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The Wall Street Journal reports that, according to the Insurance Research Council, 36 percent of people surveyed see no problem with padding claims to make up for past premiums (up from 19% in 1993). Moreover, 40 percent would pad a collision claim to avoid paying a deductible.
There’s lots of talk, these days, about the Drudge Report-largely because Matthew Drudge, a self-described gossip-monger with a web-site, churned up some dirt on President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky before anyone else.
How good is Drudge’s material? He himself reportedly says it’s eighty percent accurate. As a batting average, that would be phenomenal. As a journalistic endeavor, it fails miserably.
Why? Begin with the responsibilities of editors to ask really tough questions-and to know what kind of answers they want. A good news organization (AP, for instance) strives for 100 percent accuracy. Not even 99 and 44/100ths, but 100 percent. The reason: Credibility is all they have to sell, and if they miss, there will be someone always ready to catch them up.
No doubt about it: That slows them down. Facts are a nuisance, and checking them is a real bother. If you’re willing to compromise the factual standard and go for the 80 percent margin, you can put up all kinds of stuff fast, without checking. And every now and then you’ll hit it big, because you’ll happen to get it right and get there first. If all you want is an occasional smash, that’s the formula.
But if you want solid accomplishment-and, furthermore, if you want to be sure that the second-day story that follows your smash won’t utterly undo you in the eyes of the public-you need consistency.
The 80 percent standard does not mean (as the public unwittingly imagines) that although 20 percent of your stories are trash, the other 80 percent are solid as a rock. It means that 20 percent of every story is suspect. And since the reader doesn’t know which 20 percent, the entire story is unreliable. And if that’s true of every story, then the entire source is unreliable.
Even the habitual liar can catch your attention some of the time with something accurate. That’s a rather different standard from real journalism. Does real journalism fail at times? Of course. But being mistakenly inaccurate-and then seeking diligently to correct the flaw-is far different from sacrificing accuracy for sensationalism.
Here at Business Ethics Newsline, we take the editorial responsibility seriously. One of our functions is to authenticate the news that reaches you. That’s why you’ll notice, in a few of our links, that we insert a disclaimer explaining that we can’t vouch for the accuracy of the source we’re linking to. Facing the growing ocean of data that is the world wide web-an ocean where everything looks bewilderingly alike-we think the job of editor is one of the most important.
(c)1998 by Rushworth M. Kidder
PENNSYLVANIA
Giant Food Stores last week severed its contract with a firm that provides marketing data to retail pharmacy chains based on patient medical records and prescription drug use patterns. Another chain, CVS/Pharmacy, is now reviewing its alliance with Elensys, Inc., a Massachusetts-based computer and data firm that services more than 20 retail pharmacy and supermarket/pharmacy chains.
The controversy revolves around the sharing of medical information — including patient names, medication histories, and other personal data — among the big chains and Elensys. Using these data, Elensys mails refill reminders and announcements of new drug availability to consumers based on their past prescription usage.
This new technique in drug marketing has raised legal and ethical concerns.
Two U.S. Senators, Robert F. Bennett (R-UT) and Joseph Gartlan, Jr., (D-VA), have sponsored legislation designed to address growing concerns over unauthorized distribution of medical information.
Beyond the legal questions, ethical issues will likely persist. The doctor-patient relationship, once considered inviolable, is now challenged by high-tech and high-finance. Modern computer systems allow easy cross-matching and manipulation of data, creating new marketing venues in the expanding health care market.
Prescription drugs are among the most profitable of health products. Pharmaceutical sales are approaching $80 billion annually, and marketing expenditures have risen to more than five times their 1993 level.
These and other trends have prompted pharmaceutical and marketing firms to frequently bypass physicians and target consumers directly.
BONN, GERMANY
After losing several recent legal battles on U.S. soil and being caught in lies about company executives’ plans to market cigarettes to children, Big Tobacco won a victory last week in Germany, where lawmakers rejected a bill that would have banned smoking in public facilities and provided specific legal protections to non-smokers.
Germany’s federal parliament rejected the bill last week after a year-long battle which saw the measure’s opponents — including German Health Minister Horst Seehofer — rally against the proposal for apparently pragmatic reasons.
Opponents argued that many of Germany’s 17 million smokers already ignore existing voluntary bans on public smoking, and further legal restrictions would clog the courts without clearing the air. In addition, opponents cited the failure of a public smoking ban in France.
German non-smokers must now look for tougher enforcement of existing laws, which include a Civil Code provision requiring workplaces to be free of health and safety risks. Similarly, the Labor Protection Law and Ordinance on Workplaces require workplace air to be “beneficial to good health.”
MALAYSIA
After a barrage of criticism from the public and the government, the accident-plagued Naeila bus company has instituted a novel training program that stresses safety and spirituality.
According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, Naeila includes religion courses to raise the drivers’ values. In addition the curriculum includes more traditional measures, such as better training, more rest for drivers, and two-person driving crews during dangerous pre-dawn hours.
The Times reported that Naeila buses have been blamed for the deaths of 17 people in recent months.
DELHI
Health officials here worry that the recent decision by India’s Supreme Court to ban purchase of blood from paid donors may produce a crisis this spring, when the ban may lead to a short blood supply and an unregulated black market in paid donations.
India’s government instituted the ban on paid donations — and professional blood banks that pay for blood — in hopes of stanching the flow of infected blood currently flooding the country’s heath-care system. In a nation racked by poverty, the sale of blood is an attractive option, but one which frequently appeals to alcoholics and drug addicts. Some blood bank operators failed to screen the purchased blood for viruses and contaminants such as HIV and hepatitis-B.
Neither the public nor representatives of India’s professional blood banks dispute the government’s motives in enacting the money-for-blood ban. But blood bank operators complain that the new ban unfairly penalizes responsible blood banks.
India’s hospitals depend on professional blood banks for nearly 40 percent of their national supply, and voluntary donations — now the only legal way to give blood — are not currently sufficient to meet the demand.
Critics of the ban question the ethics of the government’s decision, charging that the measure will cost many lives now in order to save others in the future.
MASSACHUSETTS
Workers at three Boston-area Coca-Cola plants won a partial victory in what has been dubbed a “family values strike.” After Coca-Cola announced the elimination of two holidays from most worker’s calendars, 525 bottlers, drivers and machinists — claiming a further erosion of already scarce time with their families — walked off the job.
Coca-Cola has agreed to amend the schedule, reinstating one holiday and granting two personal days as compensation for holiday labor. Workers returned to the job even though some of their demands were not met, and one returning worker told the Christian Science Monitor that employees will continue to push for more family time in future contract talks.
Such concerns are not limited to Coke. Observers note that recent economic trends have increased time on the job, and time-starved workers must often cope with 60-to-70-hour work-weeks, family members assigned to different eight-hour shifts, and inadequate childcare and eldercare.
TENNESSEE
Columbia/HCA, the huge health care firm under federal investigation for allegations of Medicare fraud, has established a training program that will train more than 500 ethics compliance officers (ECOs).
About 200 ECOs completed training last week. The remaining ECO candidates, local hospital executives and the CEOs of every Columbia/HCA hospital, will train through the remainder of February.
Columbia/HCA initiated an ethics and compliance program in October, 1997. Alan Yuseph, hired to oversee the program as Senior Vice President for Ethics, Compliance, and Corporate Responsibility, promises further rounds of ethics education for company employees.
Technology and Social Justice
Fourth Annual Louis Nizer Lecture on Public Policy
by Freeman Dyson
World-renowned scientist Freeman Dyson delivered the fourth annual Louis Nizer lecture on public policy on November 5, 1997 at the Harmonie Club in New York city. Dyson, Professor Emeritus in the School of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, spoke on “Technology and Social Justice.” He is the author of Disturbing the University, Weapons of Hope, Origins of Life, and most recently, Imagined Worlds.
The Louis Nizer Lecture on Public Policy was established in 1994 by the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs to honor the internationally known lawyer and author Louis Nizer. The Nizer lectures explore the contribution of law in expressing ethical norms as part of the process through which the American society and the world community evolve toward the full expression of democracy.
‘Deeper Human Values’
“Out of 5.8 billion people in the world, the majority of them are certainly not believers [in Buddhism]. We can’t argue with them, tell them they should be believers. No! Impossible! And, realistically speaking, if the majority of humanity remain nonbelievers, it doesn’t matter. No problem! The problem is that the majority have lost, or ignore, the deeper human values–compassion, a sense of responsibility. That is our big concern.”
–The Dalia Lama, quoted in Time (December 22, 1997, p. 76).
