Ethics Newsline®

Toronto is outraged. Last week it was a benign and welcoming city in one of the world’s most peaceable nations. This week it’s a pariah, its image shattered by a travel advisory slapped on it by the World Health Organization because of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.

Now travelers are canceling trips. Concerts and conventions are being cut. The restaurant trade is imploding. The central bank has dropped its estimate of economic growth.

Unfair, cry many Canadians. The advisory, they point out, struck just as SARS seemed to be leveling off in the city, with no new cases reported outside the hospital system for nearly a week. It happened in the absence of any visits from WHO officials. And it came in contradiction to findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, which said there was no reason for travelers to avoid Toronto.

At issue, here, is a moral question with implications far beyond Canada: When does a word of warning become a promotion of panic? Where’s the line between justifiable caution and unconscionable scaremongering?

These days, the question faces public officials everywhere, from superintendents closing schools for a blizzard to police urging precautions during last summer’s sniper attacks in Washington, DC. It surfaces every time the Department of Homeland Security raises the U.S. terrorism warning another notch. It agonized British health and agriculture officials during the mad cow epidemic. And it always presents the same conundrum: How do you alert people without terrifying them?

Few would disagree with the need for the former: Alerting people is a moral imperative. Knowing the danger and giving no warning is a culpable offense. Yet to provoke exaggerated fear is irresponsible and immoral. Cranking a low-level risk into an international calamity is frankly unethical.

Why should this particular ethical challenge arise with such virulence right now? Three reasons:

1. Media hype. Panic, like disease, is contagious. It spreads through media sensationalism; publicity is the key to its success. These days, the omnivorous appetite of the 24-hour global news cycle zeroes in on anything that can bring viewers to the screen. That’s especially true in the aftermath of the Iraq war. As the air whistles out of the war-story balloon, networks long to keep the public’s attention. Is SARS overcovered? Had the WHO travel advisory been issued three weeks ago, at the height of the war, would it have clobbered Toronto as hard or would it have been overlooked? SARS, in fact, was making itself felt during the war. But who knew?

2. Global technology. SARS exemplifies a now-familiar pattern in which technology leverages ethics in unprecedented ways. Fifty years ago, a SARS virus couldn’t have circumnavigated the globe so rapidly. Nor could travelers. Nor could a travel advisory by a United Nations organization. These days, globalism connects the world for good and for bad. Will SARS cause a rethinking of corporate willingness to invest in places that, like China, err on the side of non-warning? If so, would that be a just response or a panicky overreaction?

3. International terrorism. There’s an uncanny similarity between terrorism and SARS. Both appear to attack at random, within a civilian population, and without warning. Both engender fear through publicity. Both cause people to hunker down, seek shelter, avoid movement and crowds, disrupt their normal routines, and put plans on hold — all of which slow the economy. Terrorism has prompted us to seek new tradeoffs between liberty and lockdown, surrendering a little freedom for a little more security. Will SARS, building on that model, push us even further toward lockdown? Is that right?

Behind all of these issues lurks another trend: a public fascination with and indulgence of fear. Horror flicks, ghost stories, roller coasters — think of all we do, purposefully and deliberately, to frighten ourselves. Given a small reason to fear, some will puff it up into a dreaded obsession. All the more reason, then, for public leaders to develop the ethics of warning. Finding the balance between bland dismissal and terrifying overstatement may be one of the most important, and courageous, acts of leadership.

(c)2003 Institute for Global Ethics

“I know people who have been mugged, who have had their homes burgled. I have found drug addicts unconscious in my doorway with needles still stuck in them. I have been spat at, shouted at, attacked, and abused. By doing this there is a risk to my safety, but if it’s a choice between taking that risk or living with this … then I don’t see I have much choice.”

– U.K. teacher John Messiter, who has begun posting pictures of heroin and crack cocaine users on the Internet. Messiter, who complains that rampant drug abuse in his neighborhood has been increasing for three years, says the police have proven ineffective. “They’re under-resourced and there are not enough officers,” he told the BBC, explaining that he felt it was time to take action on his own. (“Drug User Photos Posted on Web,” BBC, Apr. 24.)

HOUSTON
The CEO of American Airlines last week resigned after unions accused him of hiding executives’ perks while asking rank-and-file workers to approve pay cuts and job losses in order to stave off a possible bankruptcy.

Donald Carty stepped down in a bid to bring peace to American Airlines’ efforts to win concessions on a restructuring plan needed to keep the airline from declaring bankruptcy.

While that plan — involving roughly $10 billion in pay and job cuts over the next six years — was already struggling, it took a nosedive after workers learned about bonuses and pension plans being offered to top executives.

“We went into this thinking they had turned over all the books to us, that they had disclosed everything,” American worker Greg Roberts told the Seattle Times. “I will never believe anything management tells us again. I feel like a fool.”

Carty ultimately scrapped the executive bonuses, including $1.1 million slated for himself, but kept the $41 million pension plan, which insulates retirement funds for 45 top executives even in the case of bankruptcy, reported the Associated Press.

Defending the executives’ incentives as long planned and vital to ensuring strong leadership during the airline’s tough times, Carty acknowledged that he had failed to give the unions sufficient heads-up.

Carty’s apology failed to placate the unions, with criticism mounting throughout the week. Worried that his presence was jeopardizing the company’s future, Carty resigned.

After making additional concessions, including reducing pension benefits to executives and increasing potential bonuses to the rank-and-file, the unions late last week accepted a revised restructuring deal, according to the AFP.

WASHINGTON
The U.S. Supreme Court last week heard arguments in a free-speech case pitting athletic apparel giant Nike against a California man accusing the firm of lying about labor conditions in its Asian factories.

The lawsuit, filed in 1998, has the potential to redraw the line separating protected political and social speech from the less-sheltered realm of commercial speech, reported the New York Times.

Traditionally, U.S. businesses have been barred from exaggerating or lying about their products in advertisements. Firms that cross the line can be sued for false advertising.

Using a California law that gives unusual power to private citizens suing for false advertising, plaintiff Marc Kasky took that tack in his action against Nike, accusing the company of distorting its policies and employee treatment in South Asian sweatshops during the mid-1990s.

Nike says its speech was not advertising, but rather political discussion — part of a “lively political dialogue” centered on globalization and labor conditions, and thus should be exempted from false-advertising laws.

Kasky claims Nike’s drive to prove its practices were humane — conducted via newspaper op-eds, press releases, and private letters to university athletic directors — amounted to a publicity campaign aimed at convincing customers its products were produced ethically. As such, Nike’s claims should be treated as advertising, his lawsuit contends.

Last week, the Supreme Court appeared conflicted on the issue, with Justice Stephen Breyer noting that “the truth of the matter is, it’s both,” which makes the political and commercial distinction tough to divine.

Nike is “both trying to sell a product and make a statement that’s relevant to a public debate” protected by First Amendment provisions, Justice Breyer said, according to a report from the Washington Post.

The case is one side effect of corporate America’s growing attempts to market their products based not only on the desirability of the goods, but also on their social and environmental merits, increasingly blurring the line between proscribed commercial speech and protected political speech, noted the Post.

The lawsuit against Nike, which could have broad implications for how much latitude courts should accord corporate speech, is expected to be decided by the end of June.

WASHINGTON
The gun industry may soon become the only U.S. industry to enjoy nearly complete immunity from lawsuits under a bill pushed by the National Rifle Association and quietly approved last week by the House of Representatives.

The measure already has 52 co-sponsors in the Senate, meaning only a Democratic filibuster can prevent if from reaching the desk of President Bush, who has endorsed the bill, reported the New York Times.

The law would exempt gunmakers and dealers from nearly all lawsuits charging them with negligent distribution of their products or other wrongdoing. Such suits are now pending on behalf of nearly 30 U.S. cities and counties.

Critics argue that gunmakers deliberately push guns to neighborhoods and dealers where distribution safeguards are lax and crime rates are high, knowingly reaping profits at the cost of safety and life.

Gunmakers deny the charges, saying “responsible companies” should not be blamed “for the actions of criminals,” Lawrence Keane, general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told the Times.

Many critics of the law were taken by surprise by last week’s House vote, which came after only one witness was allowed to testify against the measure at a hearing held by the House Judiciary Committee.

That witness, David Lemongello, was forced to retire from the New Jersey police force after being shot by one of 12 guns sold by a dealer who reportedly knew the weapons were being bought by a gun trafficker barred from purchasing firearms because of a felony conviction.

Lemongello, whose suit against the gun distributor would be thrown out by the bill now making its way through Congress, told the Times he felt “sick and angry” after learning about the measure.

“I’m not looking to put the gun industry out of business,” he said. “But this case is a no-brainer. We are going after one bad dealer and one irresponsible manufacturer who didn’t monitor what its dealers did.”

Denise Johnson, the wife of a bus driver killed during last fall’s sniper attacks, also lamented the apparent immunity the gun industry may soon have, saying her lawsuit against a gun shop was not about money.

“This is about making these companies do things responsibly,” Johnson told the Times.

Bull’s Eye Shooter Supply in Tacoma, Washington, which supplied one of the guns used by the sniper, could not account for 238 guns that disappeared from inventory over the past three years, according to federal investigators. Under the new law, the store likely would be immune from prosecution.

Opponents of the law, including the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, say there is little they can do stop its passage unless citizens contact their congressional representatives before it becomes law.

NEW YORK
Former Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) executive Frank Quattrone was charged last week in a three-count criminal complaint alleging he urged employees to destroy documents ahead of a federal investigation into questionable practices at the firm.

Quattrone, a once-powerful and high-flying figure at CSFB during the stock market bubble of the late 1990s, oversaw IPOs for hot tech firms, including Amazon.com and Netscape, reported the Associated Press.

After the bubble burst in 2000, the government began investigating alleged bias and illegality in the way those IPOs were conducted, focusing part of its attention on CSFB’s high-profile Quattrone.

In March, Quattrone resigned his post at CSFB after prosecutors stepped up their examination of his role in a spate of document destruction carried out in December 2000.

Last week’s criminal complaint alleges that Quattrone was aware that government investigators were closing in on CSFB when he forwarded an email to several hundred employees on December 5, 2000.

That email — which reportedly took ten seconds to write and endorsed the company’s document destruction policy — forms the core of the government’s case against Quattrone, reported the Washington Post.

In the email, Quattrone supports a colleague’s recommendation that CSFB employees “catch up on file cleaning.”

“Today, it’s administrative housekeeping. In January, it could be improper destruction of evidence,” the colleague’s email warned, according to the complaint.

Prosecutors say Quattrone, who had hired a personal lawyer and learned of a grand jury subpoena two days before sending the email, illegally advocated destroying documents he should have known would be wanted by investigators — a move similar to that taken by Arthur Andersen in its Enron dealings, noted the New York Times.

Frank Quattrone “unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly, corruptly influenced, obstructed and impeded … the due administration of justice,” the complaint said, according to the AP.

Quattrone’s lawyer last week called the accusations “wrong and unfair.” Quattrone was simply “following the document retention policies … at CSFB,” John Keker said in a statement.

“Mr. Quattrone is innocent. He never obstructed justice,” Keker added. “Only prosecutors who see the world through dirty windows would take a one-sentence email supporting company policy and try to turn it into a federal criminal case.”

Former federal prosecutor Peter White told the Post that last week’s charges mark a climate change in the government’s willingness to prosecute executives in the post-Enron world.

“This is the sort of thing that three or four years ago doesn’t get brought” without charges in a wider case for fear of losing credibility in front of a jury, observed White. But now, “the general public is very sensitized to corporate responsibility.”

NEW YORK
New York Citys subway system used accounting tricks to paint a bleak financial picture designed to win public support for a fare hike, the state’s comptroller charged last week, blasting the agency for lack of candor.

New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi accused the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) of keeping two sets of books to hide up to $700 million in revenues that would have hurt its arguments for a fare hike.

Hevesi’s accusations follow an audit of the MTA, which showed creative accounting techniques used over the past few years to shuffle revenues and paint a less-promising picture than was warranted, Hevesi said.

“The culture is a culture of deceit, an unwillingness to come clean,” he said last week, alleging that the MTA had stonewalled on turning over budget documents for weeks, forcing him to seek subpoenas.

Hevesi’s accusations center on the MTA’s practice of taking one year’s profits and leapfrogging them past the next year to depress budget figures, reported the Reuters news agency.

Last year, the MTA took $319 million in profits and applied them to the 2004 budget instead of the 2003 budget, Hevasi claimed, turning an $83 million surplus into a $236 million deficit, and then pleading for a rate hike from riders to improve its finances.

That fare hike — from $1.50 to $2.00 — was approved by voters and will take effect in May.

The MTA has denied any wrongdoing, saying its budget figures were vetted by Deloitte & Touche and characterizing the revenue shifts as debt restructuring vital to the agency’s long-term economic health.

Without the forward planning, MTA chairman Peter Kalikow insisted, the fare increase would have been both necessary anyway and higher — as high as 50 percent, instead of the 33 percent approved by voters, reported the New York Times.

Kalikow called Hevesi’s statements “cynical” and “political.”

Hevesi countered last week by agreeing that the fare increase was likely necessary, but said “the actions of the MTA give the appearance that it was unwilling to candidly present its case,” according to the Associated Press.

Hevesi said he plans to instate reforms to ensure more open and public accounting by the MTA.

WASHINGTON
U.S. authorities last week filed criminal charges against a Fox News engineer who allegedly smuggled 12 paintings from Iraq into the United States.

Fox News fired the worker, 27-year-old Benjamin James Johnson, who initially told U.S. customs officers that the paintings had been gifts from Iraqi citizens. Later, he admitted taking them from the palace of Uday Hussein, Saddam’s son, according to the Associated Press.

Five other media workers returning to the United States also have been found carrying contraband, though none has been charged with crimes, reported CNN.

Also under investigation are five U.S. service members, accused of stealing $900,000 from a cache of $600 million in U.S. currency found in Baghdad palaces.

Other objects, including swords and gold-plated firearms, have been seized from shipments sent back to the States by military personnel in Iraq.

“We may disagree on what is art, but there is no disagreement on ‘Thou shalt not steal,’” U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer Jayson Ahern told CNN, noting that all of the items rightly belong to the Iraqi people.

Johnson, the former Fox engineer and the only person so far charged with smuggling and lying to federal investigators, could face up to five years in prison and $250,000 on each count.

CHICAGO
In a highly unusual move, the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) last week published the incomplete results of a drug trial cut short by drug-maker Pharmacia, denouncing the premature end of the study as unethical.

The study was launched in 1997 to test the benefits of a slow-release version of a popular drug for high blood pressure, reported HealthScout News.

The study, involving more than 16,000 people in 15 countries, was supposed to run for five years, but was aborted after only three years when its original sponsor merged with Pharmacia in 2000.

Abandoning the study and its patients invalidated the results of the program, which a JAMA analysis concludes was on its way to proving the drug a success.

Not only was the decision unethical, deputy JAMA editor Dr. Drummond Rennie told HealthScout News, “it turned out to be stupid as well.”

Rennie and Dr. Bruce Psaty of the University of Washington published an accompanying editorial slamming Pharmacia for its decision to drop the study for what were termed “commercial reasons” following the merger.

“What the company apparently treated as a simple commercial matter rendered the original promise to participate in research that contributes substantively to medical knowledge impotent, useless, and fraudulent,” they wrote.

“The responsible conduct of medical research involves a social duty and moral responsibility that transcends quarterly business plans,” the editorial said, according to the Associated Press.

Pfizer, which recently purchased Pharmacia, last week said it lacked sufficient information to comment on the $50 million study and the reasons it was dropped.

NEW YORK
Leading drugmaker AstraZeneca said it is taking steps to more closely control its supply of prescription drugs to Canadian pharmacies, a move widely viewed as an attempt to prevent sales of discounted Canadian drugs to U.S. consumers via the Internet.

The company’s move came in an early-April letter discussing the company’s “allotment program,” saying AstraZeneca would be stepping up its surveillance of order volume and suspicious spikes in demand.

The announcement follows a January move by GlaxoSmithKline, which said it will stop supplying drugs to Canadian pharmacies that offer sales to U.S. users via the Internet, reported the Reuters news agency.

The drugmakers are fighting a spreading pattern among U.S. patients, a growing number of whom are turning to Canada to supply expensive drugs at steep discounts due to that country’s price controls.

The practice is illegal, though U.S. officials long have looked the other way when packages come from Canadian Internet pharmacies, according to the Associated Press.

“We strongly feel that all of these moves are directly targeted at the international pharmacy business in Canada with the goal of stopping international free trade into the U.S.,” Andy Troszok, vice president of standards at the Canadian International Pharmacy Association, told Reuters last week.

AstraZeneca spokeswoman Rachel Bloom-Baglin last week hedged when asked whether that was the aim of the company’s new policy.

“It’s not a yes-or-no answer,” she told Reuters. “The bottom line is we’ve got to manage the supply chain in Canada.”

Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has introduced legislation to block firms from halting sales to Canadian firms that sell to U.S. customers, according to the AP.

Robert Hayes, president of the New York-based consumer-advocacy Medicare Rights Center, said the escalating dispute highlights the plight of U.S. patients faced with fast-rising health care costs.

“Clearly, Canadian drugs are not the answer to this national emergency,” Hayes told Reuters, “but hundreds of thousands of Americans are able to afford medicines that doctors prescribe thanks to Canadian sales.”

UPDATE: On Tuesday, April 29, the WHO rescinded its travel advisory to Toronto, saying it was satisfied with the city’s pace of progress in curtailing the spread of SARS. Covering the WHO’s Apr. 29 cancellation, the New York Times noted that 21 people had died of SARS in Toronto, with five more in critical condition. In addition, there are 39 active SARS cases, with 498 people in quarantine.

TORONTO
Medical and political leaders in Canada are furious at the World Health Organization (WHO), which last week issued a travel advisory that warns against all nonessential travel to Toronto, Canada’s largest city and economic engine, on account of the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

The disease has claimed 16 lives already in Toronto, according to press reports.

The WHO is justifying its advisory, which it intends to maintain for at least three weeks, by saying that SARS has gone beyond the health care setting and that Toronto has exported SARS to other countries.

Medical officials and politicians from Canada have responded that there is growing evidence that Toronto has managed to contain the illness as there have been no new cases of SARS for over a week and that the chances of catching SARS outside the health care setting is very remote.

Despite this evidence, Toronto is beginning to experience severe economic fallout from the SARS fears as major conventions are cancelled, restaurants are deserted and may go out of business, and even visiting sports teams are being advised to stay away from fans.

Chinese and other Asian Canadians are also voicing concern that they are being avoided by others just because the first identified case of SARS was a woman who had returned to Toronto from Hong Kong.

SARS, increasingly thought to be a mutation of the common cold corona virus, is starting to become a major social, economic, and ethical challenge for one of North America’s most prominent cities — and a test case for how other major urban centers on the continent may handle both the fears and the reality of this growing worldwide epidemic.

PRETORIA
Anti-apartheid crusader and prominent political figure Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was sentenced last week to five years in prison after being convicted on 68 counts of fraud and theft.

Madikizela-Mandela, former first lady and ex-wife of Nelson Mandela, was found guilty of using her position as head of the Women’s League of the African National Congress to secure illegal loans on behalf of bogus employees.

Prosecutors accused Madikizela-Mandela of signing up to 50 letters to arrange $120,000 in loans for different Women’s League staff members, even though the agency only has eight employees, reported CNN.

She also was charged with running an insurance scam that cheated participants.

Madikizela-Mandela was convicted of 43 of 58 fraud counts and all 25 theft charges. Her broker was found guilty of all counts, reported the Reuters news agency.

Wrapping up the nine-month trial, Magistrate Peet Johnson rejected Madikizela-Mandela’s claims that she had merely signed papers handed to her by her secretary, unaware of the illegal activities she was authorizing.

“Both accused had the direct intention in each case where they are implicated to defraud,” Johnson said. “There can be no doubt that there was a common purpose between them.”

Madikizela-Mandela was ordered to serve five years in prison, with one year suspended. Her broker, Addy Moolman, was sentenced to seven years, with the possibility of two years suspended, reported CNN. Their appeals are expected to take at least a year.

Following her conviction, Madikizela-Mandela resigned her positions in the African National Congress.

From the Gallup News Service:

“The White House is gearing up for a full court press to pass at least a modified version of President Bush’s new economic stimulus proposal — a plan that suggests tax cuts of at least $550 billion…. The tax cuts have taken on symbolic importance as representative of the efforts Bush is making to refocus his energies on domestic concerns as the war winds down in Iraq, and to blunt the efforts of Democratic presidential candidates who will no doubt focus on the weak economy as a major part of their campaign strategies in the months ahead.

“Tax cuts are not new territory for the president. Bush made tax cuts a central part of his campaign in 2000, and pushed through a major tax cut plan that was passed into law in June 2001. Now, gearing up for another election, Bush is back to tax cuts as his major domestic focus.

“Pollsters have asked a wide variety of questions about tax cuts over the past several years, and a review of the resulting data suggests that, while tax cuts sound good in principle, they have never been a high priority for Americans. The public’s support for tax cuts drops well below the majority level when respondents in surveys are reminded of alternative uses of the money. One reason for this lack of urgency about passing tax cuts may be that Americans didn’t think the 2001 tax cuts made a highly significant difference in their daily lives. Additionally, the public this year sees federal taxes as less of a burden than they have at any point since the 1960s.

“Here in expanded detail are five key points derived from a review of existing survey data on tax cuts:

1. Tax Cuts Are Not a High Priority on the Public’s Agenda

“Americans simply don’t rate tax-cut policy or cutting taxes as a major priority for the government. They didn’t in 2000 and 2001, and they don’t now…. Fewer than three out of 10 Americans considered taxes to be extremely important, in sharp contrast to issues such as the economy, the situation with Iraq, healthcare, and education.

2. Less than Majority Support for Bush Economic Proposals This Year…

“The fact that tax cuts have a low priority in the broad scheme of things doesn’t necessarily mean that the public is opposed to them in concept…. The underlying dimension in these data suggests a basic level of support for tax cuts in theory or in principle, particularly when they are asked about in isolation (that is, without any competing arguments for why they might not be a good thing; see below).

3. Given Alternatives, Americans Back Away from Tax Cuts

“It is generally the case that support for a proposal will be lower when it is explicitly juxtaposed against an alternative, or when negative consequences of the proposal are made clear in the question wording used in surveys. That’s certainly the case this year. Listed below are seven examples of questions asked in the past several months that have tested the level of support for tax cuts against some specified alternative. In each one, support is well below the 50 percent or majority level…. The lowest levels of support are evident in the NPR/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard Kennedy School of Government poll in which the question specifies that the alternative would be to spend the money on what are apparently attractive domestic programs such as education, healthcare, and Social Security. Support is also low in the Los Angeles Times poll, which notes that there is an increasing deficit and high costs of war to take into account.

4. Tax Cuts Don’t Have a Highly Significant Impact on People’s Lives

“One reason why tax cuts may be a fairly low priority for Americans could be the fact that tax cuts simply don’t make a great deal of difference in many Americans’ lives. Here are some examples of polling conducted after the June 2001 tax cuts were passed into law…. In all of these situations, less than a majority of Americans said that the tax cuts would make a significant difference in their lives or were a good thing for the country.

5. Concern about Paying Too Much in Taxes Has Dropped Significantly

“Another reason why the concept of tax cuts may not resonate as much with the public this year: Americans aren’t nearly as worked up about their taxes as they have been at any time in the recent past.

“The data this year are clear. Just half of the American public says that the amount they pay in federal income tax is too high, according to an April Gallup Poll. That’s a lot of people, but nowhere near as many as we’ve seen in our previous polling. In 2001, for example, 65 percent of Americans said their taxes were too high. In 1999 it was 68 percent. In fact, we have to go all the way back to 1962, when John F. Kennedy was in the White House, to find a time when as few as 50 percent of Americans said their taxes were too high.

“The April Gallup Poll also found that about two-thirds of the public say that their taxes are ‘fair.’ That, too, is considerably more positive than in previous years….”

“Fear is an insidious virus. Given a breeding place in our minds, it will permeate the whole body of our work; it will eat away our spirit and block the forward path of our endeavors. Fear is the greatest enemy of progress.”

– James Ford Bell (U.S. businessman, 1879-1961)

Seasons wait for no one. War, taxes, the economy — nothing stops the irresistible coming of summer. With the public transfixed on Iraq, that’s been easy to overlook. But in a scant few weeks, teenagers will again step into summer jobs. College students will again take up internships. In a struggling economy, there will be fewer openings, so employers can choose more selectively. Whom should they pick?

In a short spurt of summer work, there’s little time for training or acculturation. So the qualities that come through the door are pretty much the qualities that will be there for the summer. Employers will of course look for intelligence, ability, and a willingness to work hard. They’ll want teachable workers with good people skills. But what if, with all of those attributes, comes a determination to cheat, steal, and defraud? The results will be worse than useless. There’s nothing like a smart, hard-working cheater to make a miserable summer for everyone else.

What’s crucial in the mix, then, is a moral compass. If you’re an employer, where should you go to find young people who won’t rip you off? Short answer: suburban communities or small towns in the Northeast. When you get there, find kids who eat right. Avoid those who smoke or drink. And look for males aged 13 to 15. Why? Because, according to surveys from the Gallup Organization, that’s the profile of the young person least likely to cheat.

And that’s a significant profile: To refuse to cheat in an age of cheating is to take a significant stand against peer pressure. The extent of that pressure is clear in the just-published Gallup Youth Survey, which finds that two-thirds (67 percent) of today’s students (ages 13 to 17) report that “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of cheating goes on in their schools. Nearly half (48 percent) say they themselves have cheated on a test or exam. Girls are slightly more likely than boys to say they’ve cheated (52 percent versus 44 percent). So are older teenagers (ages 16 to 17).

Smoking and drinking also figure here: Nearly three-fourths of those who have smoked a cigarette in the past week say they’ve cheated, compared to less than half of the nonsmokers. And 60 percent of those who drink alcohol say they’ve cheated, versus 41 percent among nondrinkers. These ratios are perhaps not surprising: Since smoking, drinking, and cheating are all illicit behaviors among teenagers, it may be that a propensity for bending the rules in one area predicts similar behavior in other areas.

That logic doesn’t extend to poor eating habits, however. There’s nothing illegal about gorging on chips, cupcakes, and sodas. Still, three-fifths of kids who admit that their diet is “not good” say they’ve cheated, compared to 37 percent who say they’ve got a “healthy” diet. Does a willingness to practice self-discipline and restraint keep kids from cheating? Or is it foresight — a sense of building today what matters for tomorrow? Or, more simply, is it obedience to what’s thought to be right — a purely moral impulse that says, I won’t cheat others and I won’t cheat my future. Whatever the reason, kids who eat right cheat less.

And as for location? Fifty-four percent of teenagers in the South say they’ve cheated, with the numbers declining in the Midwest (47 percent), the West (46 percent), and the Northeast (38 percent). In addition, a 2001 Gallup Survey asked teenagers whether they would feel guilty about stealing, lying to a friend, not paying a debt, or cheating on a test. In all four areas, those feeling most guilty lived in suburbs or small towns.

So there you have it: A “Who’s the Most Likely Who” among teenage cheaters. Lest you use that as foolproof template for determining character, however, three caveats:

1. These are just averages. They won’t help you predict what this particular teenager will do. That 17-year-old junk-food junkie from rural Georgia may well turn out to be the most honest, scrupulous, and upright girl you’re ever hired.

2. Be suspicious of numbers. They reflect quick answers to probing questions, and there are lots of reasons why young people may not answer accurately. Are girls, in fact, more honest than boys — more willing to admit that they’ve cheated, where boys’ egos lead them to insist that they got those high grades all by themselves with no chicanery? And given that two-thirds of students are thought to be engaged in cheating, can we believe only a third of the answers on a survey about cheating — and if so, which third?

3. Kids aren’t cast in stone. They’re malleable, impressionable, trainable. But they need good examples, especially in an age of such distrust. Got a good company with high standards and an honest workforce? What a terrific context for any teenager to learn why truthfulness matters.

Bottom line: Be alert to what America’s teenagers are saying about themselves. But remember you’re hiring a person, not a statistic. And recognize that even a summer job can change a teenage life forever. If that change includes an adjustment of the moral compass, then you’ve just changed a social liability into an asset. Not bad for a summer’s work.

(c)2003 Institute for Global Ethics

“Journalistically, we’ll probably take some heat for it, but we have a responsibility to the community and that weighed heavily in our decision. The targets identified in the investigation were the children of a prosecutor, his own son, and the mother of the wife he killed. Right there, you have a pretty exceptional situation. We thought it was important, we thought it was for a good purpose.”

– King County Journal editor Tom Wolfe, discussing the Washington paper’s decision to print a bogus story in order to help police catch a man allegedly planning several murders. The paper’s gambit worked, snaring Steven Sherer, already in prison for murdering his wife 13 years ago. According to police, Sherer hired his former cell mate to kill Sherer’s son and mother-in-law, as well as the four children of the prosecutor who put him in prison, and then light their homes on fire. Last week, following the cooperation of the cell mate and the Journal, Sherer was charged with soliciting the crimes.

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“While there are times when things might appear to be (for) a greater good, [when a newspaper deliberately prints lies], you eat away at any integrity you may have. I can see them wrestling with the issue, but they should have wrestled it to the ground and pinned this thing. To intentionally mislead cripples credibility.”

– Aly Colón, an ethics faculty member at the Poynter Institute, a nationally recognized journalism school and research center in Florida, discussing the ramifications of printing false reports.

(“Ethics of Paper’s Fake Arson Story Debated,” Seattle Times, Apr. 18.)

NEW YORK
News network CNN came under fire last week after its chief news executive, Eason Jordan, said CNN kept silent for many years about Iraqi atrocities in order to protect reporters and sources in Iraq from torture and reprisals by Saddam Hussein’s government.

According to Jordan, an Iraqi CNN cameraman was tortured for weeks by government officials hoping to make the man say that Jordan was a CIA operative, a charge Jordan calls “ludicrous.”

Jordan said he also was told of assassination plots by Saddam’s son, Uday, against two brothers-in-law who had defected to the nation of Jordan, as well as Jordan’s King Hussein. While the CNN executive told King Hussein about the plot, the network never made the threats public. The brothers-in-law were later killed.

Jordan’s revelations, published earlier this month in a New York Times op-ed piece, were criticized by many analysts and commentators, who said CNN had walked a questionable line between journalism ethics and business interests.

While many agreed with CNN’s decision to conceal news in order to keep its staff safe, others questioned the network’s move as an unethical compromise made in order to maintain a bureau in Baghdad under a repressive regime.

“It really took the wind out of me,” said Bill Kovach, head of the Committee of Concerned Journalists. ”There were probably strategic business decisions about CNN’s relationship with the government, but this seems to me to be allowing the ethics of other endeavors to trump the ethics of journalism — to seek the truth and make it available.”

Jordan responded to such criticisms by saying the network’s decision-making process had been winnowed down to a simple rule: Protect your people. ”I am at peace with myself knowing that I did the right thing and not put the lives of innocent people at risk,” Jordan said, according to USA Today.

Jordan also told the New York Times that the dilemma as ” very simple. Do you report things that get people killed? The answer is no.”

CNN spokeswoman Christa Robinson added, “The decision not to report these particular events had nothing to do with access, and everything to do with keeping people from being killed as a result of our reporting.”

CNN insists it did not compromise its honesty or objectivity in the process, noting that its reporters were expelled often from Iraq for their tough reporting.

The network took another step into controversy last week after hiring an armed guard to protect a CNN reporter. After coming under fire in Tikrit, the bodyguard opened fire on the reporter’s attackers — an action that jeopardizes journalists’ protected status as noncombatants, watchers warned.

CNN’s decision to hire armed guards sets a “dangerous precedent,” the group Reporters Sans Frontieres warned last week.

CNN spokesman Matthew Furman said Iraq’s unusually high tensions made the network’s decision a special case. ”You do what you have to do to protect your people,” he said, according to USA Today.

WASHINGTON
Denver, Colorado, last week agreed to rein in a controversial police program that compiled data on peaceful protestors, saying it would destroy its so-called spy files on more than 3,400 individuals and groups.

The program came to light in March 2002 when the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit accusing the police of targeting, monitoring, and falsely labeling groups — from Quaker pacifists to Franciscan nuns to Amnesty International activists — as “criminal extremists.”

The police halted their surveillance last October. Last week’s deal puts a permanent freeze on the program, requiring the police to destroy the files, which include photographs, license plate numbers, and intercepted emails, reported the Reuters news agency.

The deal between the ACLU and Denver police codifies “a national standard that most probably will be adopted by other big-city departments,” Denver City Attorney J. Wallace Wortham said last week.

Mark Silverstein, the ACLU’s state legal director, welcomed last week’s deal, which also puts in place quarterly audits of Denver police activities for one year, with subsequent annual audits overseen by the ACLU and the mayor’s office, noted the Associated Press.

“The end of this political spying enhances the professionalism of the police department and is a victory for the First Amendment and for the civil liberties of all people in Denver,” Silverstein said. “As this agreement demonstrates, effective law enforcement does not require giving up our constitutional rights.”