Watergate

Of Interns, Heroes, and Hoaxes

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Intern exploitation: The New York Times explores the burgeoning practice of using unpaid interns, exploiting college students and graduates desperate for experience by “allowing” them to do menial office tasks without even minimum wage compensation. It is a perfect scheme, really: the student doesn’t want to burn bridges, so doesn’t complain, and the company avoids hiring a worker. The problem is that it is dishonest and unfair, as well as illegal.

Remembering Ethics Hero Jerry terHorst: J. F. terHorst has died, and though he was a distinguished reporter, what made him an Ethics Hero was one act of principle unrelated to reporting. Continue reading →

Essay: Ending the Bi-Partisan Effort to Destroy Trust in America

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Both the Pentagon shooter and the Texas I.R.S. attacker were motivated by a virulent distrust of the U.S. government, the distrust mutating into desperation and violence with the assistance of personal problems and emotional instability. We would be foolish, however, to dismiss the two as mere “wingnuts,” the current term of choice to describe political extremists who have gone around the bend. They are a vivid warning of America’s future, for the media, partisan commentators, the two political parties and our elected officials are doing their worst to convert all of us into wingnuts, and the results could be even more disastrous than the fanciful horrors the Left and the Right tell us that the other has planned for us. Continue reading →