I don’t have any sympathy for Hannity. There are fake news sites all over the web; by now journalists should be taking care that they aren’t accepting a spoof as fact, and passing it on to add more confusion and information pollution to public discourse. Using this gag story was lazy, incompetent, careless and inexcusable. Hannity let confirmation bias over come whatever common sense he has, just like my retired liberal journalist friend, who has posted on Facebook ridiculous fake stories about Republicans saying crazy things. To be fair, in a nation where a member of Congress openly worries about Guam tipping over, who knows what is too silly to be true? Continue reading →
To quote myself, planting false facts in the information supply may not make people sick like putting poison in the water supply, but it is damaging enough to be recognized as not worth tolerating for the occasional giggle. A year ago, I introduced the Ethics Alarms Web Hoax Scale,inspired by yet another unethical trick by the loathsome Jimmy Kimmel. As it turned out, 2014 was a banner year for web hoaxes, due to the activity of a couple webs sites that only exist to deceive the news media and make every American certain that they shouldn’t trust anything they read, anywhere.
As you know if you’ve read much here, I detest web hoaxes. I’m also not too crazy about those who use them to announce their superiority to the people who were fooled, essentially saying, “It’s harmless, unless you’re not smart enough to get it—like you.” This attitude emboldens and rationalizes for the hoaxers. I’ve fallen for some, usually when a source I trust has preceded me, marring the site with a post based on a lie. I don’t think it’s funny to make others involuntary accessories to deception.
I was reminded of the Web Hoax Scale, which, like the Race-baiting Scale, I want to finalize before making it a permanent part of the Ethics Alarms tool box, when my least favorite Republican Presidential candidate, Rand Paul, launched a fake Hillary Clinton site on Pinterest. It would have been a #1 on the original hoax scale , rated as harmless because no one who had ever heard of Hillary and who could beat my dog at Scrabble would think it was anything but a gag. (Should a hoax that doesn’t and can’t fool anyone qualify as a hoax at all?) I was going to write, however, that in this context, a fake website is inherently unethical whether it is recognized as such or not, and I have reflected that position in the revision of the scale. Continue reading →
In Ethics Alarms’ continuing effort to bring to you depressing news of awful things you may never otherwise hear about if you are normal, I bring you 4Chan. Maybe you are as late to this sick party as I am.
I was vaguely aware that the site, which essentially hosts anonymous shock posts and hoaxes—meaning that it is a magnet for unethical conduct and the people who think its cool—was behind the initial hacking and posting of those nude celebrity photos earlier this month. It is much worse than that, however. Take this, for example, reported by The Daily Dot…
The absolutely terrible #cutforbieber hashtag became a worldwide trending topic on Twitter on Monday, an unfortunate truth that owes its existence to the perpetually scheming deviants on 4chan.
“Tweet a bunch of pics of people cutting themselves and claim we did it because bieber was smoking weed,” he or she wrote. “See if we can get some little girls to cut themselves.”
Sorry, Aretha. You are just an innocent pawn in a slimy website’s quest for links.
Updates follow the original post…
Bonus ethics points are due Mediaite writer Luke O’Neill, who placed the word ‘satire’ in scare quotes while describing the website called “The News Nerd,” which he grouped with, in his words, “The National Report (behind this recent viral hoax about Bill Murray stopping a bank robbery), The Daily Currant, and the rest of the plague of woefully unfunny bottom-feeders who’ve clogged up our newsfeeds of late.” The site in question has been sued by pop icon Aretha Franklin, who argues that its unfunny fake story about her getting into a fistfight with fellow diva Patti LaBelle is defamatory. Aretha is going to lose, of course,* and worse, she is bringing more attention, traffic and income to the despicable website, which I will not link to and assist its sordid little game.
Getting links and traffic is the whole point of such sites: write and publish a plausible but strange made-up news story that enough news aggregation sites and bloggers believe, hope the story goes viral, and reap the monetary rewards of notoriety and ethical misconduct. “The News Nerd” had one of its “successes” recently by falsely reporting that George Zimmerman was peddling a new painting, this one of Trayvon Martin. It is a vile, if not especially new, creature on the web, one that makes the internet even less reliable and trustworthy than it was. Such sites’ victims are the trusting, hurried and inattentive. They masquerade as satire sites, but are intentionally poor ones. Their stories are not clever or sufficiently well-made to signal their allegedly humorous nature, and the disclaimers are hidden, perhaps a click away, or at the bottom of a screen, where the site-owners know many readers will never look. Continue reading →
In a much attacked post here way back in 2010, I offered some ethical guidelines for April Fool’s Day, which was just beginning to get out of hand. I was right, my critics were wrong, and maybe some of the mockers who are now trying to figure out when their favorite news organization is lying to them today for fun, as opposed to the rest of the year when it lies to them out of bias or incompetence, are beginning to appreciate my position.
I just watched three different morning news shows that contained fake news or commentary that the reporters and anchors, at least, seemed to think was hilarious. In one case, on Fox, conservative talk-show host Laura Ingraham dead-panned a remarkably even-handed and fair explanation for HHS Secretary Sibelius’s much-maligned TV silence when asked about the Affordable Care Act’s unpopularity. April Fool! Laura wasn’t being fair or objective, she was just tricking Fox’s audience into being angry at her for being fair and objective, or, in my case, admiring her integrity for pointing out that the incident had more than one plausible interpretation. Got me, Laura. I just heard an NPR host plead with the audience not to regard the upcoming segment as a hoax because of the date, an especially difficult plea since NPR springs virtual hoaxes on its audience all year.
The first and most important of my April Fools guidelines was this:
1. April Fools’ Day tricks are not for professionals to play on those who depend on them, trust them, or otherwise rely on them for information or services, unless there is a special relationship as well. The risks of harm and abuse are too great.
The succeeding four years have validated my position. Journalism, government and politics are the prime examples. CNN played a video that showed Jay Carney crowing yesterday about the Affordable Care Act’s success even as the Healthcare.gov website had crashed. Wait..is this a joke? Did the Obama White House film this for fun and games? They wouldn’t do this, you say? Government officials don’t use their high office for jokes and hoaxes? Really?
Sen. Ted Cruz, also on Fox, showed his new tattoo, apparently an April Fools’ joke, but also said he was certain that the Affordable Care Act would be repealed. Which is more likely, that the AFA will be repealed, or that wacky Ted Cruz would get a tattoo? Slate has a post up by someone called Rehan Salan, which is, clearly, a clever anagram for “En Anal Rash” or something, arguing that adults without children should be forced to pay extra taxes to support parents. Hah! Good one, Slate! That should turn the “pro choice” crowd on its head: lets; punish the choice not to have children via a penalty—I’m sorry, Chief Justice Roberts, a tax, wink-wink. Wait…that isn’t a joke? Ok, well, I’m sure about this, then: that fake video showing famous tough guy Don Baylor, a record holder for being hit by pitches when he played and now a coach for the Los Angeles Angels, “breaking his leg” catching the ceremonial first pitch of the baseball season. April Fools, right ESPN? No????
That mad wag, Jimmy Kimmel, is doing another victory lap. This time, the biggest jerk on late night TV managed to fool news services, panic families of Olympian athletes and insult Russia (not that that bothers me very much) by his latest internet gag—convincing American luge athlete Kate Hanson to relay, via Twitter, his fake video of what appeared to be a wolf roaming the halls of the Olympic Village accommodations. Any collateral damage is irrelevant to Kimmel, because his objective is to cause trouble, then mock everyone who was fooled for allowing the trouble to be caused, since if they weren’t so dumb, trusting and gullible—it’s all their fault, not his, you see—nothing would have happened. (Yes, Kate Hansen is a jerk too.)
Here is what this relatively harmless (as opposed to harmless, which no web hoax is) misrepresentation accomplished:
It took up thousands of valuable minutes of news broadcasts throughout yesterday which could have been used productively to educate the public about all manner of things they actually need to know about—what’s happening to Justin Carter, for example—remember him? Maybe a well-produced segment on why a teen shouldn’t be facing terrorism charges for an obvious joke he made on Facebook could spark some much-needed public outrage. Instead, serious news broadcast time, a finite resource, was used to further a prank.
It made the media a party to a lie. It doesn’t matter about what. It’s a lie.
It wasted the time, thought and energy of every person who talked about the wolf, expressed concern about it or thought about it.
It further increased cynicism and doubt about news reports, feeding the tendency to adopt conspiracy theories and fear of sinister manipulation. How do we know the moon landing wasn’t a Jimmy Kimmel hoax?
Most of all, this will encourage other, bigger, more reckless asses than even Kimmel to go further and further with their web hoaxes, because such pranks mean viral videos and fame, no matter what harm they cause. Continue reading →
The above photo is how “The Bachelor” producer Elan Hale chose to announce to the world that his Twitter tale about “Diane” the hysterical Thanksgiving traveler and his campaign to shame her was all a “joke.” This is Diane!Har!
Truth #1:
Elan Gale is an asshole, and because he is shameless about it, he is also a fick.
Okay, I confess: I’m not an ethicist or a lawyer. This is me.
Today’s earlier post about the Georgetown Law Dean who filed an expert report in federal court that was partially copied from Wikipedia was titled “How Dare Universities Charge Such High Tuition?” KABOOM!* #1…” with the full intent of offering “How Dare Universities Charge Such High Tuition?” KABOOM!* #2 shortly thereafter. My second, and messier, head explosion was triggered by a news story more outrageous than the first: it involved two universities, and a tenured professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design retiring after 25 years with a final lecture to students in which he said,
“If you are a white male, you don’t deserve to live. You are a cancer, you’re a disease, white males have never contributed anything positive to the world! They only murder, exploit and oppress non-whites! At least a white woman can have sex with a black man and make a brown baby but what can a white male do? He’s good for nothing. Slavery, genocides against aboriginal peoples and massive land confiscation, the inquisition, the holocaust, white males are all to blame! You maintain your white male privilege only by oppressing, discriminating against and enslaving others.”
As you might imagine, I had quite a few points to make about this, including why a single student in the lecture hall, and not just those being told to commit suicide, didn’t arise from their seats, walk out, and register a protest with the school—-a bit like I would have hoped Barack Obama would have done when he heard his pal, Rev. Wright, spout racist and hateful rhetoric from the pulpit.
I have learned, from bitter experience, that whenever a story causes my jaw to hit the floor I should check several non-blog sources, and there were many of them that have proven reliable in the past carrying the story. All were members of the so-called “conservative media,” true, but the tendency of the mainstream media to intentionally ignore events that make their brethren warriors of the left look bad—like, say, the ugly and still unfolding IRS scandal that the Obama administration still claims is imaginary— is an annoying constant in my world…and yours, if you will acknowledge it. Through dumb luck and dumb luck only, I checked one more source, and it saved me. The Blaze, Glenn Beck’s news and commentary site, had lapped its careless, inept competitors. The story of the professor’s farewell rant was a hoax, or satire, depending on your point of view. Continue reading →
I am taking down the post regarding the alleged insane statements of Sandra Fluke regarding the GOP’s culpability for Anthony Weiner’s sexting. I am persuaded that it is a web hoax. Though it was sent to me as true, with a reference to “Best of the Web,” a reliable source, I have traced the item back to a blogger who tagged his post “satire” and “humor.”
This is why I detest web hoaxes.
While the claims attributed to Ms. Fluke were absurd and extreme, they were not especially funny, or so removed from other positions she has advocated that the hyperbole here would be obvious, at least to me.
S0…
Gratitude and kudos to Arthur in Maine, who refocused my attention on the post.
Apologies and regrets to Ethics Alarms readers. I do check sources, but this time I didn’t check well enough.
I apologize to my fellow GULC alum, Ms. Fluke, for believing her capable of such idiocy.
I apologize to Emily’s List.
I apologize to James Taranto, to whom I originally and erroneously credited for the pointer.
I do not apologize to Rush Limbaugh or the GOP. My comments regarding them in relation to Sandra Fluke stand.
Don’t tell me I have no sense of humor. I get it, and it’s clever. Kind of fun, too. But just because a form of dirty campaigning is funny doesn’t change the basic principles it violates. Putting out a fake version of a political opponent’s supporter, poster, flyer, campaign material, web address, Twitter feed or website in order to trick people into either believing that the opposition campaign’s campaign or candidate is saying or doing something they are not really saying or doing for any purpose, including satire, crosses ethical lines into unethical campaign tactics territory. In a word, it’s cheating. It is unfair, deceptive and dishonest, but mostly, it is irresponsible, because it opens the door to far worse things, like sending obnoxious plants carrying racist signs to the other party’s rallies, robocalls making outrageous statements on behalf of the opposition, or putting the Obamaphone lady in fake Obama ads.
It has been a despicable campaign, and this Democratic National Committee fake Romney website not only makes it worse, it creates a slippery slope that leads right to the sewer.
Ethics Alarms 