journalistic ethics

NBC and the Death of Professional Broadcast News

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The flap over NBC’s unilateral decision to excise “God” from the Pledge of Allegiance (currently the catalyst for a somewhat off-topic debate in the comments to the Ethics Alarms post on the issue about the propriety of having God in the Pledge at all) points to the related problem of NBC’s gradual but persistent degradation on its news reporting and journalistic integrity over the last several years.  Happily, there is a blog devoted to just that, one of the many excellent ethics-related sites linked on the blogroll that nobody seems to use. It is called Nightly-Daily, where a fanatic Brian Williams foe named Norman Charles meticulously dissects NBC’s nightly news broadcasts to report on journalistic outrages. He finds them almost every night.

Regarding NBC’s U.S. Open coverage, the scene of NBC’s Pledge distortion, Charles wrote, Continue reading →

Comment of the Day on “Girl Talk and Bigotry Ethics…”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

We had it coming, apparently...

This comment, from new visitor Linda, exemplifies the kind of thinking that too many Americans believe pass for “ethics.”  In response to my post about a Christiane Amanpour-led  panel on her Sunday morning public issues show that celebrated male-bashing and gender bias, Linda’s response is essentially…

1. You “men” have done worse to us.

2. We have the right to get even.

3. You can dish it out but you can’t take it.

4. We have the right to be bigots too.

Indeed women do have the right to be bigots, but journalists like Amanpour abuse their own First Amendment rights when they use the freedom of the press to advance naked bigotry, and women like her panelists disgrace their own principles when they move from seeking fair and equal treatment for themselves to asserting superiority and advocating gender bias. Continue reading →

Girl Talk and Bigotry Ethics: Celebrating One-Way Gender Bias on ABC

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Christiane Amanpour just led a jaw-dropping roundtable discussion on her ABC Sunday morning talk show, “This Week with Christiane Amanpour,”as three female guest commentators ( Torie Clarke, the former assistant secretary of defense for public affairs in the Bush administration: Cecilia Attias, the former first lady of France and founder of Cecilia Attias Foundation for Women, and ABC’s Claire Shipman)
and Christiane discussed how the convergence of  Former IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s attempted rape charges and Rep. Anthony Weiner’s travails has created a possible tipping point, in which the nation will finally come to the realization of a fact that these women have known all along: women are just plain better than men when it comes to leadership, management, decision-making, and conflict resolution.

The sweeping generalities, stereotyping, and flat pronouncements of male inferiority were unrestrained. Continue reading →

To Jon Stewart, Ethics Hero: I’m Sorry I Doubted You.

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Impossible conflict of interest? No problem!

I’m also glad that I waited before posting my article labeling Stewart, the much-revered cultural force who chairs Comedy Central’s satirical news hour, “The Daily Show,” an Ethics Dunce for wimping out in his initial tepid take on the Rep. Weiner scandal.

Stewart is a good friend of the sexting, lying New York Congressman, and for most comedians, leaving a high-profile friend in trouble off of their comic hit-list would not only be acceptable, but admirable. A comedian only has the obligation to be funny, and if he  chooses to be funny without slicing up a close friend in crisis, that just makes him a kind and loyal friend. Stewart, however, can no longer claim to be just a comedian. He has built a reputation as a truth-teller, leaning to the left, perhaps, but still willing to skewer idiocy, corruption, hypocrisy and dishonesty whenever and wherever they surface in current events. This means he is trusted, and that he has a duty to make  his audience laugh while displaying integrity, fairness, wisdom and good judgment. It’s a high standards to meet, but it is also the one Stewart set for himself by reaching it again and again. Continue reading →

The News Media’s Unethical Political Word Games

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Reasonable people can disagree about the prudence and fairness of the various get-tough state and local laws targeting illegal immigrants, such as the recent law passed in Alabama (I like it, by the way). They can even disagree—though I personally don’t see how—about the wisdom of state-sanctioned incentives for illegals to smuggle their children into the country, like Maryland’s batty “Dream Act.”

What reasonable people should not accept and must not accept is the increasingly routine practice among many news outlets of dropping “illegal” from the phrase “illegal immigration” and “illegal immigrants” when discussing such measures. The practice is no less than a lie, an effort to misrepresent as bigotry legitimate objections to providing the benefits of American citizenship to those who willfully violate U.S. immigration laws and procedures. The papers, reporters, columnists and bloggers who do this inevitably follow the misrepresentation by denigrating anyone who doesn’t think scofflaws should be celebrated as heroes and handed the keys to the country as “nativists.”

I resent it, because my maternal grandparents were immigrants, the legal kind, and I would no more oppose the progress and success of law-abiding immigrants in the country than I would saw off my arm. I condemn it, because the tactic—and it is a tactic— is unethical journalism, an example of intentionally muddying an issue by imprecision so that the apathetic, the lazy or the none-too-bright—a sizable group, that—are confused about what is the real issue. Continue reading →

Chicago Flash Mobs, Political Correctness, and the Arrogant Press

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

What kind of people made up the mob? You don't want to know.

Chicago has been beset by several incidents of “flash mobs” that were of not the terpsichorean variety, but rather cell phone-organized marauders who struck suddenly, beating bystanders and robbing them. The Chicago media has adopted an odd policy in reporting the incidents: it has not reported the fact that the mobs were made up of African-American youths.

There is no excuse for this. It is manipulative, dishonest, and incompetent journalism, political correctness expanding into news censorship. It constitutes dishonest reporting, and a lack of respect for the public.  It is the ultimate in arrogance and abuse of their professional duties by people who have neither the credentials nor the right to decide what facts we are fit to know.

A Chicago Tribune writer named Mary Schmick attempted to justify her paper’s conduct, and was spectacularly unconvincing, writing in part… Continue reading →

Newt Gingrich: Ethics Victim…Ethics Miscreant…Walking, Talking Ethics Lesson

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

The Ethics Lesson

I’m glad Newt Gingrich is in the presidential race, however foolishly and futilely. He is perhaps the perfect illustration of how a potential political leader’s private personal conduct is not only relevant to assessing his fitness to lead, but predictive of it. What makes Newt especially useful in this regard is that he is a Republican, and all the Democrats who are going to be sneering at his candidacy will have to square their attacks on his character with their indignant claims in 1998 that Bill Clinton’s adultery, sexual harassment and lies were irrelevant to his leadership—and they weren’t truly private or personal.  Similarly, Newt will be helpful to some of my ethically-addled trial lawyer friends who have argued that John Edwards is still a trustworthy lawyer, despite his betrayals of his dying wife, his family, his supporters and his party.

Of course private conduct is relevant to judging a leader, especially when private conduct shows an individual to be dishonest, disloyal, cowardly, ruthless, selfish and cruel—like Newt. Cheating on two wives and leaving both of them when they were battling health crises isn’t a mistake, or a coincidence, or a misunderstanding; it is a pattern, and a symptom. You can’t trust Newt. You can’t rely on Newt. You can’t believe Newt. Ask his ex-wives, and eventually, I am quite certain, his current one.

Today conservative talk radio is abuzz with Gingrich’s frenzied efforts to sooth the conservative faithful after he attacked Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget reforms over the weekend. What??? You mean Newt Gingrich stabbed a political ally and  fellow party stalwart in the back without warning? Who could have seen that coming? Oh, only everybody: You can’t trust Newt. You can’t rely on Newt. You can’t believe Newt. Ask his ex-wives. Continue reading →

CNN, Flunking Journalistic Integrity 101

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

What? Oh THAT...

The stunning revelation that Arnold Schwarzenegger  has been hiding a love child for a decade has media pundits pondering, “What was the biggest sex scandal  to snare an American politician? There’s Bill and Monica, obviously, and Mark Sanford’s South American soul mate; Sen. Ensign’s inter-staff incest and the probable winner after Clinton, John Edwards’ despicable betrayal of his dying wife. It’s a tough field, made tougher by the presence of one more formidable contender: Eliot Spitzer, who lost his job as Governor of New York after being caught playing in a prostitution ring, the exact same kind of criminal enterprise that he busted up as a crusading prosecutor on the way to the State House.

Yesterday, CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux did a feature story on notable political sex scandals, and mentioned all of these and more, with one  exception. Can you guess which? Here’s a hint: the author of the scandal currently stars as one of CNN’s political commentators.

Yes, Eliot Spitzer’s sexual meltdown didn’t make the cut of CNN’s scandal review. What does this tell us about CNN, Malveau, and everyone involved–producers, writers, executives…Spitzer?— in the feature vetting process?

Here’s what: Continue reading →

The Washington Post, Protecting a Young Villain

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

"Even if she is a "bad seed", we have a duty to make sure nobody knows little Rhoda did those horrible things..."

The Washington Post has revisited the epically tragic story of Fairfax, Virginia teacher Sean Lanigan, who in 2010 was falsely and maliciously accused of sexual molestation by a vengeful 12-year old girl, launching him into a Kafkaesque sequence of incompetent law enforcement and bureaucratic callousness. Though he was acquitted of all charges, his life, career, personal finances and reputation remain shattered. As for the female student at  Centre Ridge Elementary School who set out to destroy Lanigan because he had reprimanded her, the Post does not reveal her name “because she is a minor.”

This is warped ethics, warped journalism, and warped logic. Every day one can read news stories about named elementary, middle school and high school students who have been disciplined for various non-criminal offenses, minor or otherwise. In the case of criminal arrests involving minors, there is a legitimate legal reason for withholding the name of an accused juvenile, for youthful offenses are often expunged or sealed, provided there is a conviction and a sentence served. This story is different, however. No criminal charges have been made, though what the girl did to the teacher was certainly worthy of one. A jury ‘s verdict has shown, and the news media has confirmed, that a girl used the devastating social stigma of  child molestation to settle a personal vendetta. I don’t care if she is thirteen or twenty-two; there have to be consequences for such vicious conduct, and being identified by name is just a starting point for her accountability. Continue reading →

How Unethical Is This Feature Story? Let Us Count The Ways:

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Next amusing list from the Houston Press: "Ten Hottest Serial Killers"!

The feature, courtesy of the Houston Press, and I’m not making this up, is headlined  “The Ten Hottest Women on the Texas Sex Offenders List”, which is sure to make another list somewhere, “The Ten Most Offensive Ideas for a Feature Story.” The author, Richard Connelly, introduced his list of child-molesting hotties by writing,

“We combed through 15 of the biggest counties in Texas and came up with the ten hottest women in the database. Warning: In some cases, we picked out the best of a series of mugshots. Alternative choices were starkly different. So click on each link before you send any marriage proposals.”

What was wrong with this article, besides the obvious drawbacks that it wasn’t funny or satirical, and that the women weren’t hot (but then, who takes a hot mug shot)?

Let’s tally them up: Continue reading →