fairness

Ethics Bob Opens An Ethics Can of Worms, All Named “Nike”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Ethics Bob opens an ethics can of worms with his latest post, “Is It Ethical For Nike To Make It’s Shoes $4 a Day?” Among the worms, some older than dirt:

  • If workers agree to work for a given price, is the company’s obligation to pay them more?
  • Should any company pay less than a living wage for full-time work, whether or not desperate workers assent?
  • Is it better for a company to pay fair wages and go out of business because it can’t compete with competitors who pay less, than to keep creating jobs, products and wealth for investors by keeping the business profitable?
  • Is a US company justified in using local standards of fairness when it is doing business in a foreign country, rather than America’s ethical standards?
  • Can a company wash its hands of the arrangements made by its foreign contractors, no matter how unjust or exploitive?
  • Is it not per se unethical for a company like Nike to pay millionaire athletes obscene amounts of money for mere endorsements while it pays only $4 a day to the workers who make their shoes?

You can, and should, read Bob’s post here, and then we can argue about the above questions for the rest of our lives.

President Obama’s Unethical Illegal Immigration Ploy

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

The President has been doing his summer reading

The ultimate descent of character for any elected leader is when he or she places the retention of political power above core governing principles and the best interests of the governed. I did not expect Barack Obama to sink to that state, but with the announcement yesterday of his cynical and unethical refusal to enforce the immigration laws, he has.

His administration declared yesterday that it will grant an indefinite reprieve to thousands of illegal immigrants facing deportation, and permit them to stay and work legally. This, of course, does more than effect those apprehended illegals: it signals millions more that they are in no danger of having to be accountable for ignoring U.S. immigration procedures, and signals future illegals that the borders of the United States are essentially open. Continue reading →

To the Pro-Obama Race-Baiters: “Have You No Sense of Decency at All?”

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Ah, if only Joseph Welch and his well-aimed indignation were here today!

We knew, way back when President Obama was running for his first term, that the temptation to paint any opposition to his leadership or his policies as proof of racism would be irresistible  for the less ethical among his supporters in the Democratic Party and among the media. This came to pass, but we should prepare for much worse.  Now that the President has a thoroughly wretched record and is, to an extent I personally haven’t seen since the paranoid days of Richard Nixon, attempting to avoid accountability by blaming everyone in sight—a thoroughly unleaderly display—the race-baiters have served notice that they will be out in force this time as well, more shameless than ever. Continue reading →

Web Ethics Complaint File: Rotten Etiquette in “Etiquette Hell”

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

The topic: rude behavior in public dining

There is nothing quite as exquisitely frustrating as having one’s commentary misrepresented elsewhere by a sloppy blogger, and then watching the nasty comments pile up by posters who never bother to read the original post. That is what is happening to Ethics Alarms, and thus me, over at an otherwise virtuous site called Etiquette Hell.

The site, or blog, or forum, or whatever the hell it is commented on the Starbucks post, with the inept headline: “Hogging all the tables in a crowded establishment.” That’s not what the post was about. That is a misrepresentation. The post was specifically about coffee shops that provide free wi-fi, and how customers abuse the privilege and benefit by camping out with their laptops for unreasonable amounts of time,  forcing patrons who need to use the tables for the primary purpose they exist to provide—allowing someone to eat and drink comfortably—to go elsewhere, or to stand. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The Barefoot Contessa and the Compassion Bullies”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

He's young, sick, and poor. His mother must be right, then.

Gary, an occasional commenter, grabs the Comment of the Day with a provocative one on a post from quite a while back. To refresh your memory, a sick child named Enzo Pereda asked the Make-A-Wish Foundation to get him a one-on-one cooking experience with “The Barefoot Contessa,” Ina Garten. Garten refused, and the boy’s mother led an online shaming exercise, condemning Garten, encouraging boycotts of her Food Channel show, and launching other bloggers and media on an anti-Ina rampage. Ethics Alarms’ verdict was that the boy’s mother was engaged in compassion bullying, demanding that this cable celebrity do her child’s bidding, alter her own schedule and priorities, and grant her son’s arbitrary “wish” because he happened to be ill. Garten had no obligation whatsoever to do what someone, or even everyone, might consider a kind act, and the one who was acting unethically was Enzo’s mother.

Gary’s comment goes to the heart of what Ethics Alarms is all about. Here is his Comment of the Day on “The Barefoot Contessa and the Compassion Bullies.”  I’ll have some additional comments at the end: Continue reading →

The Starbucks Principles

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Hey you squatters! I'm coming over!

The First Starbucks Principle: If you create a free and open public benefit, the use of which is contingent on mutually understood conditions of fairness and reasonableness, eventually the utility of the benefit will be destroyed by individuals who refuse to be either fair or reasonable.

The Second Starbucks Principle: Once this occurs, there will necessarily  be rules and enforcement, conflict leading to consensus and a new social norm, or the elimination of the benefit.

Starbucks is in the midst of the First Starbucks Principle, but the Second is on the way. The nice, absurdly expensive coffee shops that created a culture where coffee-lovers could drink their lattes at leisure while working at their laptops or perusing  books and newspapers, are being choked to death by arrogant and cheapskate squatters who stake out the tables and remain for hours on end, often driving out customers who just want to sit down briefly and sip.

I had read about Starbucks’ New York City shops covering up outlets at the store, limiting the squatters to the battery storage limits of their laptops, a pretty mild reform. Then, last week, I saw the problem up close: a companion and I purchased coffee at a Starbucks clone, Caribou Coffee, and found that every table was occupied by one squatter with a laptop. Out of eight tables, only one had a cup or food of any kind. We had to go outside and find a bench; I guarantee that Caribou lost some business, because I would have purchased another drink. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Is It Wrong For A Rescuer To Sue The Victim He Rescued?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

"OK, Princess, you'll get my bill for this rescue in five to seven business days."

On March 11, 2009, Mark Kinkaid and David Kelley were riding in Kinkaid’s truck when they saw a detached bumper, headlights and all, lying in the middle of Rt. 23.  Smoke was rising up from the highway embankment,  and the two men concluded that someone was in trouble. The truck stopped, and they got out, hopped a barbed-wire fence, made their way down the steep highway embankment, where they saw a flaming Hummer. Theresa Tanner was trapped inside, screaming for help. They forced their way into the vehicle, pried a door open and pulled Tanner out. She was injured and burned, but after weeks in intensive care, survived.

Now Kinkaid and David Kelley are suing Tanner, claiming that the crash was her fault and that she is liable for the injuries they sustained in rescuing her. They have filed a lawsuit asking for damages of at least $25,000 each. “All I know is that I am not the same man I used to be,” says Kelley, a 39-year-old truck driver and father of five, who says the heavy smoke and fire that day damaged his lungs so that he can’t carry a laundry basket up the three flights of stairs in his home.

The law provides a rationale for such a lawsuit. “The precedent is clear: danger invites rescue … and if you’ve acted recklessly or negligently and someone gets hurt rescuing you, you could be in trouble,” says Stan Darling, a tort law specialist. A well-established principle known as “the Rescue Doctrine” holds that if someone is in peril because of their own negligence or recklessness, an injured rescuer can recover damages if he acted reasonably and can prove that his injuries were caused by the rescue attempt.

That’s the law, however. This is ethics, and your Ethics Quiz today is:

Is it ethical for a rescuer to sue the person he rescued? Continue reading →

Dear Newsweek: We Can Figure Out That Michele Bachmann Is A Little Off Without The Crazy Photos, But Thanks For Your Concern.

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Holy Crap!

When I put up yesterday’s post about Nancy Pelosi’s excessive and uncivil accusations about Republicans, I went searching for an appropriate photo. I found one that I came this close to using, because it was angry, like the quote, and just a little bit deranged-looking. (Pelosi has a lot of photos out there that make her look quite mad.) I didn’t use it. I decided it wasn’t fair.

Of course, I have to try to be fair; I’m an ethicist, and this is an ethics blog. Journalists, however, don’t…wait, aren’t they supposed to be fair too?

Not in Tina Brown’s book, or rather magazine. Newsweek made the choice to be the MSNBC of pulp even before Brown took over, and now it is officially shameless. Because Newsweek, like its almost as moribund rival Time, once was a respected journalistic enterprise, some of Newsweek’s now non-operable reputation for integrity remains. It can still do damage with its cheap tricks. That’s why its wild-eyed cover photo of Michele Bachman is so despicable. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce, Ethics Hero: Name Calling and One-Way Civility On the Left

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

John Boehner was just like this during debt ceiling negotiations. Well, sort-of. OK, he really wasn't like this at all, but I don't like him, so it's not uncivil for me to say he was.

The popular Democratic, progressive, liberal and news media (I know I’m being redundant here) slur for the Republican House and its Tea Party warriors during and after the budget ceiling debate was “terrorists,” suggesting an analogy between the GOP insisting on major expenditure cuts in the budget as a condition for raising the debt ceiling, and political and religious extremists who threaten to kill people if they don’t get their way. Needless to say, it’s a disgraceful, dishonest, illogical and slanderous comparison. Whether the GOP’s negotiating stance was fair, reasonable or right can be debated; that the intent of the strategy was to strengthen the nation’s financial health is not.

To many of the Republicans involved, incurring more debt without a guarantee of serious deficit and debt reduction in the future was more dangerous than allowing the nation to default on its obligations. Add to that the fact that many in the Tea Party  leadership believe that the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling was overblown, and it is clear: the Republicans were using their control over the immediate fate of something progressives  wanted more than conservatives as a bargaining chip in a political disagreement. It may have been irresponsible; it may have been a risk; it may have been a bluff. But it was not terrorism. It was politics. Hardball politics no doubt, but well within accepted standards

Oh, I forgot: there is another reason the Republicans weren’t acting like terrorists. They weren’t threatening to kill anybody, and they didn’t kill anybody. Continue reading →

The Ethics of Interviewing Kids on Camera

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

 

Art Linkletter was right: "Kids say the darndest things!"

When I initially learned about  Chicago TV station WBBM editing  an interview with a 4-year-old boy last month to make him sound like an aspiring gang-member when he actually said that he wanted to be a policeman, I decided to pass. I try to avoid making obvious observations, and nobody could defend the conduct of the station’s editors, who intentionally truncated the child’s remarks to the interviewer to make them sound chilling. The larger question of whether the child should have been interviewed at all, however, is more challenging. We see kids being interviewed on TV all the time, and it is far from certain that reporters are doing so ethically.

In the wake of  the WBBM incident, journalistic ethics expert Al Thompkins reprinted his guidelines for interviewing juveniles on the Poynter site. I’m an admirer of Thompkins, but I found his guidelines almost as chilling as the distorted interview itself. Here is his guidance on the issue of interviewing kids, with my reactions: Continue reading →