THE MEDIUM AND THE MESSAGE

Apr 26th, 1999 • Posted in: Weekly Overview

The ethics involved in the information and entertainment industries are once again spotlighted in the wake of the Littleton, Colorado tragedy — covered this week in Rush Kidder’s column, and in our statistic and research reports — and also in several other stories leading this edition of Business Ethics Newsline.

In our wrap of the news of the week with an ethical angle, we lead with details of a court ruling allowing CBS’s “60 Minutes II” to air a piece gathered inside a medical facility with a hidden camera.

Another media-related story with a different bent follows: a new Web site aimed at socially conscious investors. The site is devoted to discussion of the ethics of major corporations.

And we follow with another information-age ethics story concerning FTC charges brought against an “information broker,” a firm that obtains and sells data, for allegedly lying in order to learn about individuals’ financial records.

In other news, we have two stories dealing with Asia: a report from China that officials supervising construction of the world’s largest hydroelectric project are corrupt and have allowed shoddy work to be done, and charges brought by activists who claim that a U.S. oil firm is fostering brutality by supporting a project in Myanmar.

Next, three stories about medical ethics: a report claiming doctors tend to use more of heavily-advertised varieties of blood-pressure medication because they are influenced by the ads; a movement by a noted philanthropist to fight the influence of money on medicine; and a suit against a managed-care company claiming false advertising.

We follow with two Olympics-related stories: Johnson & Johnson’s decision to back out of sponsorship of the event, and the International Olympic Committee’s reluctance to comply with congressional requests for periodic updates on what it’s doing to stanch corruption.

A story from the Netherlands concerns outrage over the killing of animals that arrived at an airport without proper papers, and two stories from the United Kingdom look into the always-interesting world of British commerce.

We conclude our wrap of the week’s news in ethics with a story about the retirement of Wayne Gretzky, an athlete praised not only for his abilities but also for his conduct.

Our “Trendlines” feature this week focuses on the sometimes-unhygienic mixture of news and advertising on the Web. And our “Whatever Happened to…” feature brings you up-to-date on three stories: the U.S.-E.U. “banana wars,” the NCAA wage-freeze suit, and the future of the direct-sales business in China.

Have a productive, ethical week.

– Carl Hausman

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