Ethics Newsline®

Special to Newsline from editor Carl Hausman

The Enron debacle and its fallout dominated the news in ethics through much of March, with a related story — campaign finance reform — leading this week’s report. The Enron scandal was cited as one compelling reason for the need to stanch the flow corporate money into government. Criminal indictments of Enron were reported on Mar. 18, and in our Mar. 11 issue we relayed stories about President Bush calling for tougher penalties for corporate mismanagement. A concomitant chill in Canadian markets was one of our top stories on Mar. 3, as our Canadian correspondent reported how the incident has shaken faith in markets there.

Health-ethics stories received a great deal of play during the month. Three major stories are in this week’s report: a finding that minorities receive inferior health coverage compared to whites, an offer by the World Health Organization to aid in lawsuits against Big Tobacco, and NBC’s decision to bow out of its attempt to advertise hard liquor after protests from health and social groups.

Media-ethics stories ran the gamut this month, from attacks on too-real “reality TV” (Mar. 25), a Canadian animation firm’s troubles with government regulators (Mar. 25), a report alleging that Hollywood has been playing cozy with tobacco companies by featuring their products (Mar. 18), the use of television to fight religious violence (Mar. 11), and the U.S. government’s decision to shut down a propaganda office after journalists expressed fears that disinformation could work its way into the foreign press and back to the United States (Mar. 4).

And international affairs and governance issue received heavy play in March: a scandal-related shake-up in Japan (Mar. 25), controversy over politically motivated tariffs (Mar. 18), charges of corruption in the Zimbabwe elections (Mar. 18), and a U.S. State Department report accusing several nations of softness on human rights issues (Mar. 11).