cheating

The Principal Who Helped Gaby Rodriguez Fake Her Pregnancy Just Won “Principal of the Year.” The Frightening Thing Is, He Might Have Deserved It.

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Note that it says "Principal." It doesn't say anything about "principles."

I received this news from Ethics Hero Harris Meyer, the journalist who has been trying to preserve some semblance of integrity in his profession by reminding it what ethical investigative journalism is not, through his efforts to rebut the praise for Gaby Rodriguez, the high school student who deceived her family and classmates by pretending to be pregnant as her senior project. The news: Trevor Greene, the principal who helped devise Gaby’s unethical stunt and assisted her in lying to the rest of the school, has been named the state’s top high school principal by the Association of Washington School Principals.

He received this  honor, the release says, by virtue of his organizing a system of student-teacher mentorships, and guiding the school’s effort to expand and improve its science, technology, engineering and math curriculum. The fact that he also mentored a student in a blatantly unethical exercise that was, as I wrote in my original post about Gaby’s scam, Continue reading →

Unethical Advertising Slogan of the Month: Reebok

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

You read that right: the slogan, which Rebok printed up for use by an affiliated gym in Germany and which quickly went viral on the web, is

“CHEAT ON YOUR GIRLFRIEND, NOT ON YOUR WORKOUT!”

As blatantly unethical exhortations in pursuit of commerce go, this one is pretty spectacular. Consider:

  • It is disrespectful of women.
  • It advocates betrayal, dishonesty, disloyalty, infidelity, promiscuity and cheating.
  • It designates a higher priority to narcissistic self-maintenance over love, commitment, and stable relationships.
  • It represents an athletic equipment company giving the stamp of approval to cheating.

That’s a remarkable amount of bad ethics in just eight words. A masterpiece of economical cultural poison. Bravo! Continue reading →

Ethics Corrupters on The Web: Symptoms of a Cheating Culture

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I encountered this charming example of high school cheating advice quite by accident. There is a stunning amount of this kind of thing on the web, and perhaps what is most impressive about it is the matter-of-fact way it is received. This example was posted on a Facebook page, and the few posters who registered objections to it as cheating were ridiculed. mocked and insulted by the rest as prudes, fools, judgmental ass-holes, “holier-than thou” bitches, and worse. One commenter couldn’t understand why this would  even be called cheating. “Nobody’s copying any  exam answers!”, he asked, puzzled.

The trick here reminds me of a response I got from a lawyer in an ethics seminar, as I was discussing a hypothetical in which an attorney had promised to review a non-profit client’s by-laws that had to be included in a crucial grant submission. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Oprah Winfrey

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

If enough of these tune in to your TV show, the number of real viewers don't matter. Which gave Oprah an idea...

Oprah Winfrey’s new cable network, OWN, is foundering, so the much-worshipped icon of female empowerment empowered herself to rig the ratings system by sending out this tweet to her gazillion Twitter followers ( all right, she has only 9, 253, 598) Sunday night:

“Every 1 who can please turn to OWN especially if u have a Neilsen* box.”

OWN was debuting a new show called “Oprah’s Next Chapter.” Since a Nielson household is one of the 25,ooo Americans whose viewing habits are extrapolated to calculate the estimated viewers of any program nationwide, a direct appeal to someone with a Nielson box is an attempt to cheat. Those boxes count as many thousands of viewers in the ratings process, which is why the identity of the Nielson household is carefully protected. It is also why the penalty for trying to manipulate the ratings (if only the Nielson households and nobody else watched Oprah’s show, the ratings would inaccurately indicate that the program was a sensation) is to have the offending program’s ratings erased entirely. Continue reading →

Forget About “Minority Report”—The Sure Fire Way To Stop Pre-Crime Is To Round Up Newt Gingrich Supporters

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Forget those psychics in the pool, Tom! All you need to identify pre-criminals is to check Newt Gingrich's donor list!

All right, maybe that’s a little extreme. Still, in America today we have a putative Presidential candidate who is virtually carrying a billboard stating, “I am dishonest! I am a narcissist! I am angry, mean and vindictive! I am incapable of shame, and I have the self-control and judgment of a mad scientist from an old Vincent Price movie!“, and yet people still call up talk shows and say, “Why isn’t everyone backing Newt?”

Why? WHY? Well, how about this, from CNN:

“As recently as last week, Newt Gingrich’s communications director has been criticized by editors on Wikipedia for dozens of edits he has made and requested in defense of his candidate. While some of the changes were minor, Joe DeSantis has removed or asked to remove factual references to Gingrich’s three marriages as well as mentions of ethics charges brought against him while he served as speaker of the House. These efforts continued as recently as Monday.”

That’s right: Newt Gingrich has his staff trying to re-write the more distasteful episodes in his history—all the better to fool you with. This is the candidate remember, who now says he is the one running on “principles.” What principle would Stalin-style censorship come under, Newt?

Oh, never mind—we know the answer. Win at any cost. The ends justify the means.

Back to the title: perhaps they aren’t slam-dunk future criminals, but at this point, I really do believe that individuals continuing to support Newt Gingrich after he began the campaign with a certifiable character deficit and has managed to show with every passing week that it was even worse than his worst critics could have imagined really do create a prima facie case that they are unethical by nature. There just is no other plausible explanation.

 

 

The SAT Cheating Scandal

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Over at Curmudgeon Central, Rick Jones appropriately eviscerates the Educational Testing Service for its role—the role being negligent facilitator–in an unfolding scandal involving students cheating on their SATs by having surrogates take their tests. 20 people have been arrested thus far as either the fake test-taker of the fraudulent scholar paying for said test-taker, and Rick’s guess that there must be a hundred times the ETS’s estimate of 150 incidents of cheating on the SATs  is extremely conservative. The problem is that the SATs are taken under incredibly lax  security, and Rick reveals something I never would have suspected: if someone is caught cheating after the SAT service investigates, he or she is given a refund and allowed to take the test again—and no college is ever notified! Rick writes…

“…in a just universe, the cretinous yahoos at the CB/ETS who decided on this policy would lose their jobs, have “unethical moron” branded into their foreheads, and be publicly pilloried. Preferably literally.” Continue reading →

The Real Meaning of Manny Being Manny

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The only surprising aspect of the news yesterday that former baseball slugger-savant Manny Ramirez had been arrested for allegedly slugging his wife—the one alleging being said wife—is that any baseball fans were surprised. If anything was written in the Book of Fate, it was that this man, so completely lacking in respect for basic ethical values, was destined for trouble with the law.

While he was playing, of course, Manny’s uncivilized and cheerful contempt for basic rules and principles of right and wrong were tolerated by his employers, amused sportswriters and evoked cheers from fans. He was a great, great hitter, you see: who cares if he was habitually rude, unprofessional, slovenly, careless, disloyal, disrespectful and above all, selfish to his core? Look! He’s having fun! Isn’t that charming? Stop harping on little details, like hustling, sportsmanship, or being honest. Let Manny be Manny! Continue reading →

Ethics Hero Emeritus: Baltimore Orioles Pitching Great Mike Flanagan,1951-2011

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Mike Flanagan, for more than three decades an ace pitcher, coach, executive and broadcaster with the Baltimore Orioles, died of a self-inflicted shotgun blast this week. It is obvious from listening to his devastated colleagues, former teammates and friends that he was genuinely loved and respected, and one reason was his overwhelming decency and strong ethical compass. Many members of the Orioles family recalled how Flanagan was known for taking young players aside and schooling them on how to represent the team with dignity, honor, fair play, hard work, and integrity.

In his lovely column today remembering Flanagan and his values, Washington Post sportswriter Tom Boswell recounts how the ex-pitcher once explained why he wouldn’t cheat. Many sportswriters and former player have offered the argument, during the continuing ethical debate over the culpability of players using steroids, that it is only natural that an athlete, any athlete, would cheat to prolong his career. Flanagan showed why they are wrong, and why we should never excuse unethical conduct on the grounds that “anybody would do it.”

Boswell: Continue reading →

Cheater’s Remorse: ABC News Gets Ethical Without Knowing What “Ethical” Means

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

"Right now, cheating doesn't pay, so we're committed to ethics."

If you think ABC News is going to get any credit here for officially (sort of) banning the practice of paying so-called “licensing fees” to get exclusive interviews, I’m going to disappoint you. For there is nothing admirable about….

1….. engaging in the discredited practice of paying big money to central figures in news stories in order to gain access to them, and

2….disguising the practice by technically paying them inflated fees for the rights to photographs, even though the real reason for the pay-off is #1 above, then…

3….rejecting the practice when it leads to questions about how the network got an interview when it didn’t pay “licensing fees,” but…

4…noting that it might still go back to the unethical practice “perhaps once every couple of years,” since…

5….the other networks do it.

Yuck, pooie, ichhhh, petah!  ABC’s decision, outlined in a report by media watchdog Howard Kurtz, tells you everything you need to know about the state of ethics in broadcast journalism in general and ABC in particular, and I have seen prettier sights floating in an unflushed toilet bowl. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Dear God: Stop Calling”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The post about political candidates announcing that they have been “called’ by the Lord to run for high office continues to generate provocative, passionate and  perceptive responses, the latest from Glenn Logan,a blogger who covers the University of Kentucky Wildcats for their most discerning fans. Glenn’s comments here—sadly less frequent than they once were—are always thoughtful. Here is his comment on “Dear God: Stop Calling!”, putting to good use his expertise regarding competition of all sorts. I think you’ll agree that it is a most deserving “Comment of the Day”:

“Just because God calls us to do something does not mean that our effort will be successful, even if we do it the best we can. I would hope that most people understand this. Very often, it seems to be the case that the value, or the lesson, is in the journey rather than the outcome. This is pure assumption on my part — God has not seen fit to reveal his works to me, a fact for which I am eternally grateful.

“It is also possible that these worthies mistook their own desires as a call from God. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference, for whatever reason. If we forget, for a moment, that we are talking about politicians and just assume they believe what they say, this could be little more than a misunderstanding on their part.” Continue reading →