integrity

Would You Buy A Magazine From This Man?

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

NewsMax is a conservative  magazine that is really as doctrinaire and ideological as critics accuse Fox News of being. (Compared to NewsMax, Fox is the Daily Kos.) It also has strange ideas about whom we should admire. I just heard a radio ad for NewsMax that trumpeted, “Dick Morris says it’s his favorite magazine!”

This endorsement is supposed to make me, or anyone who values basic ethical values (including, presumably, many of those core conservative values NewsMax is always invoking), run out and subscribe?  Knowing what I know about Dick Morris, I would have sworn his favorite magazine would be “Con Man Today,”  “Back-stabber’s Weekly,” or ” Hustler.” Continue reading →

Reporters, Spouses, Conflicts, and Dissonance

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The Washington Post’s ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, recently wrote a column discussing the seeming conflict of interest created for a Post reporter because of who she married.

Juliet Eilperin covers climate change for the paper. Her husband, Andrew Light, is an expert on the same topic, and coordinates international climate policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. Alexander says that while Eilperin often gets quotes from her husband’s organization, he is never involved, and that the Eilperin-Lights maintain a strict separation of their careers. None of which answers the question: can she be an objective reporter on her Post beat, which happens to be in the same field where her husband makes his living?

The Post ethics rules, Alexander duly points out, say the Post is “pledged to avoid conflict of interest or the appearance of conflict of interest, wherever and whenever possible.” Obviously, there is an appearance of a conflict of interest here. Perhaps Eilperin would be vigorously critical of a policy pronouncement coordinated by her husband, or maybe she would consciously or unconsciously allow her affection and commitment to her husband color her reporting. We don’t know, and she may not even know. One might think that we would know she was unbiased if she filed stories that put her husband, his views or his employers in a bad light, but even that isn’t certain. It might mean she was over-compensating for bias. It might mean that her views on climate change policy had soured because Andrew was in the dog house, or that she had come to resent his work for the Center, because it took time away from the family. Either way, the fact that Eilperin’s husband is linked to the climate change issue and particular views on that issue must exercise a powerful influence over her judgment.

The principle in force at work here is cognitive dissonance, often referred to in the media but seldom correctly. A psychologist named Leon Festinger devised a scale—-vertical, with zero in the center, extending upwards from +1 to +100, and downwards from -1 to -100. The Cognitive Dissonance Scale is used to measured how positive and negative attitudes toward people and things subconsciously influenced attitudes toward other people and things that they had connections to and associations with, through the involuntary reduction of cognitive dissonance. For example, you dislike an author and his books. You love a particular political cause. You discover that the author is a vocal supporter of that cause. This creates cognitive dissonance that your mind must resolve; you cannot continue to hold such a low opinion of the author and such a high opinion of his cause. You will change the values to bring them more into line with each other; you will reduce the dissonance.

If you love the cause more than you detest the author (using Festinger’s scale, imagine that the author is a  minus 6, and the cause is a plus 16), the cognitive dissonance will be resolved by your gradually feeling more positively toward the author, and conceivably, less positively toward the cause, so they eventually they meet or almost meet around plus 10. Suddenly, you have more interest in the author’s books. Your attitude has been adjusted. You may also be more open-minded when listening to adversaries of the cause you once blindly supported, because its value is lower, even though you didn’t consciously change your opinion. Cognitive dissonance and the process whereby it silently adjusts and manipulates attitudes explains much of advertising, political affiliations, biases, and how powerful, popular leaders, celebrities and institutions  influence public culture for good or ill. It also explains why close relationships can create conflicts of interest.

There are many movies about lawyers in which, for dramatic or comic effect, a trial pits an attorney-husband against his attorney-wife (“Adam’s Rib”) or an attorney-parent against an attorney-son or daughter (“Class Action”). But in real life, these adversary situations usually require informed consent by the clients, because they raise suspicions. Would a husband really go all out to make the woman he was married to look like a fool in court? In the movies, there is usually a manufactured competition between the related lawyers, but the appearance of conflict still remains. Depending on the situation, one attorney-spouse’s relationship to the other could create such a likely conflict that even client consent wouldn’t justify continuing the adversary representation. Suppose, for example, that the attorney-wife knew that her husband’s job at the firm depended on him winning. She has a stake in him winning the case now. How can she give all her loyalty to her client, who is paying  her to defeat her husband?

She can’t. And though ombudsman Andrews ties himself in knots to argue that Eilperin is in a different position, she isn’t. She has a stake in her husband’s success, which is on only one side of the climate debate.  She also has a stake in keeping his love, respect and trust. Can we trust her to be completely unbiased? Presumably, if he isn’t in her dog house, Andrew Light is very high on Juliet Eilperin’s dissonance scale. If she is to be properly objective as a reporter, his positions and those of his employer should be right at the middle of the scale—zero, neutral. But that will create dissonance. That position will eventually, inevitably carry a positive value, because she associates it with her husband.

Her marriage creates, therefore, at least an appearance of bias, and probably actual bias. There is nobody to consent to the conflict, because the equivalent of the lawyer’s client for a reporter isn’t the paper she works for, but the public itself. Short of the Post holding a public referendum, the public can’t  consent or refuse to consent. Nor should they have to. Surely Eilperin can report on another topic. Surely the Post has other qualified reporters who aren’t married to warriors in the climate change wars.

Alexander closes his article by giving Eilperin the benefit of the doubt: “It’s a close call, but I think she should stay on the beat. With her work now getting special scrutiny, it will become clear if the conflict is real.” Wait a minute…what about that “appearance” phrase in the Post’s own Code? Real or apparent conflicts are prohibited; the whole point is not to wait to see “if the conflict is real,” meaning, I suppose, that Eilperin starts obviously slanting her climate change reporting. Some observers think she’s doing this already, and that’s the point. Because of who she married, we can’t trust that she will successfully battle cognitive dissonance and give objective analysis.

If the Post cares about its integrity and avoiding the appearance of conflicts of interest, they need a new climate change reporter, and Juliet Eilperin needs a new beat.

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Cocoa Krispies and the Curse of the Transparent Lie

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I have always been bothered by public lies that nobody could possibly believe. It is widely believed that such lies are harmless, since nobody could possibly be deceived by them. They are harmful, however, because their use suggests that lying doesn’t matter— it’s trivial, something everybody does, and nobody should expect truthfulness when a lie will serve.  The culture is already far too accepting of transparent lies. Politics is the most prominent example. Because the public expects candidates for high office to lie about their intent, they are amazingly forgiving when campaign lies become apparent. And because we  knowingly vote for well-meaning liars (or so we think), some  really dangerous, corrupt liars not only get elected, but can survive public exposure as liars. After all, say their supporters, enablers and henchmen, it is only a matter of degree.

Transparent lies, therefore, numb us to the hard stuff. They make us cynical, and the make us tolerant of liars. Then there is the possibility that the spokesperson who utters an obvious whopper really does think we’ll believe it. That’s an insult, profoundly disrespectful, and we should resent it.

The Ethics Scoreboard had a  feature called “The David Manning Trivial Liar of the Month” to highlight the public lies nobody could possibly believe. It was named for Sony’s “defense” when it was revealed that the movie critic, “David Manning,”  who they advertised as raving about lousy Sony films like “The Animal” (Starring Rob Schneider as a guy who accidentally has animal DNA grafted…oh, never mind.) was a fake invented by their marketing division. Sony said, in essence, that it was no big deal because everyone knows those critical raves in movie ads are mostly lies anyway. I didn’t carry the feature over to Ethics Alarms, because the kind of transparent, shameless, “I’m going to say this anyway even though it will have America rolling its eyes” lie the feature was designed to condemn didn’t come around every month. Naturally, the minute  Ethics Alarms debuts, here comes the Kellogg people with a classic.

Suddenly, boxes of Kellogg’s breakfast cereals like Cocoa Krispies have a huge yellow label across the front proclaiming “Now Helps Your Child’s IMMUNITY.”   Next to the banner is an announcement that the cereal is soaked with antioxidants, upping the daily vitamin requirement provided by a serving from 10% to 25%.  This has attracted the attention of the FDA , consumer advocates, and nutritionists, who say that the claim that a bowl of Cocoa Krispies that have been sprayed with extra vitamins can improve any child’s immunity to disease is either “dubious” or “ridiculous,” depending on whether you want to be nice about it.  USA Today quoted Marion Nestle, nutrition professor at New York University, as fuming, “The idea that eating Cocoa Krispies will keep a kid from getting swine flu, or from catching a cold, doesn’t make sense. Yes, these nutrients are involved in immunity, but I can’t think of a nutrient that isn’t involved in the immune system.”

The immunity claim isn’t  Kellogg’s obvious lie, however, as hard as that may be to believe. This is, also quoted in the USA Today story:

“It was not created to capitalize on the current H1N1 flu situation,” spokeswoman Susanne Norwitz says. “Kellogg developed this product in response to consumers expressing a need for more positive nutrition.”

Right. It is just a coincidence that in the middle of a swine flu epidemic, with dire predictions of world plague and the Dustin Hoffman movie “Outbreak” playing on every cable system, with parents sending their kids to the doctor as soon as they sneeze, scared silly by news reports of perfectly healthy children catching the H1N1 flu and dropping dead in days, Cocoa Crispies suddenly takes up a third of its box with claims that the cereal boosts immunity.

To be fair, it is obvious that Norwitz was trying to be deceitful, which is usually the antithesis of an obvious lie, since deceit depends on using the truth to deceive. She said the product wasn’t “developed” to exploit the H1N1 scare—no, no, it was “developed” because consumers wanted more nutrition. But nobody asked her why the product was developed. They asked her why Kellogg’s was making the dubious  immunity claim, and her answer that Kellogg’s wasn’t intentionally capitalizing on H1N1 fears, and that assertion, despite her attempt to qualify it, insults our intelligence.

What should she have said? She should have said this: “We know parents are concerned,with the current flu outbreak and all the publicity it is receiving, about their children’s heath and their vulnerability to the virus. Since we had recently increased the antioxidants added to our cereals, it seemed to be responsible to make sure parents knew about it, so we provided the banner. Antioxidents do contribute to immunity against disease. Did we think this would sell more cereal? Sure. We’re in the cereal business.”

But no. She and her employers didn’t have the integrity, honesty, brains, or respect for us to say that. They chose instead to play word games, and ended up with a foolish misrepresentation that even the most gullible couldn’t believe.

Corked Bats and “No Harm, No Foul”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

From lawyer/baseball blogger Craig Calcattera we learn that Baseball Hall of Famer Robin Yount may have used a corked bat. Corking, in which cork is surreptitiously inserted into a hole drilled down the length of a baseball bat, is banned by the rules of baseball: it supposedly allows the bat to be swung faster and propel a ball farther and harder because of the properties of the cork. Get caught with a corked bat, and a major league player gets thrown out of the game, suspended and fined. Worse, he acquires the reputation of being a cheater. Those who are certain that former Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa used steroids are bolstered in their belief by the fact that he was once caught using a corked bat.

Yet there are strong indications that the superiority of corked bats is imaginary. When TV’s excellent “Mythbusters” tested the matter, their tests rendered that myth as “busted.” So Robin Yount’s  3,142  major league hits were not aided in any way by the cork in his bat. Should we care that he used one, if he indeed did?

Yes. We should care that he was cheating. Using a corked bat violates the rules, and the fact that this cheating is not as effective as a player  thinks it is, or effective at all, is absolutely irrelevant to an assessment of his character, integrity and sportsmanship. When the Delta House students in the comedy “Animal House” steal what they think are the final exam answers and use them on the test, they are still cheating, even though it turns out that their cheat-sheet had the wrong answers.  A runner who cheats but loses the race anyway is still a cheater; so is a corked bat-user who never manages to hit the ball.

“No harm, no foul”  is just another rationalization to make it easier for some to let unethical conduct go unrecognized and unpunished. The foul is the harm, or part of it. In cheating situations, there are two issues: was there cheating, and what were the consequences of it. The cheater is responsible for the results of his cheating, but often has less than complete control over them.  An ineffective cheater is still just as unethical as an effective one.

Many have trouble grasping this. Even some professions have trouble grasping this: for example, the ethics rules governing lawyers generally only prohibit completed violations.  An attorney trying to introduce falsified evidence in trial doesn’t count as cheating, in the construction of the Rules, if the attempt fails.  A lawyer who tries to deceive his or her client with a slyly misleading statement may not be violating the ethics rules if the client isn’t misled. Admittedly, this weakness in the legal ethics rules has a lot to do with the logistics of enforcement, but it is still an embodiment of “no harm, no foul.” The unsuccessful attempt to break the rules would probably support a complaint that the lawyer exhibited conduct calling  his character into question, but I can’t locate a case of  a lawyer whose bar  disciplined him solely for unsuccessfully attempting to break a rule.

When, if ever, baseball decides to permit corked bats, then using them will be perfectly fine, if probably pointless. For now, however, the anti-corking rule still serves a useful purpose. It helps identify who the cheaters are. In cheating, as in more honorable pursuits, there is no honor in being inept.

If Only There Had Been More Like Her…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Frank Navran, a friend, colleague and perceptive ethicist with a talent for teaching ethics with vivid stories, tells this one, a true case of integrity applied the right way, by the critical person, in a timely fashion:

While attending an ethics conference in New York in October of 2008, I decided to stay with friends in New Jersey. That meant riding the train into the City for my conference. On the second day of the conference, I happened to sit next to a young woman who was neither reading nor napping so I engage her in conversation. It started with a simple “Do you ride the train every day?”

She said that yes. she does ride the train every day, and had been doing so for seven years since she and her family chose to move to New Jersey “for the kids”. I asked what kind of work she did, and she replied that she  was the CFO of a mid-sized insurance company.  Now, recalling that this was the fall of 2008, insurance companies were in the news. And so I asked her how things were at her company. Her reply was, “Better than most”.

Now I was curious. “What does “Better than most” mean?”, I asked.

She went on to explain. “About three years ago I left AIG, where I knew my prospects for advancement were limited, and accepted an offer to become the CFO for my current company.  As a newly-hired CFO, one of the first things I did was to meet with my staff. When meeting with the gentleman who managed our investment portfolio I asked for a description of our holdings. He proceeded to sing the praises of our investment strategy which included a significant percentage dedicated to what he referred to as “securitized debt”.

She said she was not familiar with these instruments and asked how they worked. His reply was that they were AAA rated and were returning huge investments. Unsatisfied, she probed for details, and when he was unable to provide them, suggested that the “do his homework” and meet with her again in two days.

Two days later, when asked to explain securitized debt, he restated that they were AAA rated and very profitable but added that no one seemed to really understand just how they worked.

Her reply, she told me, was simple She gave him three months to divest the company of anything that he couldn’t adequately explain to her simply because she was not going to go before her Board and justify their investment strategy without understanding the nature of and workings of the instruments in which they were invested.

“In other words, she had integrity,” Frank concludes. “What a radical concept.”

Indeed. What the CFO did was not, of course, radical. It was honest, responsible and prudent. We can only imagine how different things would be today if there had been more executives like her when the financial sector was operating with mirrors,  winks, and sleight of hand.

<Sigh!>