Never Mind Bush Heads on Pikes, Is THIS Responsible Journalism?

From MSNBC:

(The answer is “No.”)

If this is the level of respect and civility we can expect from partisans during the campaign, we are all in trouble.Any responsible news organization would fire Martin Bashir. As we all know, MSNBC, proud employers of Al Sharpton and Ed Schultz, is not such an organization.

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Pointer: Twitchy

Source: YouTube

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.

The Matthew Owens Attack: For Obama, Impossible Choices and Deserved Accountability

Actually, Matthew Owens DOES look a little like my son...Of course, it's hard to tell...

From the Huffington Post:

“Alabama police are trying to track down a mob that beat a man into critical condition — leaving their battered victim with the words, ‘Now that’s justice for Trayvon.’ Cops told WKRG that Matthew Owens got in an argument with some kids playing basketball at a court in the city of Mobile on Saturday night. The kids left and a group of some 20 adults arrived at Owens’ front doorstep, armed with chairs, brass knuckles, pipes and paint cans. The group, all African American, allegedly beat him into a bloody pulp before someone uttered the words that connected the crime to the death of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed teen who was shot and killed in Florida by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman.”

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UPDATE (4/25): New reports question some of the details above. The dispute may have started over thefts in the neighborhood witnessed by  Owens’ niece; a neighbor says that Owens had been in disputes frequently; police now say that the beating was administered by only members of the group, with the rest standing by and watching. There has been at least one arrest. Also of note: Owens’ sister’s claim that one of the attackers said “Now that’s justice for Trayvon” may have been corroborated by other neighbors.

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This was completely predictable, and indeed it is only the worst, not the first, incident in which an attack on a white victim was linked to “justice” for Trayvon Martin. Now, the reasons I laid out a month ago that made President Obama’s reckless comments about the Sanford, Florida killing divisive and dangerous ought to be obvious to all, but if not, here are some questions to consider: Continue reading

Lawrence O’Donnell and the Missing Religious Bigotry Ethics Alarm at MSNBC

Really?

Religious bigotry? Hey, whatever works!

Is this really how it is going to be? Are the media protectors of President Obama really going to stoop to anti-Mormon bigotry to attack Mitt Romney?  First New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow writes disparagingly about the Mormon “magic underpants” with nary a peep of  protest or discipline from his bosses at the New York Times, and now MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell spews out this last night as Romney’s three primary wins were being tallied:

“Mormonism was created by a guy in upstate New York in 1830 when he got caught having sex with the maid and explained to his wife that God told him to do it. Forty-eight wives later, Joseph Smith’s lifestyle was completely sanctified in the religion he invented to go with it. Which Mitt Romney says he believes.” Continue reading

Ethics Quiz: What if the Westboro Baptist Church Is Just Kidding?

I know just how you feel, Homer.

This is a unique Ethics Alarms quiz, because I am offering it while having absolutely no idea what the answer is, or even, perhaps, what the right question should be.

The story you can read here describes the Westboro Baptist Church’s interactions with an openly gay DJ. You will recall that the church’s followers have achieved infamy by loudly protesting on the scene of private funerals for military personnel killed in combat, with “God Hates Gays” being one of their signature protest signs. Yet the DJ, when he visited the group, found them to be friendly, unthreatening, civil and kind. They hugged him. The asked him over for dinner.  The surprised and puzzled writer suggests that the Fred Phelps followers’ act may be a form of First Amendment-testing performance art, sort of like Bill Maher. Maybe they aren’t really hateful after all. Maybe they just act that way!

My Ethics Quiz question for you to consider:

Does the fact that they can be kind, tolerant and accepting in the privacy of their abode make the Westboro Baptist Church protesters less unethical, more unethical, or does it make no difference at all? Continue reading

Time To Retire Editorial Cartoons, With Gratitude

The nuanced subtlety of Pulitzer Prize winning Herb Block. Translation: "Nixon's a crook." Brilliant!!!

All right, hear me out. I love cartoons. I used to aspire to being a cartoonist. I have good friends who are cartoonists, and I know there are cartoonists who are strong contributors to Ethics Alarms. But for many years it has appeared to me that editorial cartoons have become an increasingly archaic form of commentary, one that misinforms the public and contributes to the venom and lack of nuance in public discourse.

Cartoons, by their very nature, deal in caricature, exaggeration and extremes for metaphorical and humorous effect. The practical effect of this, however, is that the opinions expressed through cartoons are also “supported” in a manner that would be outrageous in a written opinion piece. I know: you can’t hold a cartoon to the same standard as an op-ed. Fine—then don’t put it on the editorial pages. Continue reading

Ethics Dunce: Rep. Debby Wasserman-Schultz

Honestly, if you had told me that the Democrats could find someone to chair their national organization who was as big a buffoon, hypocrite and embarrassment as Michael Steele, I would have said that it was impossible. And then along came Debby...

On “Meet the Press,” the Democratic National Committee Chair. Rep. Debby Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.), reacted indignantly to the Rush Limbaugh-Sandra Fluke incident, saying in part,

“…And the bottom line is that the leading candidate on the Republican side for president couldn’t even bring himself to call Rush Limbaugh’s comments outrageous and call him out and ask him to apologize… Rush Limbaugh, in that apology, said that he was trying to be humorous. I don’t know any woman in America, David, that thinks that being called a slut is funny.”

By Wasserman-Schultz’s own conduct, however, we may apparently conclude that she thinks it is funny when a woman is called a “dumb twat” and a “cunt,” both of which vulgarities were directed at Republican women by HBO’s Bill Maher. Continue reading

Comment of the Day: “Charles M. Blow’s Anti-Mormon Tweet, Chapter 2…”

Michael, who is now the Ethics Alarms all-time leader in the Comment of the Day category, scores another with a thought-provoking post inspired by the New York Times’ stunning disinterest in its columnist tweeting a religious slur about Mitt Romney. I’ll have some added reflections at the end. Here is his Comment of the Day onCharles M. Blow’s Anti-Mormon Tweet, Chapter 2…”:

“I remember an article about this when I was in college. In analyzing how the news media treated different races, they came up with the PC Hierarchy. Anyone higher on the hierarchy can criticize or be insensitive to anyone below them. If there is a conflict between two groups, the one higher on the PC scale is assumed to be right”

PC Hierarchy of RacesContinue reading

Unethical Quote of the Week: Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz

“Passionate, organized hatred is the element missing in all that we do to try to change the world. Now is the time to spread hate, hatred for the rich.”

—-Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, a retired professor from Cal State East Bay, addressing a rally this weekend of the Occupy Oakland  group, which fought police in a pitched battle that ended with 400 arrests.

I said that the Occupy movement would end badly, and it is, not that it should have taken advanced psi-powers to divine that a protest based on ignorance, envy and anarchy with no practical and constructive proposals to offer would eventually end in violence, anger and ugliness. Hate is what it has come down to now, and the party and supporters of the President who came to office promising hope are now pinning their hopes on a sad movement fueled by hate. To say that the protests are also unethical is to flog the obvious. They have cost communities millions of dollars that will be made up in cut services; they have soiled parks and public places, they have provided a meeting place for thugs, vagrants, criminals, and worse ( an Occupier was arrested over the weekend for strangling his parents), and they have embodied a cultural rejection of personal responsibility.

Not to mention an escape from reality.“The fact that everyone now talks about the 99 percent, the 1 percent – that shows Occupy’s won,”  Carter Lavin, 23, of Oakland told the press. “The debate was about debt, not jobs. Now it’s about jobs.”

Sure, Carter. Continue reading

Comment of the Day: “Let’s Have An Open Debate on Both Sides …”

Blameblakeart’s comment to my post about the school district that condemned a student’s high school newspaper anti-gay adoption column, part of a “pro vs. con” feature approved by the editors and faculty advisor, illustrates a point that was the subtext of my post but never explicitly stated.  It should have been, but blameblakeart shows how it’s done. The productive, educational, fair and persuasive way to rebut any argument is by using facts and logic, not to just condemn it as “offensive” or “bullying,” or to discourage future expressions of unpopular points of view. That is true in school and out of it.

Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, “Let’s Have An Open Debate on Both Sides of This Controversial Issue. Wait…Your Side Offends Me. Shut Up. You’re A Bully.”  I’ll have a comment at the end: Continue reading

“Let’s Have An Open Debate on Both Sides of This Controversial Issue. Wait…Your Side Offends Me. Shut Up. You’re A Bully.”

The Shawano (Wisconsin) High School’s student newspaper decided to publish a “Pro vs. Con” feature on the contentious issue of gay couples adopting children. A student wrote a column advocating each position.

In his column headlined “Should Gay Couples Be Allowed To Adopt?” student Brandon Wegner catalogued various arguments against gay adoption, and included this:

“If one is a practicing Christian, Jesus states in the Bible that homosexuality is (a) detestable act and sin which makes adopting wrong for homosexuals because you would be raising the child in a sin-filled environment….A child adopted into homosexuality will get confused because everyone else will have two different-gendered parents that can give them the correct amount of motherly nurturing and fatherly structure. In a Christian society, allowing homosexual couples to adopt is an abomination.”

A male couple raising a child who goes to the school saw the paper, and strenuously objected to school administrators, saying that the piece was hateful and would encourage bullying. Naturally, the school district immediately caved and threw the student, the paper and the column under a metaphorical bus, because that’s what school administrators do. If an anti-gay bigot had objected to the pro-gay adoption feature, it is even money that the school would have done the same.

An official mea culpa was immediately released: Continue reading