Michael, who also just made a “Comment of the Day”-worthy point regarding the recent post about schools banning homemade lunches for students (you can read it here), makes an important point about reports that dismiss allegations of government misconduct as “unsupported.” There is an obvious parallel with the public’s misinterpretation of verdicts finding the likes of O.J. Simpson (who did kill his wife and Ron Goldman) and Barry Bonds (who did lie to a Federal Grand Jury) “innocent” because the government prosecutors did not meet their burden of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Here is Michael’s Comment of the Day on the post, Finis: The New Black Panthers Voter Intimidation Affair: Continue reading
journalistic objectivity
Finis: The New Black Panthers Voter Intimidation Affair
The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, a careful, professional, non-partisan group charged with reviewing allegations of U.S. Government attorney misconduct, released the report on its investigation of the contentious Civil Rights Division handling of the case of two paramilitary-clad members of the New Black Panthers, one carrying a club, who appeared to be at a Philadelphia polling place in November 2008 for the purpose of intimidating voters. The men were videotaped, and the YouTube video of them standing at the polling place was provocative, to say the least.
To briefly recap: Voting Rights Act prosecution was initiated by the Bush Justice Department, and subsequently scaled down by the Obama Justice Department. Two career Civil Rights Division attorneys resigned over the handling of the incident, alleging that political appointees within the Obama Administration had pushed a policy of not prosecuting African-Americans under the Act—in other words, race-based enforcement. Continue reading
Ethics Dunce: NBC
An Ethics Dunce, in ten easy steps
- General Electric Co. earned $14.2 billion in worldwide profits last
year, including $5.1 billion in the United States, and paid exactly zero dollars in federal taxes. - This especially interesting because Jeffrey Immelt, G.E’s CEO, is also the Obama’s administration’s link to corporate America.
- The story was widely reported by the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN, and thousands of lesser media outlets.
- NBC is owned by General Electric.
- NBC could not find room in its news broadcasts for the tax story. Continue reading
Unethical Quote of the Week: Detroit News Business Editor Sue Carney
"The new model is so ugly that...What's that? They give us HOW much ad money? Uh..hey, what a GREAT looking car!
“We made several changes to the online version of Scott’s review because we were uncomfortable with some of the language in the original. It should have been addressed during the editing process but wasn’t. … the changes did not fundamentally change the thrust of Scott’s piece … a car dealer raised a complaint and we took a look at the review, as we would do whenever a reader raises a flag. The changes were made to address the journalism of the piece, not the angst of a car dealer.”
—Sue Carney, business editor of The Detroit News, lying her head off to rationalize a disgraceful instance of a newspaper changing its content—a car review— to serve the interest of an advertiser.
How often does an ethical news publication publish an article then go back after it has run and change the text, over the objection of the reporter who wrote it, not correcting an error but softening an opinion? Answer: never, by definition. Continue reading
Obama’s Social Security Cover-Up, as the Media Snoozes
USA Today ran a sensible editorial a couple of weeks ago calling for the Obama administration to stop cravenly caving to groups like the AARP, Congressional Democrats, and increasingly, liberal/progressive commentators who claim that Social Security isn’t really a budgetary problem. The fiction: since Social Security has received more from taxpayers than it has had to pay out since 1983, the Social Security Trust Fund has built up a whopping $2.5 trillion, guaranteeing enough to meet the program’s obligations ( despite yearly deficits, now that the population is senior-heavy) until the money is scheduled to run out in 2037. The truth: the trust is empty. Congress had raided it regularly for non-Social Security spending, so now the yearly Social security deficits (37 billion dollars last year, a projected 45 to 57 billion in 2011, and a half trillion total in the decade underway) are putting a direct burden on the already reeling Federal budget.
Good for USA Today: this is responsible, public-spirited journalism. the public has heard so many lies from politicians and elected officials about Social Security that it is thoroughly misinformed and confused, and an informative, unbiased editorial from the nation’s most read newspaper is exactly what is needed. But the Obama administration couldn’t handle the truth, so it trotted out White House Budget Director Jacob Lew, who denied that there was a problem, writing in response… Continue reading
Nuclear Crisis Ethics
Meltdown! Radiation! Mutations! Well, I guess that's all we have to know.
I just heard, for the twelfth time, Sen. Joe Lieberman telling “Face the Nation” that the United States should put the brakes on nuclear energy plant construction “right now until we understand the ramifications of what’s happening in Japan.” Meanwhile, the anti-nukes crowd is out in full force, seeing Japan’s crisis as their opportunity to scare the bejesus out of the public, which is nervous about nuclear energy anyway since they know nothing about it, other than that something bad happened at Three-Mile Island, the Russians had a catastrophe at Chernobyl, Jane Fonda made that scary movie, “The China Syndrome,” where they shot Jack Lemmon— “And don’t they make bombs with that nuclear stuff?”—and the fact that Homer Simpson works for a nuclear plant that creates three-eyed fish and is run by that evil old Montgomery Burns. Continue reading
Fired for Applauding: The Warped Ethics of Sports Reporters
I missed this story, because I regard auto racing as interesting as beetle mating, but it is an important one.
"Yeah, I report on it, but I really don't give a damn."
Trevor Bayne won the Daytona 500 last month, and the unexpected victory of the youngest Daytona champion ever provoked audible glee in the press box. One of the reporters on the scene, Sports Illustrated freelancer Tom Bowles, explained on Twitter and his blog why his applauding for a sporting result, considered a cardinal sin in the sportswriting profession, was not a sin after all.
Quiz: Who is More Unethical, Jayson Blair or Dan Rather?
Yes, it's time for another ETHICS QUIZ!!!
Be careful! This one is tricky.
Jayson Blair, as most of you will remember, was a spectacular fraud in the New York Times newsroom, a star reporter who was sacked in 2003 after it was discovered that he had fabricated numerous stories
Dan Rather, in contrast, was a distinguished and respected reporter and CBS anchorman who earned his accolades, but who was felled by a disgraceful episode in 2004 in which he conspired with a “60 Minutes” producer named Mary Mapes to use forged documents in support of a critical story about President Bush avoiding his duties when he was in the National Guard, which Rather presented on the air two months before the 2004 election. Continue reading
Lara Logan’s Cairo Ordeal Starts An Ethics Train Wreck
A female CBS correspondent gets cut off from her security while doing live coverage of the demonstrations in Cairo, is surrounded by a group of Egyptians in the crowd, attacked, and sexually assaulted. She is rescued by Egyptian police and flown back to the U.S., where she is hospitalized.
This what happened to “60 Minutes” Correspondent Lara Logan, and you wouldn’t think such an unambiguous example of brutality and criminal conduct would raise any ethical controversies. But the already nasty incident has metastasized into a full-fledged Ethics Train Wreck, with both the Left and the Right taking turns disgracing themselves.
And the media, of course. Continue reading
Are GOP Leaders Obligated to Condemn Doubters of Obama’s Birth and Beliefs?
No.
But NBC’s David Gregory thinks so. Here was his exchange with Republican Speaker John Boehner on “Meet the Press” yesterday: Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 