trust

Worst Ethics Column of the Month: Michelle Goldberg’s “The Lara Logan Media Wars”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

There’s nothing so pointless as complaining about a phenomenon that is logical, natural, useful and just, on the grounds that it’s so darn mean. Nevertheless, that is the gist of a Daily Beast column by Michelle Goldberg, another in the increasingly ethics-challenged stable of journalists being assembled at Tina Brown’s slick website.

Ruing the fate that befell journalist Nir Rosen after he not only ridiculed the horrendous attack on ABC reporter Lara Logan by an Egyptian mob, but implied that as a ‘war-monger” she deserved it, Goldberg wrote…

“…it indicated that Rosen has deep, unexamined problems with women, particularly women who are his more-celebrated competitors. But it was also appalling to realize that this brief, ugly outburst was going to eclipse an often-heroic career. The media’s modern panopticon has an awful way of reducing us all to the worst thing we’ve ever done…Again and again, we see people who make one mistake either forced out of their jobs or held up for brutal public excoriation. But the more we live in public, the more we need to develop some sort of mercy for those who briefly let the dark parts of themselves slip out, particularly when they’re truly sorry afterward.”

Ah, yes, the old “one mistake” plea! Continue reading →

Presidents Day Ethics: The Presidents of the United States on Ethics and Leadership

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

In commemoration of President’s Day, Ethics Alarms presents the ethics wisdom of the remarkable men who have served their country in the most challenging, difficult, and ethically complicated of all jobs, the U.S. Presidency.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Presidents of the United States:

George Washington: “I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.” Continue reading →

Unethically Leaked Unethical Manuscript Shows That Sarah Palin Is Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The Anchorage Daily News has obtained a leaked (read: stolen) manuscript of an unpublished book detailing a close former aide to Sarah Palin’s discovery of the Republican star’s many character flaws. Among other items, the book suggests that she knowingly violated federal election laws.

Now what? Let’s run down the ethical docket: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Teacher Natalie Munroe

/ Jack Marshall / 62 Comments

This isn't Natalie...just on the inside.

Teacher Natalie Munroe was suspended from her job at a Philadelphia-area high school after her online rants about her students, co-workers and administrators were found, read, and distributed by some students and parents.

Munroe, however, neither had the common sense or the understanding of her obligations as a professional to apologize, and has decided to be defiant instead. She pulled down the offending blog posts and is now defending herself, arguing (naturally) that her First Amendment rights have been violated (yawn!), that her comments were “taken out of context” (an old stand-by), that her insulting opinions about her school duties were but a small proportion of what she posted (and, she might have mentioned with the same rapier logic, an extremely small percentage of her total communications output since birth, and an infinitesimal percentage of all the words uttered by homo sapiens since the Stone Age ) and most of all, that what she said about her Central Bucks East High School students, none of whom were mentioned by name, was all true.

You can read her self-absorbed excuse-making here, if you have a high boredom and annoyance threshold. Or you can read one of the blog posts that got her suspended, in which she confesses how she would like to describe her various students to their parents, listing, among other descriptions… Continue reading →

The Main Ethics Lesson of the Congressman Lee Affair

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

By now, you probably have heard the saga of ex-Congressman Christopher Lee (R-NY), a married man who was trolling Craig’s list for girlfriends and e-mailed a candidate shirtless photo of himself to prove to her that he was fit..and also, incidentally, as dumb as an unusually dumb brick. The young woman sent the photo to Gawker, which broke the story, resulting in the humiliated Congressman, supposedly a rising GOP star, resigning.

What is the most significant lesson of this rapid fall from political grace?

It isn’t that middle-aged men who don’t comprehend how the internet works should avoid e-mailing photos of themselves that recall George Costanza’s effort to flirt with the Fotomat girl, although that’s true.

It isn’t that horny and untrustworthy individuals who can’t control their libidos should avoid committing themselves to high-profile leadership positions in our government, since the public looks to them to exemplify the best in ethical values and the entire nation is embarrassed when they disgrace themselves. This is true too, but it is painfully clear that such individuals will never learn this, and we are stuck with them, at least until they reveal their true nature. Continue reading →

The Sad Saga of the Ex-Drug Dealing Law Student

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

David Powers, a certified public accountant working at PricewaterhouseCoopers, standing third in his class at St. John’s University School of Law, was preparing to graduate this spring. Seeking to move from accounting to law (and who wouldn’t?), Powers was completely candid to the New York Appellate Court’s Character and Fitness Committee, disclosing an expunged 1999 conviction for drug possession on his record and the circumstances surrounding it.  He wanted to know if the conviction would be a hurdle to his acceptance for admission to the New York Bar. But when he asked St. John’s to send the Bar a letter of support, it not only refused but rescinded his admission, reports the New York Post.

Now Powers is suing, since St. John’s taught him well. Continue reading →

Eroding Public Trust: Obama and General Electric’s “Appearance of Impropriety”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The fact that an official act appears to be sensible and fair does not necessarily mean that it is ethical.

Consider the EPA’s waiver of the new global warming regulations for a stalled power plant project in California. Officials reviewed EPA policies and decided it was appropriate to “grandfather” projects such as the Avenal Power Center, a proposed 600-megawatt power plant in the San Joaquin Valley, and thus exempt them from new federal limits on greenhouse gases and conventional air pollution. The Avenal Energy project, explains Environment and Energy News, is a combined-cycle generating plant consisting of two natural gas-fired General Electric 7FA Gas Turbines with Heat Recovery Steam Generators (HRSG) and one General Electric Steam Turbine.

Translation: It is a huge G.E. contract.

Hmmmm. Continue reading →

Dear ESPN: I Know She’s Hot, But Fire Erin Andrews

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

…or at least suspend her. Show us that a male-dominated sports network can have a modicum of journalistic ethics, and won’t behave like a drooling traffic cop giving a buxom babe a pass for running a red light because she bats her eyes and flashes some cleavage.

You did the right thing in early January, when one of your broadcasters abused a female colleague in a sexist manner; some would say—certainly the fired Ron Franklin—that you reacted a little precipitously, but you are clearly taking a strong stand against gender bias in the workplace, and that’s commendable. Still, don’t you know that what your pin-up, “Dancing With the Stars” reporter Andrews did was far worse? Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: The Ever So Tolerant Wisconsin Bar

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Hot on the heels of the story about the New Jersey lawyer who managed to avoid interruption to his legal career after admitting forgery, we have more disturbing evidence that a profession that insists on self-regulation may have a rather different concept than the public about what constitutes “fitness to practice law.”

The professional ethics rules in every state declare that substantial dishonesty and especially failure to obey the law call into question a lawyer’s trustworthiness and are grounds for suspension of disbarment. Many states automatically disbar any lawyer convicted of a felony. But in Wisconsin, a local newspaper investigative report reveals, there are 135 attorneys continuing to practice law despite convictions for battery, theft, fraud and repeat drunken driving. Some even had active licenses even as they served time behind bars, giving a new meaning to the term, “jail house lawyers.” Another 70 of Wisconsin’s  attorneys-in-good-standing managed to avoid discipline by getting charges reduced or entering into deferred prosecution agreements. Continue reading →

Unethical Comment of the Week: Vice-President Joe Biden

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

“I wouldn’t call him a dictator, no.”

—-Vice-President Joe Biden, answering a reporter’s question about whether soon-to-be ex-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is a dictator.

President Mubarak is a dictator. By what measurement would we conclude otherwise? Continue reading →