Wait…What’s The Problem? Isn’t Mayor Wu Just Following The Tactics And Principles Of Her Party?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I don’t understand. The Biden Administration has declared that opponents of his policies are threats to democracy. The current Justice Department has sought extreme and excessive punishment for the protesters and rioters at the Capitol in January of 2021 while ignoring the violent and disruptive acts of the George Floyd Freakout rioters and demonstrators. The Democratic Administration sought to intimidate parents who were critical of woke school boards seeking to inject sexual politics and CRT ideology into public school curricula. And yet when Boston’s mayor Michelle Wu admitted that her staff compiled a list of her most vocal critics and protesters to hand to local law enforcement authorities, the public, which in Boston is primarily Democratic and progressive, howled in outrage.

This is how their increasingly totalitarian party operates in 2023. This is what they voted for. What are they complaining about?

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More From The A.I. Ethics Files: The Suspicious Photograph Contest Entry

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The photo above was entered into a photography competition but disqualified because the judges “suspected” that it was generated by artificial intelligence. As it turned out, the photograph was taken legitimately, but by the time the contest entrant learned about her disqualification, the competition had been settled. Suzi Dougherty used a high-level iPhone to createn the unsettling photo of her son standing near two mannequins while visiting a Gucci exhibition.

The photo competition was sponsored by Charing Cross Photo in Australia. Disqualifying Dougherty’s photo via Instagram post, the judges said they were “intrigued” by the photograph, but “suspicion set in.”

Oh. Well that’s OK then!

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Add Switzerland To The List Of Supposedly Wise “First World” Nations That Don’t Comprehend The First Amendment Or The Ethical Importance Of It

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

…among others. But let’s concentrate on the First, shall we?

The Swiss Gymnastics Federation (STV) has now banned photographers from taking photos of female gymnasts like the one above of retired female gymnastics champ Gabrielle Douglas.

The association has imposed the ban on such “suggestive” photos to ensure that gymnasts can only be photographed in a way that focuses innocently on their poses and positions, not their bodies. “To protect gymnasts, the STV strives to ensure that no suggestive or otherwise ethically sensitive photos are published and passed on. Especially photos where gymnasts were photographed in the crotch,” STV states in its news guidelines. “The STV is aware that such photos can arise in action photography. However, publication should be avoided. The main concern of the STV is to sensitize the media professionals and to let common sense prevail.”

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This Biased Journalism Fiasco Explains So Much It Should Be Taught In Journalism AND Ethics Classes

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! And sure, journalism is a profession! You can always trust journalism icons!

No…no…and no.

Business Insider published an alleged news article headlined, “More people actually moved out of Florida than New York or California in 2021.” Part of the ongoing effort on both the political Rights and the Left to sink Florida Governor Ron DiSantis’s chances of keeping Donald Trump off the GOP 2024 Presidential ticket, the story claimed to debunk the conventional wisdom that the ultra Woke states are bleeding residents while DiSantis’s state’s population is growing. 674,740 residents left Florida, BI told us, exceeding the total of 433,402 residents who had fled California and the 287,249 residents moving out of New York.

It was pure confirmation bias. The stats were unbelievable on their face, but the Business Insider staff believed them anyway, because they wanted to. After being roundly smacked on social media, BI reversed itself with a replacement post headlined, “We got it wrong: More people moved out of New York and California than Florida in 2021,” that revealed,

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Ethics Dunce: Power Line

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The tweet above is a joke, and announces itself as one. What makes the joke especially funny is that it is conceivable that New York’s ridiculous, socialist, Dunning-Kruger victim Congresswoman would really say something like this. That is also why it is extremely important ethically for the satire account’s tweets to make it clear that its output is parody.

The site does that. The account has the handle @AOCpressTwo and the username Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Press Release (parody). Its bio reads, “I’m the boss – you mad bro? (parody)” (www.twitter.com/AOCpressTwo).

However, in conservative website Power Line’s weekly collection of memes, cartoons and jokes covering the previous seven days’ events from a rightish perspective, it includes this version of the tweet:

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Ethics Verdict: Disney Is Officially Incompetent

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Yes, those are “the Seven Dwarfs” of “Snow White and” fame, according to our national steward of childhood fantasy and iconic fables, the Disney Corporation. That photo is smoking gun evidence of insanity, a production shot from the upcoming live action version of the 1937 movie that made Walt Disney’s artistic vision a cultural force, now retitled “Snow White.” Of course Snow White is going to be Snow Of Color, as the actress playing the German fairy tale princess is Latina Rachel Zegler, who has already embraced the company’s current “screw tradition, common sense and legacy” attitude by tweeting, “Yes I am Snow White; no, I am not bleaching my skin for the role.”

You do recall why Snow White was called Snow White, right?

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Not This Issue Again! Arrest These Parents For Child Endangerment, Please…

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“Six-Year-Old Becomes Youngest Girl To Climb Devils Tower” says the Wyoming news headline.

Gee, isn’t that wonderful? I can find no criticism of the parents in that story, or any of the media accounts so far. Am I really the only person with a website who sees this kind of thing, and it is a “kind of thing,” as obvious child endangerment and criminally reckless parenting?

I’ve discussed this despicable stunt parenting problem before; I even did a summary of the cases EA has analyzed in 2019. Looking it over, I realize that there isn’t much else to be said, except that lucky Alice Galy (lucky not to be dead, not lucky in her stork’s choice of delivery points) fits right in with Abby Sunderland and the rest. Here’s the relevant section from “The Child Endangerment Follies”:

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Ethics Quiz: Fairness To Joe Biden And A Confirmation Bias Test

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I’ll make his is short and sweet:

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is that video something or nothing?

Greg Price is a conservative gadfly; if I could have found a version of the clip that was without commentary, I would have used that. naturally, none of the Left-biased mainstream media feel that the video is noteworthy. Fox News, however, does.

Biden’s treatment of women, and little girls has nothing to do with dementia, but it a long-time proclivity that has troubled me, and that render his fervent feminist supporters as hypocritical in my eyes. This example may seem ambiguous or innocent to some. Where I was brought up, Boston, a stranger who presumed to treat a child like this would be at risk of getting punched. Of course, Biden has security around him, and is abusing his privilege and power by placing the mother in an awkward position. But if the President did not have the well-established record as a sniffer and harasser, would this episode bother anyone, even Greg Price? Is this just Ick, not ethics?

One Ethics Villain Promotes Another, As The Associated Press Pimps For Black Lives Matter On Its Anniversary

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Sometimes an ethics story defies my ability to devise an appropriate headline. The AP story “Black Lives Matter movement marks 10 years of activism and renews its call to defund the police” is a prime example. The story is even worse than the headline (“activism” is a deceitful and deceptive euphemism for violence, lies, divisiveness and fraud), with the once-trustworthy news organization displaying the worst of U.S. journalism’s ethics rot.

The scam that is Black Lives Matter has done nothing but damage since its emergence in 2013, but to hear the AP tell it, this is a movement for Americans to honor. Let’s see…I haven’t checked yet, and I promise to reveal what I find: is the AP’s reporter who wrote this junk, Aaron Morrison, an African American?

Why yes, he is! What a coinkydink. This piece of propaganda could only have been written by a devoted supporter; the AP rigged the story. That’s American journalism in 2023.

Let me provide some highlights with commentary:

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Incompetent Elected Officials Of The Month: Oregon Mayors Dean Sawyer And Matt Diaz

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

It demonstrates a critical lack of integrity to claim you believe one thing when addressing the community that elected you and to privately say the opposite. It is also irresponsible and incompetent to assert positions your supporters would object to in less-than-reliably private forums, like social media. As an extra layer of incompetence, two Oregon mayors were active on social media behaving like this when they clearly didn’t understand the perils of social media (though I bet they do now).

First let’s take the case of Dean Sawyer, the three term mayor of Newport, a city of about 10,000 residents in Oregon. A 30 year police force veteran, he joined a private Facebook group called “LE (that is, Law Enforcement) Only in2016, two years before he was elected mayor. All these years, while he has been extolling “diversity” and celebrating LGTBQ+ “pride,” he was mocking both, as well as progressive sacred cows like illegal immigrants, in his posts, often with particularly vulgar and juvenile memes. (During “Pride Month,” for example, Sawyer posted a photo of disgusted-looking, scantily clad women in a dressing room with the legend, “Strippers waiting for EMS to untangle the new girl’s balls from the pole.”) his luck ran out as it usually does with reckless social media users. Somehow Oregon Public Broadcasting got a tip and managed to track down Sawyer’s politically incorrect and wildly hypocritical posts. Then it wrote, in a special report headlined, “For years the mayor of an Oregon Coast city has posted hateful memes on Facebook”...

Since 2016, Sawyer has posted racist memes mocking Mexicans and endorsing former President Donald Trump’s hardline policies on immigration. One post in April made fun of trans swimmer Lia Thomas. Several mocked Bud Light, which has drawn the ire of Republicans for the company’s business relationship with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Both Thomas and Mulvaney have been targets of right wing smear campaigns and online harassment.

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