journalistic ethics

An Ethics Breach That Matters: Betrayal Of The Rule Of Law And Democracy

/ Jack Marshall / 53 Comments
In the endless Obamacare Ethics Train Wreck, the trains may be our democracy, and the Rule of Law.

In the endless Obamacare Ethics Train Wreck, the trains may be our democracy, and the Rule of Law.

The consensus among objective legal observers is that President Obama’s unilateral amendments to a bill passed by Congress and signed by him into law exceed his constitutional authority, are illegal, and violate his oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Worse, they create a precedent that endangers the nation’s freedom,  as protected by the rule of law and the system of checks and balances, by laying the foundation for more obtrusive and dictatorial acts by future Presidents, who are sure to notice that the negative consequences of this blatantly unconstitutional act were nil. The President and the executive branch shares responsibility for this dangerous and irresponsible display of autocratic lawmaking with both houses of Congress and both political parties, none of which have demonstrated either the integrity or the courage to oppose him, for varying reasons.

It is depressing and indeed disgusting that our successful democratic system of government  created out of the vision and sacrifices of so many men and women of character, ability and high ideals is being progressively undone by fecklessness, incompetence and political expediency. That, however, is the plot playing out on the national stage, and these are the perpetrators: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Slate Editor David Plotz

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

SlateDavid Plotz, journalist and editor of the on-line culture magazine Slate, takes on the California Supreme Court in an essay in his magazine, harshly criticizing the 7-0 decision yesterday to deny Stephen Glass the opportunity to practice law in the state. Glass has been attempting for almost 20 year to persuade some state that a star journalist who was exposed as a pathological liar is a trustworthy lawyer. Plotz’s attack on the opinion as smug and self-righteous says a lot more about Plotz and his field of journalism than it does about the court. It  exposes the perils of a non-lawyer delving into legal ethics without even a modicum of research. Mostly, the exercise shows how far journalism has fallen, when the editor of a prestigious on-line journalistic enterprise essentially denies the importance of professionalism. “It’s a job,” he concludes about the law, trying to bring lawyers down to the depths of his own, thoroughly debased line of work.

Not that the decision isn’t ripe for criticism, for it is. In particular, the majority reasoning continues the legal field’s strange hypocrisy of applying a far more stringent standard to the character of those trying to get their licenses that it does to those who have proven themselves unworthy of holding them. The District of Columbia, supposedly one of the toughest jurisdiction regarding legal discipline, recently administered a mild reprimand to a Justice Department attorney who had been practicing on a suspended license for more than two decades. John Edwards, whose trail of lies while deceiving his dying wife and devising schemes to hide his pregnant mistress in order to gull the Democratic party into nominating him for President, has managed to avoid any discipline at all despite the fact that his continuing leave to practice law disgraces every lawyer on the planet. And, of course, the very same court Plotz derides now recently delivered the stunning conclusion that a non-citizen who entered the country illegally and engaged in years of lies to remain here is nonetheless fit to be a lawyer. (Naturally, Plotz liked that decision.) None of these are mentioned in the post. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of The Week: The California Supreme Court

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

stephen_glass

“Glass and the witnesses who supported his application stress his talent in the law and his commitment to the profession, and they argue that he has already paid a high enough price for his misdeeds to warrant admission to the bar. They emphasize his personal redemption, but we must recall that what is at stake is not compassion for Glass, who wishes to advance from being a supervised law clerk to enjoying a license to engage in the practice of law on an independent basis. Given our duty to protect the public and maintain the integrity and high standards of the profession (see Gossage, supra, 23 Cal.4th at p. 1105), our focus is on the applicant‟s moral fitness to practice law. On this record, the applicant failed to carry his heavy burden of establishing his rehabilitation and current fitness.”

—–The California Supreme Court, finally rejecting the application of disgraced journalist Stephen Glass for admission the the California Bar, on the grounds of trustworthiness and poor character.

This should end Glass’s efforts to enter the new profession of law after spectacularly destroying his reputation in his former one, that of star journalist for The New Republic. After he was found to have fabricated more than 40 pieces for the magazine and gone to elaborate efforts to deceive fact-checkers. Stephen Glass  (Whom I first wrote about here) was fired in 1998. Luckily for him, he was already a student at Georgetown Law Center at the time, attending its night school, as he almost certainly would not have been admitted after his public exposure as a serial liar. Glass graduated, and beginning in 2002 commenced on this long,  difficult and ultimately unsuccessful journey to professional redemption, taking and passing multiple bar exams and being rejected, first by New York and now by California.

Upon reflection, Glass may well conclude that lying to the New York Board of Bar Examiners was an especially bad idea. Continue reading →

NOW Can We Agree That The News Media Is Biased?

/ Jack Marshall / 82 Comments

michelle birthday

Almost as infuriating as the fact that the major mainstream news organizations are blatantly, unprofessionally and unethically biased toward liberal and progressive policies, causes, politicians, and the Democratic Party is the refusal of so many in the media and on the Left to admit it. This is a big problem, because it is impossible to fix a problem when those responsible for it refuse to acknowledge that there is a problem. Yet a fair, objective and independent journalistic establishment is crucial to the proper functioning of a democracy, and the open yet still denied abdication of this role by journalists, which shifted into a higher and outrageous gear with the media’s shameless stumping  for Barack Obama in 2008 poses a continuing threat to all citizens, not just left-leaning ones. The Obama administration’s arrogance, ineptitude and rank defiance of the Constitution on many fronts will supply some future historian with a fascinating study of how the removal of news media scrutiny does the most damage to the government it is trying to prop up.

Journalists either deny the bias allegation (admittedly, some with integrity, like CNN’s Jake Tapper, do not) because they are too biased to realize it, or because they believe that they should be biased, since progressivism is The One True Way. Citizens who deny it, like the readers here that I can usually rouse by asserting the obvious about media bias, either do so because they can’t see it (the fact that reporting supports what they support just proves the competence and wisdom of reporters!) or because they feel their favored policies and leaders are the beneficiaries of the bias, so why mess with a good thing?

The first is depressing; the latter is disgraceful. Continue reading →

Christie And Obama: Is It Me? I Keep Expecting Partisans And the News Media To Have Integrity And Honesty, And I Keep Getting Disappointed…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments
Nah!

Nah!

The news media feeding frenzy over Chris Christie’s traffic jam scandal continues, with the news that a special prosecutor is being handed the investigation being treated with solemn nods and predictions of sinister revelations to come. This is all fine and good: the possibility that any elected government leader would intentionally cause pain for the citizens it is pledged to serve is too offensive to the concept of duty to be allowed to linger in doubt. When a New Jersey Democratic legislator opined that the governor should face impeachment if it is shown that he ordered the despicable traffic sabotage, I heartily agreed, and I count myself as a Christie admirer. The poll results so far regarding this incident, especially in New Jersey, are troubling: by Ann Athouse’s calculations, 7% of those polled believed that Christie was behind the outrage and lied about it, and don’t mind a bit. Where are the ethical standards of such individuals? What’s wrong with those people?

Whatever it is, it is apparently the same thing that is wrong with Democrats, progressives, African-Americans and the news media, who don’t seem bothered at all that equally insidious, or worse, governmental abuses have been, may have been or are being engineered by President Obama and/or his lackeys, and there appears to be no accountability for it, or even adequate bipartisan criticism. How can this be? What am I missing? Continue reading →

The Fifth Annual Ethics Alarms Awards: The Worst of Ethics 2013 (Part One)

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

This is the first installment of the Worst.  It says something, and not something happy, that this segment of the year-end awards are more than twice as voluminous, and far more competitive, than the “Best” of 2013 ethics. Well, nobody said it would be easy….

Ethics Train Wreck of the Year

trainwreck

Obamacare, a.k.a Affordable Care Act. This is quite an achievement, as there were at least two other three Ethics Train Wrecks rolling along in 2013 that would have been easy victors in a less horrible year. One of them, The Trayvon Martin- George Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck, was last year’s winner, and still wreaked ethics carnage across the culture, thanks to Zimmerman’s trial (which never should hev been brought), the biased media coverage, the incompetent prosecution, the inept judge, and then afterward, the ignorant and/or racially motivated attacks on the jury for doing its job well and fairly against overwhelming odds. Yet as bad as this hangover from 2012 was, the Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck was arguably even worse. The news media decided to go Soviet and abandon all pretense of objectivity, essentially becoming an Obama Administration propaganda tool for gun control. Elected officials lied their heads off; so did the aroused NRA. Gun owners talked and behaved like they were about to be Gulaged. Legislators shamelessly used the grief of victims to stampede public opinion; children became props; fake statistics were everywhere; brain-damaged Gabby Gifford was programmed to read child-like messages as if they were the conclusions of research papers. The President’s total lack of political leadership skill again came front and center, then, when he had failed to do what he promised to do, the opposition was vilified by celebrities like Jim Carrey, who called them murderers and worse.

But the Affordable Care Act lapped both of these. It revealed itself to be a five-year long train wreck that just took a break after an earlier stretch where the bill was passed without due diligence by its supporters and using a cynical by-passing of due process. A Presidential lie intentionally devised to deceive the public was repeated for the five-year span, and then exposed when the law began to take affect….but not before the law inspired Republicans to force a reckless and irresponsible shut-down, a mini-train wreck within the train wreck.  The website debacle was initially spun by the news media (not working worth a damn isn’t a “glich”), then the evidence of near criminal ineptitude became impossible not to report. The indisputable evidence that the President of the United States had sold a program under false pretenses came to light, prompting dozens of politicians, bloggers, pundits and reporters to destroy their credibility forever (I hope) by desperately trying to either rationalize the lie ( “the ends justify the means”), call it something other than what it was (The New York Times’ disgraceful “incorrect promise” was one low point), or simply deny that it was a lie at all (Democratic Chair Debby Wasserman Schultz, setting a new low for personal dishonesty, itself an achievement in her case). Then, when the public pressure and political fall-out became unbearable. the President just began amending the provisions of his own law on the fly, except that it was the nation’s law, and it’s unconstitutional to do that—this, after the mantra from Democrats and the news media during the shut-down debate was that the ACA was “settled law.”  HHS Secretary Sibelius misled Congress, the White House denied that her stated goals were goals once it was obvious they wouldn’t be met; and nobody was held responsible for yet another Obama Administration debacle. And there’s a lot more, with the train wreck still moving at top speed.

Fraud of the Year

Iowa State University biomedical sciences assistant professor Dong-Pyou Han, who resigned after admitting he tainted blood samples to get desired outcomes in research animals, allowing him to claim a break-through in the effort to develop an AIDS vaccine. The National Institutes of Health had awarded Han’s research team $19 million in multi-year grants.

Incompetent Elected Officials of the Year

  • Elected Body (National): House Republicans, who staged a wholly useless, expensive and damaging government shut-down on “principle,” without ever articulating what that principle was sufficiently for anyone responsible to agree with them. Runner-Up: The California House Legislature, which passed a law allowing illegal aliens to practice law.
  • National Elected Official:  President Obama.  From being incapable of working with Congress, to refusing to fire incompetents, to not knowing what was going on in his own administration, to drawing red lines he wasn’t willing to defend (and then advocating killing people just to show he was willing to defend them), to undermining the trust and faith in both his office and himself by uttering unequivocal lies, President Obama had one of the worst years of self-inflicted miscalculations, errors, failures and reversals of any U.S. President in history. I’m sorry to have to say it, but it’s true.
  • Local Elected Official: Storey County (Nevada) Assemblyman Jim Wheeler (R). Wheeler told a group that if his constituents demanded it, he would vote (with a heavy heart)  to reinstate slavery, as he felt doing so would be his duty as a representative. Runner-up: Maryland House of Delegates Member Don Dwyer (R), who after a drunk driving and drunk boat piloting episode, the latter injuring several people, blamed his conduct in part of feeling betrayed over his colleagues approval of gay marriage in Maryland.

Sexual Harasser Of The Year Continue reading →

Fun With Rationalizations: Considering Salon’s Attack On The New York Post

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

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Let me dispense with the outrage over The New York Post’s brilliant (from their perspective, which is selling newspapers) and tasteless front page covering the death of Menachem Stark, a Hasidic real estate developer ( a.k.a. “slumlord”) who was found murdered and burned in a dumpster last Friday in Long Island.

The operative principle is not, as the reader who flagged the issue suggested, the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule does not often apply to the press, which is supposed to be truthful, not kind and diplomatic. There are provisions of most journalistic codes about avoiding unnecessary harm to third parties, which is pretty much a universal ethics rule in every field, from law to the military. When, however, you operate a tabloid, and not just any tabloid but a tabloid whose brand is defined by intentionally shocking, outrageous, assaultive and controversial headlines and photos, “Unnecessary harm to third parties” is almost an impossible principle to apply.

The headline is a perfect example of the Julie Principle, which I explained back in May. The Julie Principle comes into play when an undesirable or annoying  characteristic or behavior pattern in a person or organization appears to be hard-wired and part of their essence.  In judging such a person or entity, it is useful to keep the lyrics of Julie’s song from “Show Boat” (lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein Jr., music by Jerome Kern) firmly in mind, when she sings…

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly…

I’ve gotta love that man til I die

Can’t help lovin’ that man of mine!  Continue reading →

Cartoon Ethics: The Washington Post’s Stupid Elephant Trick

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Trainwreck Cartoon

The above cartoon, by reliably liberal op-ed cartoonist Mike Luckovich, who draws cartoons for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was run in the Washington Post this Saturday. It immediately reminded me of why, in a previous post, I suggested that the simple-minded, factually misleading art of editorial cartoonists needed to be retired. I wrote:

“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.”

This, if anything, was worse than the Tom Toles cartoon that provoked that commentary. This Democratic talking point—more like ducking point–got graphic representation the day following another wave of bad news about the dysfunctional Affordable Care Act and how thoroughly it has been botched by the Administration. Right before Christmas, the Post’s front page carried an infuriating story about how, after waiting two years before considering how to set up the Obamacare website, the Administration chose a company that even cursory due diligence would have revealed as untrustworthy and incompetent:

“Not considered in the 2011 selection process was the history of numerous executives at CGI Federal, who had come from another company that had mishandled at least 20 other government ­information technology projects more than a decade ago. But federal officials were not required to examine that long-term track record, which included a highly publicized failure to automate retirement benefits for millions of federal workers.”

Republicans caused that trainwreck? The same day the cartoon ran, this was in the news:

“The Iowa Department of Human Services says problems with the federal healthcare website has led to a delay in processing policyholder information and is asking 16,000 Iowans to reapply for Obamacare using the state website or call center.”

And did Republicans force the President to lie repeatedly about how the law wouldn’t take away anyone’s current plan or doctor? Indeed, they warned that what happened would happen, and were attacked and ridiculed while the media bolstered the President’s disinformation campaign. That, as much as the website, has made the public perceive Obamacare as a trainwreck. The mean old GOP elephant is to blame for that? As I noted in the earlier post, an editorial cartoon shouldn’t be permitted to spread falsehood and misunderstanding, and a respectable newspaper shouldn’t actively engage in the blame-shifting and denial process, which is the full-time occupation of Affordable Care Act defenders these days.

Then I searched for the cartoon on line, to determine who drew it (his signature was illegible in the size published), and for the first time, was able to read the date. The cartoon was drawn on July 29, 2013! This was after the “trainwreck” label was being wielded by Republicans because Democratic Senator Max Baucus used that term to describe his—as it turned out, accurate—assessment of how the Administration’s public information campaign was going, not the law itself. Yes, the Republicans were working to impede the progress of the ACA then, because they were convinced the law would lead to disaster. Still, Luckovich’s cartoon, while partisan, was hardly unfair or misleading—in July.

Now, however, it assumed a different meaning. The date wasn’t noted by the Post: I thought it was a new cartoon, which means I thought Luckovich was engaging in MSMNC-style historical air-brushing. The cartoonist wasn’t, however.

Was the Post? Was it deliberately using Luckovich’s dated cartoon to bolster its desperate Obama-defending readership with the baseless accusation that the GOP was really behind the law’s current travails? Or was it just being careless, reckless, inattentive and unprofessional–you know, like most of the news media. most of the time?

I don’t know. I do know that the Post owes its readers and Luckovich an apology, the former for treating them like idiots, and the latter for making him look like one.

___________________________________________

Sources: Opposing Views, Washington Post

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Glenn Greenwald

/ Jack Marshall / 55 Comments

“Every journalist has an agenda. We’re on MSNBC now where close to 24 hours a day the agenda of President Obama and the Democratic Party are promoted, defended, glorified. The agenda of the Republican Party is undermined. That doesn’t mean that the people who appear on MSNBC aren’t journalists. They are.”

—-Libertarian blogger, pundit and activist Glenn Greenwald, defending himself in an MSNBC interview against allegations that he has become a “spokesman” for fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden.
Journalism!

Journalism!

Remember, this is an ethics quote, not necessarily one that expresses an ethical point of view. With that caveat, I find it fascinating in many respects:
  • Greenwald is technically correct: journalists who use  their position to distort the news, express their biases and serve as advocates rather than objective critics, as most of the journalists do on MSNBC (and the way many too many journalists do elsewhere) are still journalists. They are unethical and unprofessional journalists. Continue reading →

The Ethan Crouch Case’s D.A., Trying To Right An Arguable Wrong With Six More

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments
Listen to your mother, Joe.

Listen to your mother, Joe.

The infamous vehicular homicide case that generated the “Affluenza Defense” is well on its way to becoming an ethics train wreck.

The news media keeps doing its part: today CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield, whom I can no longer recall why I ever thought she was more than an over-opinionated hack (I think it was her glasses) said again today that Judge Jean Boyd “bought” 16-year-old scofflaw Ethan Crouch’s defense that he wasn’t responsible for his actions (that ended up leading to the death of four and critical injuries to two of his friends) because he had been spoiled by an affluent upbringing. As I already pointed out, there is no evidence that Judge Boyd agreed with that dubious argument, and solid evidence that she did not. Never mind. Ashleigh and the rest of her incompetent colleagues will continue to try to mislead the public regarding this just as they regularly do on nearly every other news story.

The more surprising development was the sudden participation of the Tarrant County District Attorney Joe Shannon, he whose efforts to jail young Couch were foiled by Boyd’s expansive judicial compassion toward a minor, in the ethics follies. He’s attempting another “bite of the apple, ” as judges say, by asking Boyd to lock up  Ethan  on two counts of intoxication assault that he argues are still pending before her court. Shannon explained:

“During his recent trial, the 16-year-old admitted his guilt in four cases of intoxication manslaughter and two cases of intoxication assault. There has been no verdict formally entered in the two intoxication assault cases. Every case deserves a verdict.”

Shannon’s renewed plea focuses on the two teens riding in the back of Couch’s Ford F-350 pickup (voluntarily riding there, knowing the driver was unlicensed and drunk as a skunk) who suffered life-altering injuries. One of them, Sergio Molina, is paralyzed and can communicate only by blinking. It is 1) disingenuous 2) unprofessional  3) unfair 4) futile, and he knows it, 5) irresponsible, and 6) probably unconstitutional.

All of which means his gambit is 7) unethical. Continue reading →