It isn’t new, and there is no way to stop it, but we need to complain a little louder about the false promotion of counterfeit musical acts for concerts and fairs. It may be legal, but it is misleading and dishonest. Continue reading
misrepresentation
Book Publicity Ethics
Author Jennifer Belle felt that her new book, The Seven Year Bitch, needed a more creative publicity campaign than her publicist was providing. The placed an ad in “Backstage” requesting actresses with “compelling and infectious laughs,” to read her book on the subway and at New York City landmarks for $8 an hour. This was enough to interest the New York Times in sending a reporter to cover the auditions, and then Belle sent the actresses she selected out in teams of two to the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the steps of the TKTS booth in Times Square, Washington Square Park, and the subways. They read the book out loud, laughing their infectious laughs, and when asked, told onlookers about the wonderful book they were reading. Continue reading
Andy’s Unethical Health Care Propaganda
I understand the government’s problem when it passes legislation in a fog of lies, misinformation, spin and deceit so think on both sides that nobody even pretends to know what the consequences will be. And it certainly is embarrassing when claim after claim about the legislation made by the House Speaker and President himself is shown to be untrue or mistaken after the fact: “Oops! The law won’t really be budget-neutral!” “Sorry! Many of you won’t be able to keep your health care plans after all!” “Darn! There really isn’t anything in here that will keep costs from rising!”
Gee, maybe they should have read the thing before voting for it.
Be that as it may, it does not justify the Obama Administration paying $700,000 in taxpayer funds to run TV ads showing avuncular old Andy Griffith, of Mayberry fame (Pssst! Andy used to specialize in playing con-men and scam artists before he and Don Knotts teamed up), telling seniors how peachy the new system will be. Continue reading
Integrity, Rep. Mark Kirk, and the Citizen’s Duty to Pay Attention
The defenders of G.O.P. Rep. Mark Kirk, who has been caught in more than one misrepresentation of his achievements, will argue (as such people always do) that these “mistakes” are simply campaign gotchas that tell voters nothing about what really counts, which is how he will perform when he is elected, as he hopes he will be, a U.S. Senator from Illinois.
In fact, a candidate who lies about his past honors and job history, as Kirk has, cannot be trusted. He continues to show voters that quality, or lack of quality, as this incident, reported in several sources, proves. From The Plum Line: Continue reading
Obama, the Bomber, and the Dangers of Deceit
I live in the Washington,D.C. area, and I often say that deceit is the official language here. Deceit is an artful form of lying in which literally truthful statements are made in a manner, tone and context designed to deceive others into believing something that is not true, by playing on their assumptions, hopes or trust. Like any other lie, it allows the liar to gain tangible benefits, but with less risk than with a normal lie. If a deceitful statement is unmasked after an individual has relied on it, the originator of the deceit can and often does blame the duped listener, who “misunderstood” or “jumped to conclusions.” That’s the special upside of deceit.
The downside of deceit is that it is the calling card of especially slippery people, the preferred device of the verbally adept and the unconscionably manipulative. Effective deceit takes work and talent; show me someone who can be deceitful easily, and I will show you someone whom neither of us should trust.
That is why this statement by President Obama from last week is so discouraging, and perhaps, a tipping point in his relationship to the American people: Continue reading
Free Speech or Theft? The Law and Ethics of Stolen Valor
The U.S. District Court in Colorado ruling in the case of US v. Strandloff, has found the “Stolen Valor Act,” 18 U.S.C. § 704(b) & (d), to be an unconstitutional infringement of free speech. Rick Strandloff represented himself as a wounded decorated Iraq War veteran in order to rally support for veterans and opposition to the war. The original Stolen Valor Act of 2005 criminalized the wearing of military medals an individual was never awarded; later, it was expanded to included the crime of falsely saying or writing that one has been given military honors for valor. The Act says, in part, that it is a crime to…
…falsely represent [oneself], verbally or in writing, to have been awarded any decoration or medal authorized by Congress for the Armed Forces of the United States, any of the service medals or badges awarded to the members of such forces, the ribbon, button, or rosette of any such badge, decoration, or medal, or any colorable imitation of such item …
Deciding an issue like this inevitably comes down to both law and ethics. Not all speech is protected by the First Amendment, and deciding how many kinds of speech we can sensibly and reasonably prohibit requires a court and a culture to think about just how bad—how wrong–certain kinds of speech may be, based on their actual and potential harm. Continue reading
Race, Politics and Cowardice: the Unethical Victimization of Shirley Sherrod
The forced resignation of Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod, an African-American, is far more significant than it appears. By itself, it is a deplorable example of an innocent citizen being victimized by a convergence of unethical conduct by the media, the Obama Administration, and the N.A.A.C.P. Sherrod’s fate, however, is also a warning, a frightening sign that racial and political tensions are rapidly spinning out of control in America, and that the very institutions we should be able to trust to apply reason, competence, courage and fairness to the issue of race are displaying cowardice, dishonesty and opportunism instead. I hope this is an isolated incident. Everything tells me it is not.
This sudden ethics train wreck developed when Andrew Breitbart, proprietor of the provocative, entertaining and thoroughly Right-leaning website Breitbart.com, posted a grainy video that he said showed Shirley Sherrod, U.S.D.A.’s state director of rural development for Georgia, speaking at a March 27 NAACP Freedom Fund banquet. Continue reading
Plagiarism, Lies, and the Shameless Scott McInnis
Colorado gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis did the impossible: he made Richard Blumenthal look honest by comparison.
McGinnis, a Republican, has admitted that a recent story in the Denver Post, alleging that articles he had written on water issues for a foundation grant were significantly plagiarized from the writings of a Colorado Supreme Court justice, was factually correct. Then McInnis came up with an astounding non-explanation that was even more unconvincing than the Connecticut Attorney General’s excuse that his repeated and false claims of Vietnam war service were mere slips of the tongue. Continue reading
The Ethics Of Using A Facebook Mole
A lawyer wants to get access to an adversary witness’s Facebook page so he can use information he finds there to impeach her testimony at trial. But even though she accepts virtually anyone who asks to be her “friend” whether she knows them or not, he worries that she wouldn’t accept his request if she recognized his name and face from her deposition, which might prompt her to guess his intent. So the lawyer asks an office paralegal to send her a “friend request” instead. Sure enough, she accepts, and soon the paralegal is gathering all sorts of dirt on the witness and passing it on to the lawyer.
Is this an ethical plan for the lawyer, or not? Earlier this year, the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Ethics Committee issued a legal ethics opinion that concluded it was not: the paralegal was acting for the lawyer, who was using subterfuge and misrepresentation to gain the witness’s consent to explore her private (or semi-private) Facebook information. The Committee said that it didn’t matter that the witness was careless with granting access, or that she gave consent to other “friends” that she barely knew: Continue reading
Unethical Web Site of the Month: Essay Emperor
Masquerading as a blog (Ethics offense #1 : Dishonesty) when it is, in fact, a commercial web site advertising an essay writing service, Essay Emperor includes “informational posts” purporting to give general information about essay writing services but which actually links the reader to just one service: the service provided by—what a coincidence!—Essay Emperor, Inc. (Ethics Offense #2 : Deceit)
Three of the posts on the home page claim to discuss the ethical issues of using essay-writing services. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 