fairness

Ethics Dunce: ABC’s Brian Ross

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

Now that I think about it, nobody gets shot in Pixar movies. I wonder if movies about violence vigilantes need to be regulated…

He just couldn’t help himself. Learning of the horrible Batman theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado, ABC reporter Brian Ross got on the air and reported a possible “tea party link” with the killer, James Holmes, and if you don’t think this sent a thrill up his leg, I have some gold mine shares to sell you. Anything to smear conservatives: why was he looking at tea party web pages, any more than PETA sites, or Parcheesi fan sites? Because, you see, the tea parties are violent—don’t you remember? They inspired that guy to shoot Gaby Giffords! Where else would you expect to find a madman killer?

It was fantasy, of course, and Ross and ABC duly apologized, but never mind: it worked. Confirmation bias is a sure thing. I was in a Food Court at LAX today, and heard someone at the table next to me eating similar unidentifiable swill say, “Did you hear? One of those tea party guys shot all those people!” I finally got to my room in Sun Valley (it was easier to get to Mongolia than Sun Valley) to check what she was talking about. So you see, Brian? Mission accomplished!

Others are politicizing the Aurora shooting in only slightly less outrageous ways, mostly with the sadly predictable rush of anti-gun advocates to point to the slaughter and say, “See? Guns bad.” Then comes the related cognitive dissonance trick, linking gun rights to automatic weapons to madmen and criminals using such weapons to the tragic deaths resulting from said use, hence Republicans and conservatives are really allied with killers and murderers, which gives us some insight into their true character.

I’m sure Brian Ross approves.

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Facts: Huffington Post

Graphic: Shout Omaha

Ethics Hero: Sen. John McCain

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

It’s good to have the old maverick doing what he does best.

“Bachmann!”

Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minnesota’s shame, used her oxymoronic presence on the House Intelligence Committee to argue in a June letter to the State Department and a letter this week to fellow Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison, that  Huma Abedin, the top aide of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, may be a security risk  because Abedin’s late father, mother, and brother had or have connections to the Muslim Brotherhood.  Abedin’s position, Bachmann suggested  ominously, ‘‘affords her routine access to the secretary and policy-making.’’ Her letter to Ellison was signed by  five other Republicans: Reps. Trent Franks of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Thomas Rooney of Florida and Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia.

Sen McCain angrily took to the Senate floor to call this example of ethnic profiling and Muslim bigotry what it is: Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The Ice Child” and Staging Theft Ethics”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Arts blogger Jeremy Barker contributes a provocative counter-argument to my stance in the controversy over a D.C. based theater company that borrowed/adapted/stole an original production concept from a New York company without attribution or permission.  My position was (and is) that no rule, principle or law designed to discourage such conduct could avoid suffocating legitimate adaptations, mutations and new uses of  ideas devised by others, with devastating effects on creative expression. This is one of the great ethics controversies in the world of art, and I am glad to see it back in the ring.

Here is Jeremy’s Comment of the Day on my post, “The Ice Child” and Staging Theft Ethics.

“Jack–I just came across this piece and wanted to respond because I think, in quoting me, you ignore part of my argument, and I’m curious if you can clarify your perspective.

“Specifically, I feel like your caveated argument in favor of Factory 449 is based on the sense that it’s common practice to borrow such design or staging elements in text-based theater. I agree, it is. But if we were speaking of a specific author’s text, I think most commenters would have swung the other way. We tend to protect the playwright’s text in a different fashion than we do a design concept. A writer could be accused on plagiarism for either (a) imitating a distinctive plot, or (b) appropriating the same words. Yes, we can argue about what is an acceptable form of “referencing” (no one thinks Arthur Laurents wrote Romeo & Juliet, for instance) and what crosses the line. Often, this applies to how the text is used. But we understand and appreciate a playtext as a protected, distinctive thing.

“Indeed, I’d argue that this logic, which privileges the text, is the basis on which people in this thread are defending Factory 449′s appropriation. Since it wasn’t the same “play,” by which they mean “play text,” it’s not really the same thing, ergo, it’s not ripping someone off wholesale. Continue reading →

Banning the Privacy Bomb

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Yes, I think posting this photo is a lousy thing to do to your dog, too.

The stories come out routinely, and the opposing opinions are predictable. A boorish date dumps a woman via arrogant e-mail, which is promptly forwarded to thousands, making him a national laughing stock and pariah. A movie star sends an angry and mean-spirited message to his teenage daughter, who places it in the hands of the celebrity-devouring media…which then use it to savage the star’s reputation.  A Harvard law student takes an e-mail sent by a friend and fellow-student as a follow-up to a contentious discussion about race, and forwards it to minority advocates on campus, who then condemn the “friend” as a racist. A model live-tweets her encounter with the married actor sitting next to her on a flight, as he engages in awkward flirtation. In each case, defenders of the punitive distributor of the embarrassing communication argue that the victim deserved it, while critics of the conduct insist that it is a betrayal of privacy and trust.
We need to decide, as a culture, whether we believe that reasonable expectations of privacy should be respected or not; indeed, whether they should survive or not. Those who endorse, defend and encourage the kind of conduct in these incidents and many more are, whether they realize it or not, fouling the nest of our national culture and community, making not just privacy, but also friendship and intimacy, almost impossible. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce and Unethical Quote of the Day: Jon Dawson

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

“OH, you mean the one with the word “Column” at the beginning?”

—-Jon Dawson, alleged columnist for the Kinston Free Press, in snotty response to my query regarding his fake story that prompted my recent post, “Ethics Train Wreck in a Little Tea Pot.” I asked if his story was a hoax.

Yeah, you’re right…if I had seen the photo first, I might have been more suspicious….

I guess his answer means yes. I also guess somebody ought to tell all the other local news and city beat columnists around the country that the heading “column” by their names is supposed to be understood as “Don’t believe a thing I say.” Someone should also let national writers like E.J. Dionne, Robert Samuelson, Kathleen Parker, John Avlon, Andrew Sullivan…anyone with a column, really…that their brand of punditry and journalism is supposed to be assumed to be satirical and tongue-in-cheek, because “column” gives proper notice that the “facts” the column contains are likely to be hooey.

Back when I lived in Boston, there was a city beat columnist I enjoyed and read often. He was clever and funny, and his specialty was local Boston stories. His name is Mike Barnacle. He’s not in Boston any more: they ran him out of town for making up stories or embellishing them with phony facts. (He is now seen on MSNBC, where facts are beside the point.) I thought they were a bit rough on Mike in Boston, and I wonder why he didn’t inform his paper that the fact that he wrote a “column” gave him leave to test the gullibility of his readers every day. Continue reading →

Sympathy Abuse: The Unethical Death Announcement Request

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

 

Take ’em or leave ’em.

The Miami Herald reports that Robert Maurius Reno, a younger brother of former U.S Attorney General Janet Reno has died. In lieu of flowers, the family is asking  friends to give to the Obama campaign –“even if they are Republicans.”

Wrong. Ethics foul.

I know that the Obama campaign has been promoting its tasteless brainstorm of encouraging wedding invitees and birthday celebrants to give money to the campaign rather than a gift, but this is emotional extortion. A citizen has a right to his or her own political activity, and short of using logic, facts and the power of persuasion to prompt a shift in loyalties, it is an abuse of the power of friendship and a misuse of sympathy to exploit a death to make someone give support to a cause, a party or a candidate that he or she would normally oppose.

If a family can compel Republicans to give to the campaign of a Democratic candidate, then it can use a family death to make an anti-abortion advocate give to Planned Parenthood, an Orthodox Jew contribute to Hamas, and a Red Sox fan buy a season ticket to watch the Yankees. This turns a generous and normal desire to show respect for the deceased and support for the grieving family into a trap to make mourners choose between violating their core beliefs and rejecting the wishes of the family.

The device is unfair, unmannerly, offensive and crude, and places politics over friendship and good taste. So is Obama’s birthday and wedding registry scheme, but that only  crossed an ethical line, while this obliterates it. Republican or Democrat, if you’re going to try this strong-arm tactic on me, don’t expect to see me at the funeral.

Or anywhere, for that matter. And I might just give double to the other side.

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Pointer: James Taranto

Facts: Miami Herald

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

 

 

Ethics Quiz: Twitter Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

An Ethics Alarms Quiz for a hot sleepy Sunday:

Grant’s Tomb or the National Stupid Question Monument

Young Georgia Ford of Great Britain wasn’t a veteran of Twitter, and when she sent a tweet to her followers naively asking if the Wimbledon tennis tournament was “always held in London,” she had no reason to expect that viral re-tweeting would make her an international laughingstock. It did though, as thousands of Twitterphiles, and some celebrities, pounced on her question and mocked her by name. “Wow, that Georgia Ford tweet from earlier is possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” tweeted one Laurence T. Green, who obviously does not follow the speeches of Joe Biden, the political opinions of Bill Maher, or the periodic pronouncements of Rep. Allen West. Embarrassed and humiliated, with her name being made a synonym for ignorance, Georgia closed her Twitter account.

Your Ethics Quiz: Was Georgia’s treatment by the Twittersphere unethical, or was her tweet fair game for ridicule? Continue reading →

Comment of the Day on “Ethics Quiz: Jury Nullification For A Molestation Victim”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Here is the Comment of the Day, Eeyoure’s deliciously indignant dressing-down of the jury whose verdict was discussed in today’s post, “Ethics Quiz: Jury Nullification For A Molestation Victim”:

“The jury’s verdict was absolutely perverse.  The jury ignored truth about specific law for which they were responsible for finding guilt or innocence, where evidence existed beyond reasonable doubt that the law was broken.  Simultaneously, the jury concluded that irrelevant evidence, plus the defendant’s testimony, proved guilt beyond doubt of a person who was not charged, not on trial, for breaking of law for which the jury was not responsible for finding guilt or innocence.

“The jury’s verdict was the culmination of an orgy of medieval reparations-groupthink, a determined seizing of lowest available ground in the terrain of societal unrest.  The members of the jury made themselves a proud, self-serving, self-satisfying gang of “justice”-dolers, caught-up in extolling the glories of vengeance.  This was a jury that obviously considered with the utmost gravitas (that is sarcasm) the notion that “justice delayed is justice denied.”  No matter how long was delayed the justice THEY felt was due, they saw it as their sovereign right to determine that such justice would not be denied, and to determine who would deliver (that is, who did deliver) that justice, blameless.  (more sarcasm coming) What a shining moment in jury-rigged righting of historical wrongs! (end sarcasm)

“Well, chances are rather high that none of the jurors will ever read here.  So, they can just each go their merry way, keep marching merrily along as ignorantly and unthoughtfully as ever, proud of the “justice” they have served.  Without ever taking the simplest, tiny, extra step of considering, for example, by their own jury-“reasoning,” how their verdict thoroughly justifies any friends, allies, or sympathizers of the old man who was beaten in the retirement home stalking THEM (the jury members and their hero) for the rest of THEIR (the jurors’ and hero’s) days – then suddenly, at a convenient and opportune moment, beating every one of THEM every bit as savagely as was beaten the man by the assailant whom they let off the hook.

“With “justice” like this jury has upheld, who needs to hold a stinkin’ court?”

Ethics Quiz: Jury Nullification For A Molestation Victim

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Really?

A San Jose jury acquitted William Lynch of criminal assault, despite his admission that he had beaten a former priest who had molested him as a child. After the acquittal, Lynch was cheered outside the courtroom.

Lynch told reporters he fully expected to be convicted, but had hoped that his testimony would call more attention to the child abuse problems in the Catholic Church. He visited his victim, Rev. Jerold Lindner, at the retirement home where he now lives.  The 65 year-old who allegedly molested Lynch and his younger brother in 1975 was confronted by Lynch, and when he told Lynch that he didn’t remember him, Lynch attacked him and “beat him almost to death” according to witnesses.

Your Ethics Alarms Quiz question:

Was the jury verdict ethical? Continue reading →

Rest in Peace, Andy: Mayberry Wasn’t Racist

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

In the wake of Andy Griffith’s death today, a friend of mine wrote this on Facebook: “If you’re waxing nostalgic about Mayberry as an idyllic 1960s Southern town, remember that it had no Negroes living there. Is it any wonder that show was so popular in the midst of the turmoil of the civil rights movement?”

The sentiment was undoubtedly motivated by good intentions, but boy, it is unfair. America was a largely segregated society in 1960, when “The Andy Griffith Show” began its trek to television Valhalla, and it was not up to the producers or writers of a folksy sitcom set in small North Carolina town to remedy that, protest it, or comment on it. This wasn’t “Andy Kills a Mockingbird.” It was a comedy, and a comedy unique and precious for celebrating basic ethical values like kindness, loyalty, friendship, tolerance, community, cooperation, patience, respect and virtue. There were no racist sentiments or attitudes expressed in Mayberry, and no reason to doubt that if a black family moved into the town, they would have been embraced, appreciated, and treated like everyone else. The fact that this may not have been true of a real North Carolina town of that period is as irrelevant as pointing out that real Scottish villages don’t disappear and reappear centuries later like Brigadoon. Continue reading →