Financial Ethics Issues Dominate April Headlines
Apr 29th, 2002 • Posted in: TrendlinesSpecial to Newsline from editor Carl Hausman
Fallout from the Enron scandal continued to impact the news in ethics this month. In this week’s edition, we lead with a warning from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: Cooperate with government probes or face the government’s wrath. Also this week, we feature a story from our Canadian correspondent about a press report indicating that despite the lessons of Enron, many Canadian firms continue to receive auditing and consulting advice from the same firms. The effect of the debacle on Arthur Andersen’s attempt to merge with a Canadian firm was highlighted on Apr. 22, and allegations that Merrill Lynch acted in conflict of interest was featured in our Apr. 15 report. On Apr. 8, we also noted that press reports indicated that an Andersen executive claimed he was sidelined and silenced after attempting to alert his bosses to the growing problems at Enron, and that Xerox had agreed to a settlement with the government over alleged accounting irregularities.
Education and ethics figured prominently in several stories this month: a debate over separate schools for refugees in the United Kingdom (Apr. 29), protests in Philadelphia against turning some of the city’s worst-performing schools over to private companies (Apr. 22), and a threatened teachers’ strike in the United Kingdom over the length of the workday (Apr. 8).
Ethics and the environment was a recurring theme in April’s Newsline: A jury returned a precedent-setting verdict over pollution from a gasoline additive (Apr. 29), the Senate handed President Bush a setback in his Arctic oil drilling policy (Apr. 22), and a report from the New York Times claimed that environmentalists were largely excluded from the Bush administration’s conversations on the shape of energy policy (Apr. 1).
Health care was the subject of several articles: A federal judge upheld Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide law (Apr. 22), a report claimed that the threat of malpractice suits is degrading the quality of medical care (Apr. 22), the Food and Drug Administration warned pharmacies not to concoct their own nicotine lollipops (Apr. 15), and a British woman known only as Miss B, paralyzed from an accident, won the right to have her life-support terminated (Apr. 1).
Finally, high-tech remained a staple of ethics news: The U.S. Supreme Court refused to clamp down on computer-generated “virtual” child pornography (Apr. 22), Canadian tax authorities fretted that e-commerce may become a tool for tax avoidance (Apr. 8), and video-game makers adopted a code of ethics seeking to tone down violence in the popular diversions (Apr. 01).
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