blogosphere

Ethics Verdict On Dr. Phil’s Media Mugging

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments
You're in the clear, Phil...this time.

You’re in the clear, Phil…this time.

If a brilliant scholar like Richard Dawkins can get himself in hot water trying to be provocative in 140 characters, you can imagine the scalding a phony expert like Dr. Phil can attract with his tweets. Sure enough, the Oprah Winfrey-spawned arbiter of troubled relationships is now being ground up in the maw of the blogosphere and news media for tweeting this question to his inexplicably large mass of Twitter followers:

 “If a girl is drunk, is it okay to have sex with her? Reply yes or no to @drphil #teensaccused.”

He did not ask “If a girl is passed out drunk, is it okay to have sex with her?” Nor did he ask “If a girl is drunk, is it okay for me to have sex with her?” (The answers to both of these questions, obviously to me, you, and Dr. Phil, is emphatically  no. But then, he didn’t ask either of them.) He also didn’t suggest that he doesn’t know the answer to the question he did ask. He posed a question for his followers, which it is reasonable to assume was done to get a sense of the majority response.

There was nothing wrong, unethical, “tone deaf,” insensitive, sinister, off-putting, icky, misogynistic or otherwise inappropriate about the tweet or its wording, whether it was sent by Dr. Phil or anyone else.

And yet (from the Washington Post)... Continue reading →

Gotcha Nation

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

"Don't you see? It's not a lunch, IT'S A SMOKING GUN!!!!!!!"

For once, I wasn’t sucked in on this one, despite multiple nudges from readers. The story was that a pre-schooler’s lunch, lovingly packed by her mom and containing a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, potato chips and apple juice, was vetoed by an elementary school diet-cop, who forced her to get an approved cafeteria lunch that consisted of three chicken nuggets. Then the girl’s mother got a “you’re not properly feeding your child’ notice from the school, and a bill for the cafeteria lunch. Pushed my Drudge, picked up by Fox (“Preschooler’s Homemade Lunch Replaced With Nuggets”) and flogged for days by Rush, Sean, Laura, Mark, Bill and the rest of the conservative airwaves and blogosphere, the tale was widely cited as the tipping point of Big Brother unleashed. This was the work of Michelle Obama’s food crusade, and the harbinger of jack-booted indignities to come! Parents told what to feed their kids! The end of Democracy! Barack Obama’s evil plot exposed! Continue reading →

More Lessons from the Sherrod Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Gordon Peterson, venerable host of “Inside Washington” and long-time Washington D.C. news anchor, began the show’s segment on Shirley Sherrod this way:

“Some of you may remember the good old days of newspapering and TV and radio news when you had hours to work on your story, and your editors and producers had plenty of time to sift through your stuff for accuracy. If you remember that, you’re a dinosaur. Welcome to the blogosphere, the burnout pace of online news and the 24 hour instant deadline. Which brings me to the story of ousted Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod who was let go on the basis of a single piece of internet video that was edited out of context, posted on a conservative website, picked up on Fox News, and bought lock, stock and barrel by the Obama administration.”

That’s right, Gordon. And, as Charles Krauthammer immediately pointed out on the show, you have succumbed to the blogosphere’s unethical standards, because you didn’t check the accuracy of that statement. Continue reading →