trust

Greg Smith’s Urgent Ethics Alarm

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it”

This, says Greg Smith, is how the leadership of Goldman Sachs sees its clients.

With that, Goldman Sach’s executive Greg Smith began his remarkable op-ed in the New York Times, sending his former employers into crisis mode, panicking investors, and setting the financial, political and journalistic worlds buzzing. Obviously, it was an exposé about ethics as much as anything else.  Smith described a corporation-wide breach of trust with clients, a culture in which leadership openly derided those the company pledged to serve as “muppets,” and apparently, sheep to be sheared:

“It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off… I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.”

Smith cites a breakdown in leadership, resulting in a corruption of values: Continue reading →

“The Good Wife” Ethics Addendum: Why Misrepresenting the Legal Profession’s Standards Does Real Harm

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Sure, it was a comedy, but how many people believe that Jim Carrey's compulsively lying lawyer was not that far from the truth?

A comment from reader Penn on my post about “The Good Wife’s” recent misrepresentation of legal ethics standards got me thinking, and what it got me thinking was that I was too easy on the show.

Penn asked why I waste my time watching programs that raise my blood pressure, and there are two answers. The first is what I wrote back: it’s not a bad show; in the past it has been a very good one, even from the legal ethics perspective. I have used several scenarios from episodes in seminars.

The second answer, which I didn’t mention in my response to Penn, is the more important one, however. Good show or not, millions of Americans get their information about the legal profession from the portrayal of lawyers and law on TV and in movies. From these fictional sources, they think they know that most lawyers are liars, that they allow their clients to lie, that they put witnesses on the stand who they know will lie under oath. The public thinks that lawyers abuse the law, don’t earn their fees, don’t give a damn about their clients (unless they are sleeping with them), switch sides routinely and confuse juries to release serial killers on more victims. Continue reading →

“Goody Goody” to the Least Sympathetic Betrayal Victim of the Year, Former Senator Arlen Specter

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

First, this musical introduction, courtesy of the brilliant and tragic Frankie Lymon:

Ironically, over the weekend I wrote, in a reply to a comment, about how badly I felt when I finally met Arlen Specter and he was very complimentary to me, after I had described his 2009 defection from the Republican Party in very uncomplimentary terms. Now comes the news that the former Pennsylvania Senator’s new book includes a lament that neither President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid nor other key Democrats delivered on the promises that caused him to betray his party and those who had voted for him.

Arlen, Arlen, Arlen. Continue reading →

A Secret Service Betrayal

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

A despicable former Secret Service agent named Dan Emmett has self-published “Within Arm’s Length,” a tell-all  book about his work protecting the Clintons.  I’m not going to repeat any of his stories, and nobody should read his book either. This kind of thing is another fever on the way to the complete death of trust and professionalism.

Emmett’s job was to guard the First Family, and as part of his job he saw them all in private and unguarded moments. The Clintons had to trust that his sole objective was to ensure their safety, not to gather juicy material for a book, and they should not have had to worry about whether every stray remark or imagined slight would later find its way to the internet. “Within Arm’s Length” is nothing less than betrayal, and in my view, it falls just short of treason, and perhaps not short at all. Undermining the relationship between the Secret Service and the President of the United States, which this book does, threatens the safety of future Presidents. For agents to do their jobs, they must be trusted to the extent that nothing is withheld from them out of fear that they will disclose it. Emmett proves that such unquestionable trust is unwarranted, and in this sad era where betrayal is rewarded or shrugged off as predictable, probably impossible. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Ethics Alarms

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

“The lesson: the absence of respect for the opinions of others, accompanied by a lack of humility and a surplus of contempt for fairness and civility, will doom even intelligent, talented and hard-working individuals to inevitable failure, because they cannot be trusted, not by employers, not by colleagues, not by friends.”

—Me, from January of last year, writing about the demise of Keith Olbermann at MSNBC

Rush, Sandra, Bill, and Jack, plus many, many others, please—please— take note.

Super Tuesday Confirmation Bias Lesson, Or Why We Can Never Trust Media Analysis

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Checking the Republican primary results as Super Tuesday neared an end, I got an unexpected demonstration of confirmation bias in the news media, so vivid that it could be used in an educational video.

On CNN, John King, Gloria Borgia and the gang were analyzing the razor-close contest in Ohio, widely regarded as a must-win for Rick Santorum, just as Mitt Romney seemed to be pulling ahead for good. Welcome news for Romney? Not so fast!

Gloria Borger, whose contempt for all things Republican is always writ large on her face and unmistakably expressed by her tones of disdain (Does she even attempt to appear objective? It doesn’t seem so, as her demeanor when discussing GOP politics always suggests to me that she thinks she is covering some kind of demeaning novelty event, like a four-poster bed race or a dwarf-bowling, that the audience knows as well as she does is a colossal waste of time), vigorously took the floor and emphasized that Romney was winning in the very communities where Democrats were strongest, and losing to Santorum where Republicans usually did well. This, she said, eyes rolling (“I can’t believe I’m here talking about Republicans when I could be home watching a repeat of ‘Big Bang Theory!'”) showed that Romney would be in likely trouble if he were the nominee in November, since his strength would be wasted in Democratic strongholds and he wouldn’t be getting the support of the blue-collar types that a Republican presidential hopeful couldn’t win Ohio without. “To illustrate Gloria’s point,” King interjected, and then produced a computer graphic showing Romney’s fatally flawed vote patterns. Everyone nodded sagely. Mitt’s victory in Ohio showed that he was a loser.

Meanwhile, over at Fox, they were discussing the exact same phenomenon. Local politics maven Michael Barone weighed in, and said that this could bode well for Romney in November. John McCain, though losing Ohio in 2008, still “cleaned up” in the blue color districts, noted Barone, so even though Santorum was beating Romney there tonight, they could be still counted upon to go Mitt’s way in 2012 when Obama was the opposition. Meanwhile, the well-educated, wealthier areas that gave Barack Obama the critical swing state’s electoral votes that year have in the past swung Republican, and Mitt’s showing with that group tonight just might indicate that he could seriously cut into Obama’s strength, taking the state red. And Michale Barone knows his stuff, the Fox-ites gushed. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Sen. Olympia Snowe

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

To the left-biased media (in other words, almost all of it), a Republican who votes like a Democrat is an automatic hero, and can do no wrong. That is why, perhaps, Maine’s GOP Senator Olympia Snowe received nothing but accolades and sympathy when she suddenly decided not to run for re-election, citing the increased polarization in the Senate. Ignored and largely unmentioned in the national media is how this decision and her timing of it betrays her party, her staff, and Maine itself.

In announcing her decision, she said,

“As I have long said, what motivates me is producing results for those who have entrusted me to be their voice and their champion. I do find it frustrating, however, that an atmosphere of polarization and ‘my way or the highway’ ideologies has become pervasive in campaigns and in our governing institutions.”

Never mind, for the nonce, that for moderates to withdraw from polarized political bodies only makes them more polarized: Good plan, Olympia! Let’s concentrate on the first part of that selection. “What motivates me is producing results for those who have entrusted me to be their voice and their champion.”  Really, Senator? Then why in the world did you go out of your way to violate that trust, by doing the maximum damage possible to your party, your staff and your constituency in your manner of leaving? Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Journalist Harris Meyer

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Harris Meyer is an Ethics Hero because he won’t let a bad lesson go unchallenged.

Meyer is an award-winning  freelance journalist and a former editor at the Yakima (Wash.) Herald Republic. That was the paper that first broke the story of Gaby Rodriguez last year, which I wrote about here. With the encouragement of her high school principal, Rodriguez, a senior, embarked on some amateur social science research that involved deceiving everyone in her life except her mother, one (of seven) siblings, her boyfriend, and the principal. She pretended that she was pregnant, suing padding. She faked the pregnancy for months, finally announcing the sham in a student assembly. This extended hoax was supposedly designed to expose how pregnant teenagers are treated by their peers and others. It was, by any rational standard, a despicable thing to do—a betrayal and exploitation of her friends,  her boyfriend’s family, her siblings and teachers. Deception on such a scale must be justified, if at all, by both need and necessity. Were there other, less destructive ways to investigate the treatment of pregnant teens? Sure there were; interviews come to mind. Collecting published journals and other accounts. But Gaby’s unethical stunt was in spiritual synchronicity with a reality show-obsessed culture, where fake is entertaining and collateral damage is of no concern.  I wrote: Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: How Unethical Is This Lawyer?

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

"Dr." Susan Friery with "Bowser", who for the last ten years has claimed to be a poodle.

Newburyport (Mass.) lawyer Susan Friery, a partner at the New York-based law firm Kreindler & Kreindler, has been suspended from being able to practice law in Massachusetts until February 2014.

Why? Two years..that seems pretty stiff. Well, it seems that from the time she joined the firm as a part-time paralegal and medical consultant in 1986 to her resignation, she represented her self to the firm and its clients as an MD.  Friery joined the law firm in August 1986 . In truth, she had only completed taken four semesters of medical courses at SUNY Buffalo School of Medicine, and never got a degree. But she got her entre into the  firm by falsely claiming that she had graduated from another school, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in New York. In 1989, the firm paid most of her tuition to law school,and by 1993, Friery became an associate, specializing in medical malpractice cases and personal injury law suits with medical injuries. Her name appeared with the title MD or Dr. on the firm’s letterhead, business cards, legal correspondence and other documents filed in numerous courts.

Court documents also show that Friery presented herself as a doctor at seminars and meetings. By 1998, the law firm had included Friery’s alleged medical credentials in its web-based advertising.

Your Ethics Quiz for today, therefore, is this…TWO YEARS??? I’m sorry, let me calm down. <big breath> Ok, here’s the question:

Do you think a suspension of two years for 25 years of falsely holding oneself out to the public as well as colleagues as a medical doctor is sufficient punishment? Continue reading →

Unethical Headline of the Month

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

From the Scientific American website:

“Should Global-Warming Activists Lie to Defend Their Cause?”

"Hmmm... that's a real brain-teaser!"

The fact that this question can even be asked in seriousness, or be deemed worthy of debate in scientific circles, tells us all we need to know about why climatologist Peter Gleick decided to use deception and theft to try to discredit the Heartland Institute, a vocal critic of global warming research. It also makes it impossible to know who to trust and when, in the global warming debate and others.

Great.

Nice job, everybody.