and unfair; I would call it dishonest. But those in high positions seem to regard it as their right. Continue reading →

The NPR Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Ethics train wreck scholars take note: when an organization’s image and existence is based on multiple lies, an ETW is inevitable.

Oh NO! It's another Ethics Train Wreck!

National Public Radio is now in the middle of a massive, six-months long ethics train wreck that began with the hypocritical firing of Juan Williams on a trumped-up ethics violation. The disaster exposes the culture of dishonesty and entitlement at the heart of NPR, and by extension, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. To the extent that their supporters blame anyone else, it is evidence of denial. This is a train wreck, however, and the ethics violators drawn into the wreckage are many: Continue reading →

Quiz: Which Law Enforcement Fiasco Was More Unethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

It’s Quiz Time!

Chief Wiggum would be an upgrade.

Today’s topic: Why the public doesn’t trust the law enforcement system. Here are two horrible and true, tales of AWOL ethics involving law enforcement in New York and Tennessee. Which is more unforgivable, A or B?

A. Brooklyn, NY: The Perpetual Warrant

What is the fair limit of “the police made  an honest mistake”? Let’s say the police have a warrant to search your house, and come to your door because they got the address wrong—and it’s a mistake. At least they didn’t break down the door in the middle of the night. OK, mistakes happen. Then they come again, because they got your address in error again. Annoying, but they seem embarrassed: they aren’t trying to harass you.

And then they arrive 48 more times. Continue reading →

Don’t Knock “The Code of the West”!

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

A commenter just nominated the Republicans in the Montana State Legislature for “Incompetent Elected Official” status because they have proposed “The Code of the West” as  Montana’s State Code.

Nomination rejected. I don’t want to argue about whether a state needs a State Code, although it seems a lot more useful and constructive than state birds, state songs and state pies. I also don’t feel like debating the political correctness attacks on the potential use of the Code of the West by Native American activists, who apparently think the Code glorifies cowboys and insults Indians (Oh, all right: the complaint is nonsense. Valid ideals are not sullied by the misdeeds of those who espoused them.) But I like the cowboy codes, all of them. One is already on the site. I might not choose the same ten tenets of the unwritten Code of the West that is being debated in Montana, but the Code of the West is a perfectly good statement of ethical principles, and any state that embraces it should be praised, not embroiled in a lot of political posturing. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Facebook Wars II”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Though not strictly an ethics comment, Mary’s theory about why school administrators are engaging in so much ethically dubious conduct is provocative and has the ring of truth. Here is her Comment of the Day, on the post “Facebook Wars II: More School Abuse of Power and Privacy“:

“A number of years ago, while extracting myself from a bad relationship, a therapist friend told me that the more healed and “normal” I became, the more outrageous and pathological my ex-partner’s behavior would be, in a psychological attempt to pull me back into the relationship.

“I sometimes think the same thing applies to social relationships and organizations. As they lose their relevancy and people withdraw and move on to new social structures, those invested in the old organizations thrash wildly to maintain an ever crumbling status quo. Continue reading →