fairness

PolitiFact Bias: the Smoking Gun

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I could not resist this one. Colleague Bob Stone, better known as “Ethics Bob,” has jousted with me over the Tampa Bay Times’ “fact check” web page, PolitiFact. Though far from the worst of the newspaper fact check features, PolitiFact is routinely biased leftward, and sometimes worse than biased. Bob, and some other worthy visitors here, rise to PolitiFact’s defense whenever I smite it, though it deseves to be smought, or smitten, or whatever. Here is a ringing example of why Politifact drives me crazy, and a ridiculous display of biased reporting.

You may recall that  when she was House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi used military aircraft to travel to and from her home district in California, costing taxpayers millions of  dollars. This became a Tea Party rallying cry (as well it should have), and was taken as symbolic of the profligate Democratic Congress. John Boehner, the current Speaker, pledged during the 2010 campaign that if he took over, he would fly commercial. He reiterated the pledge after 2010’s red tide gave him the gavel. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: You’re the Prosecutor!

/ Jack Marshall / 88 Comments

The facts are simple. The ethics are not.

Near Shiner, Texas, a father arrived home to find a 47-year old man sexually molesting his 4-year-old daughter. So the father beat him to death, apparently in the process of stopping him.

Assuming that the father has no criminal record or history of violence, and that this is really what happened—and ignoring the fact that the incident occurred in Texas—your Ethics Quiz is this: If you were the local prosecutor, would you seek to prosecute the father? Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Ronan High School Principal Tom Stack

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This is a dream Gerald Molen had about Tom Stack. Stack is the one on the toilet.

Gerald Molen is a major Hollywood producer, and one of the best; among his accomplishments are “Rain Man,” “Schindler’s List,” “Jurassic Park,” and “Twister.” He was invited to deliver a speech to graduating seniors at Ronan High School in Ronan, Montana, and out of the graciousness of his heart,  agreed. Molen prepared a speech evoking the heroism of Oskar Schindler, and planned to ask the students to “imagine your future is a movie. Forty years from now, you’re writing a script about your accomplishments. What would that script look like?”

When Molen arrived to give his speech ( the high school is a 90 minute drive from his Montana home) the school  principal, Tom Stack, informed him that he had  decided to disinvite Moler. Apparently some parents had complained that Moler was a “right winger,” and objected to him speaking to the seniors. Stack didn’t care what the actual speech was about; mustn’t upset those progressive parents! Molen wasn’t welcome because of his political beliefs, and not even any specific belief. He was just one of those cruel and mean conservatives—you know, the ones Nancy Pelosi, Ed Schultz and Lawrence O’Donnell are always condemning—and his contagion couldn’t be allowed to spread. Molen, understandably insulted,  told the story to the Hollywood reporter.  Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Day: Jo-Ann Youngblood

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

“There is nothing wrong with being an average (mediocre) employee. Not everyone aspires to be in management. If the person meets the requirements of their current job, and they like the job and want to stay in the job, so be it. Stop trying to force people to get to the next level. The reality is that work is not the most important thing in everyone’s lives. People have more important things in their life than work. Work is simply a means to get the money we need to pay the mortgage and our other bills. Work is a low-priority event for most people. I’m only willing to do the bare minimum that it takes to get a paycheck every two weeks. As long as I am meeting the requirements of my job, than that is good enough. Don’t expect any more of me because I will not be a slave to any company.”

—-Commenter Jo-Ann Youngblood (of Tulsa, Oklahoma) in response to New York Times small business blogger Jay Golz’s 2011 post, “The Dirty Little Secret of Successful Companies,” in which he concluded that what dragged companies down were what he called “the sixes”—mediocre employees who just weren’t very good at their jobs.

George Costanza, hard at work.

Golz reprinted the comment today in a Times feature selecting highlights from the blog. I like Golz’s answer, which read in part:

“…As the owner of a business, I have the right to avoid hiring someone who only wants to do the bare minimum to get a paycheck. In fact, if I hire too many people with that attitude, I will be out of business. This is Capitalism 101, survival of the fittest. I operate in a very competitive market. I don’t have any patents, any special marketing magic, or any secret recipes. My companies can only exist and grow if they do a much-better-than-average job. Continue reading →

Graduation Ethics: the Cheering Mom and the Jerk’s Advantage

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Stipulated: for police to arrest proud South Carolina mother Shannon Cooper for loudly cheering during her daughter’s high school graduation over the weekend  was excessive, unreasonable, and stupid.  The graduation crowd  had been asked to hold their cheering until all students’ names had been called, and warned relatives of the graduates that they would be removed from the facility if they disobeyed the rule. As some parents inevitably do at every graduation, Cooper ignored the reasonable request, but this time, the defiant parent paid a steep price. Police charged her with disorderly conduct and placed her in a detention center.

Let me also make this clear, however: Cooper behaved like a selfish jerk. She is being showered with sympathy now, cast as Innocent Parent Abused For Being Proud of Her Baby, but that’s not who she is. She is the theater audience member who ignores the request to turn off her cell phone, and disrupts the actors and the audience when it rings, and the movie audience member who chats loudly during the show. She is the pet owner who doesn’t clean up after her Great Dane at the dog park. She is the able-bodied shopper who parks in  a handicapped parking space to run into the store “for just a minute.” She is the person who breaks into line, who brings 30 items to the “15 items only” checkout station, who takes more than her share of free food at events. She is, in short, the kind of person who doesn’t believe reasonable rules apply to her, and who constantly challenges the rest of us to “make a big deal” out of relatively minor demonstrations of contempt for everyone she comes into contact with. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Are Fake Dwarves Unethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Remember, Disney didn’t cast little people as the dwarfs either…he cast ink.

The advocacy group “Little People of America” is crying foul because the seven dwarves (or dwarfs, if you’re Walt Disney) in “Snow White and the Huntsman” were played not by real little people (who don’t like being called dwarves, just playing them for money) but by digitally-altered normal-sized actors.

A representative of the group told the gossip web site TMZ that the studios should be “casting people with dwarfism as characters that were specifically written to be played by little people … and other roles that would be open to people of short stature.”

Your Ethics Quiz of the Day: Do movie makers have an obligation to cast small people in small people’s roles? Is it unethical to use special effects to do avoid casting them? Continue reading →

“Pass the Trash” Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

School superintendents included.

Nancy Sebring was hired to be the new Omaha, Nebraska school superintendent and was scheduled to move into her position on July 1, having been hired in April.  Meanwhile, she was finishing up as outgoing Superintendent of Schools in Des Moines, Iowa. When Sebring suddenly resigned her Iowa post, which she had held for six years, on May 10, she and Des Moines school board president Teree Caldwell-Johnson explained that Sebring had stepped down early so she could attend to pressing family affairs before moving to Nebraska.

The real reason, however, was that Sebring had resigned as an alternative to being fired. The school board had discovered that she had used the school’s computer system to send more than forty e-mails to a man with whom she was having an adulterous affair, many of them sexually explicit. The e-mail trail began shortly before she announced her new job, and continued until she was forced to resign. Now Omaha knows about the e-mails too, thanks to a newspaper report. Sebring’s new job has ended before it started, and Omaha is desperately behind in finding a school superintendent. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Jenny McCarthy Body Count

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

Sure, bet your kid’s life on the wisdom of Jenny McCarthy. Makes sense to me!

From The Jenny McCarthy Body Count:

“In June 2007 Jenny McCarthy began promoting anti-vaccination rhetoric. Because of her celebrity status she has appeared on several television shows and has published multiple books advising parents not to vaccinate their children. This has led to an increase in the number of vaccine preventable illnesses as well as an increase in the number of vaccine preventable deaths. Jenny McCarthy has a body count attached to her name. This website will publish the total number of vaccine preventable illnesses and vaccine preventable deaths that have happened in the United States since June 2007 when she began publicly speaking out against vaccines.

“Is Jenny McCarthy directly responsible for every vaccine preventable illness and every vaccine preventable death listed here? No. However, as the unofficial spokesperson for the United States anti-vaccination movement she may be indirectly responsible for at least some of these illnesses and deaths and even one vaccine preventable illness or vaccine preventable death is too many.”

You can visit the Jenny McCarthy Body Count, which stands at 888 preventable deaths as of May 31, 2012, here.

Your Ethics Quiz is simple: Is the website fair?

My answer: sure.

McCarthy is an engaging, attractive, well-meaning woman and semi-talented comic actress who has misused her celebrity, as many celebrities do and have, to exert more influence over the public and media than her experience, education, intelligence, wisdom and expertise justify. Are the various television programs, media outlets and hysteria-peddlers also accountable for giving someone with McCarthy’s thin credentials and outsize influence a platform to frighten and mislead the many members of the public who are even more ignorant than she is? Absolutely. Does that reduce McCarthy’s culpability for spreading misinformation that leads to potentially deadly neglect of the health needs of children? Not one bit.

Using the Jenny McCarthy Body Count to call attention to the foolishness of anti- vaccine hysteria is a clever idea, and if it keeps even one parent from being misled by the medical nonsense pushed McCarthy and her allies. it is performing a public service.

_____________________________________

Pointer: Instapundit

Facts: Jenny McCarthy Body Count

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.

AM Cable News Horror: Fox Eliminates All Doubt

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Unfair, imbalanced, and proud of it!

Thoroughly traumatized and disillusioned by the blatant partisan cheerleading on CNN’s “American Morning”–courtesy of Carol Costello and Soledad O’Brien—-I made the quite idiotic mistake of having today’s morning coffee to “Fox and Friends,” the Fox News counterpart. Despite the fact that I already knew that jumping from CNN to Fox News as a respite from biased reporting was like leaving the Titanic for a quiet voyage on the Hindenburg, I was still shocked at what I saw.

Head morning stooge Steve Doocy introduced “a look back” at President Obama’s 2008 campaign. What followed was a long, slick attack ad, contrasting film footage of various Obama “Hope and Change”- themed speeches and campaign pledges, such as his infamous promise to halve the deficit by the end of his first term, intercut with contrasting images, statistics and graphs making a mockery of his words. “Ah!”, thought I. “They are showing the latest Republican National Committee ad. I certainly hope the Republicans paid the going rate for this, because it would be unethical for Fox to show a complete, three-minute GOP anti-Obama ad gratis on the pretense of analyzing it.” I have seen this trick on CNN and NBC, and it is abysmal broadcast journalism.

I am relieved to report, however, that this is not what Fox News did this morning, because the video was not made by the RNC, and it wasn’t produced by an independent pro-Republican PAC, either.

It was produced by Fox News. Continue reading →

Is It Fair For A Business To Discriminate Against the Homely?

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

 

Take your pick!

The EEOC is investigating a popular Boston area coffee shop chain, alleging that it discriminates in favor of attractive young waitresses to the detriment of older or more homely waitresses. The management of Marylou’s disputes the accusation, arguing that its hiring pool is disproportionately young and attractive.

I don’t want to get into the actual guilt or innocence here, but rather muse about the ethical issue. Should there be laws preventing employers from using attractiveness as a criteria in hiring, if it is relevant to the success of the business, or even if it is not? If a coffee shop owner’s patrons are overwhelmingly male, and the owner believes that having waitresses who look good in a starched uniform makes the customers happy and more likely to spend their money, why should the law prevent that? Is there anything really wrong with the conduct? Continue reading →