Ethics Newsline®

No denying the evidence. As Chicago Cubs right fielder Sammy Sosa smacked a grounder to second base last Tuesday night, his bat split wide open. And there it was, embarrassingly visible: a cork insert embedded in the wood.

Doctoring a bat that way lets it swing faster, driving the ball farther. But it’s against baseball’s rules, so the homerun mogul — the only player to hit 60 home runs per season for three seasons — was instantly ejected from the game. He now faces an eight-game suspension.

He’s not stonewalling. He admits the bat was his. Baseball officials promptly X-rayed his other 76 bats, but found no alterations. The same process was applied at the National Baseball Hall of Fame on five bats that Sosa once used to slug famous homers, with similar negative results. Which is what Sosa has been saying all along. Mistakenly, he says, as he went to the plate that night, he grabbed the wrong bat — the corked one he uses in pre-game warm-ups to put on a show for the fans.

Let’s give Sosa the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume it was unintentional. After all, it’s been a terrible week for icons. Design maven Martha Stewart was indicted for lying to the feds about insider trading. Meanwhile, over at a company whose name has become a verb, six former Xerox officials agreed to $22 million in penalties to settle charges of fudging the company’s books in the late 1990s. Little wonder that a Gallup report due out June 10 will report that three-quarters of the public describe the overall state of moral values in the United States as “poor” or “only fair” — and that two-thirds of the public think it’s getting worse.

“We’re in a period of much more intense interest in ethics” than in prior decades, George Gallup Jr. told me last week. He attributes the latest survey numbers, which are essentially unchanged from 2002, to a “disappointment with the last century” and a search for explanations. “It’s part of a surge about looking for the meaning of life,” he says.

Which, oddly enough, brings us back to Sammy Sosa. What does it tell us — about baseball, entertainment, and life — that one of the great home-run hitters in history feels he has to dupe his fans during the warm-up? What does it mean that one of the few items in sports for which no suitable plastic or metal substitute has been found — the timeless, natural-wood baseball bat — now has to be hollowed out for show? What’s the significance of entertainment-world pressures that replace solidity with lightness?

The answers to these questions are found in the moral pessimism of the Gallup survey, perhaps reflecting a concern that a kind of systemic hypocrisy is building up around us:

• Public moralizer Bill Bennett, having capitalized on the popularity of virtue, now seems a bit hollow for his longstanding embrace of gambling, an apparently addictive vice of which he was personally fond.
• New York Times writer Jayson Blair, valuing his frequent appearance in print more than the honesty of his reporting, embraced plagiarism as a way to sustain his rising career.
• Even the White House, in the latest Middle East press conference about the new “road map” for Israeli-Palestinian peace, piped chilled air into blowers at the podiums under the blazing Red Sea sun, so that world leaders in business suits would look heroically cool and composed as they spoke on global television.

Pick apart any one of these and they seem either aberrant or innocent. Take them together and they remind us that Sammy Sosa has unwittingly given us a symbol for our times. Does outward appearance really count for more than the substance within? Does the end of public approval justify any means for achieving it? Is ours the Age of the Corked Bat?

At bottom, all these cases — Sosa, Stewart, Xerox, Bennett, Blair, Bush — have one thing in common. They seek to create the impression of figures larger than life — performing at superhuman capacity, or pushing the envelope to extremes, or treading where mere mortals cannot go. It’s as though they claimed a special privilege, a kind of immunity to the laws governing the rest of the universe.

I suspect that they, like the rest of us, want the real thing. But under the pressures of fame, wealth, and the global photo op, they couldn’t resist corking their bats. And the sad part is that none of them needed such fabrication: Left on their own, with no staging and mechanics, these are outstanding people capable of doing just fine without the artifice.

Sammy Sosa’s symbol, then, is also the question for our times: As we step to life’s plate, what bat are we choosing to swing?

(c)2003 Institute for Global Ethics

“The public interest has been replaced by the commercial interests of powerful media. Things that don’t make money — coverage of the arts, culture, civic issues — don’t get any attention.”

– Lawrence Grossman, a former president of NBC News and PBS, speaking to the Los Angeles Times last week about the FCC’s decision to allow greater media consolidation by single companies whose licenses are granted with decreasing attention to whether content is educational or merely entertaining. As the Times notes, “Critics are asking some pointed questions: Is broadcast television worth saving, especially when the industry arguably has abandoned the pact struck decades ago — that is, in exchange for serving the ‘public interest,’ TV stations get to use the airwaves for free?” (“Is Free TV Worth Saving in a 500-Channel World?” Los Angeles Times, June 3.)

NEW YORK
The two top editors of the New York Times resigned last week in a bid to restore the award-winning paper’s reputation and newsroom morale following a month of scandals.

Executive editor Howell Raines, who joined the Times staff in 1978, and managing editor Gerald Boyd, a 20-year veteran at the paper, tendered their resignations after a month spent in spin control, trying to curb fallout from the plagiarism scandal of Jayson Blair and the byline brouhaha sparked by Rick Bragg.

“This is a day that breaks my heart,” Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger told staffers, announcing his colleagues’ departure, reported the Associated Press. “They felt and believed — and I sadly came to agree — that this was the best action they could take to help the New York Times newsroom heal.”

Raines had come under particularly intense criticism by Times staffers for his autocratic style in the newsroom, where he took the reins a few days before the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001.

While the Times won a record seven Pulitzer prizes in 2002, praise for Raines was tempered by staffers who accused him of playing favorites and hurting newsroom morale.

“You view me as inaccessible and arrogant,” Raines told staffers at a meeting last month following the plagiarism scandal of reporter Jayson Blair, who was championed by Raines despite warnings from colleagues. “You believe the newsroom is too hierarchical, that my ideas get acted on and others get ignored,” he said, promising changes.

Last week, Raines said he would step down to make sure those changes happened quickly and effectively. The Times has announced the formation of a special committee to review newsroom policies and practices, noted the AP.

Last week’s resignations are “directly traceable to Jayson Blair,” Lena Williams, the Times’ Newspaper Guild representative, told CNN last week. “There’s an anger out there. We are angry that this singular individual has brought this chaos and disorder to his colleagues.”

“He’s impugned all our reputations and there are people here who feel that if Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd had done their jobs, this Jayson Blair thing would not have happened,” Williams added.

Joseph Lelyveld, a former executive editor of the Times who retired in 2001, has agreed to return as interim executive editor until the position is filled, according to the AP.

WASHINGTON
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last week took the controversial step of relaxing federal media ownership rules, prompting threats of lawsuits and congressional action.

The FCC’s 3-to-2 split along party lines makes it easier for large media corporations to control content over a broader area, reported the Associated Press.

The rules, for example, allow individual companies to own TV stations that reach nearly half of the nation’s viewers, relaxing the upper limits from 35 to 45 percent of the population.

Opponents and proponents sparred last week over the rules’ likely effects, with both sides promising to file suit — critics to reverse the changes and supporters to wedge open the door on ownership even wider.

Last week, the Senate Commerce Committee sounded off on the limits, too, saying they would hold hearings to consider altering the new rules.

“I have a long voting record in support of deregulation,” committee chair Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said. “But the business of media ownership, which can have such an immense effect on the nature and quality of our democracy, is too important to be dealt with so categorically.”

Sen. Ernest Hollings (SC), the committee’s ranking Democrat, went further, criticizing FCC head Michael Powell for pushing rules Hollings warned will damage the diversity of viewpoints in the media, according to the AP.

“Broadcast media is not just another appliance. It’s not a toaster with pictures,” Hollings said. “The free flow of diverse and antagonistic views cannot be guarded if a few large businesses control all the information across every medium.”

NEW YORK
Home-design guru Martha Stewart was indicted last week on criminal charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and securities fraud related to stock sales made in December 2001. She also faces a civil complaint alleging insider trading.

Stewart was named in actions filed by federal prosecutors and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which filed a civil complaint claiming she used insider information to sell stock before its price dropped sharply.

The charges stem from Stewart’s sale of nearly 4,000 shares of stock in ImClone Systems in December 2001. Stewart sold her shares one day before the company went public with bad news, driving its stock price down.

Prosecutors declined to press criminal insider-trading charges, which can be tricky to prove, reported the New York Times.

Instead, they accused Stewart of securities fraud, saying she was tipped off that her friend, ImClone Systems owner Samuel Waksal, and his family were selling massive amounts of their shares.

Stewart, who insists her sell-off was tripped automatically when ImClone stock hit $60, has denied using insider information to avoid suffering steep losses. Her broker, who was also indicted last week, also pleaded not guilty.

In an unusual twist, prosecutors accused Stewart of securities fraud for statements she made at a June 2002 investors conference, where she insisted she was innocent and would clear her name.

Prosecutors say those statements were not mere proclamations of innocence, but instead were calculated moves designed to calm investors and drive up the price of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia — securities fraud, in other words, reported the Associated Press.

“I was a little surprised at that,” former New York economic crimes prosecutor Richard Serafini told the AP. “There’s kind of a natural tendency when you’re confronted with something to deny it. Now they’re charging it as market manipulation.”

Following last week’s indictments, Stewart resigned as chairman and chief executive of her firm. She will remain on the board and serve as “chief creative officer.” Stewart also launched a Web site and paid for a full-page ad in USA Today denying the federal charges.

“I simply returned a call from my stockbroker,” Stewart wrote in the open-letter ad. “I later denied any wrongdoing in public statements and voluntary interviews with prosecutors. The government’s attempt to criminalize these actions makes no sense to me.”

If convicted on all counts, Stewart faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and a $2 million fine, although she would be likely to receive a much more lenient sentence, according to the AP.

ImClone founder Samuel Waksal, who pleaded guilty to six counts in the insider-trading scandal, is to be sentenced this week.

WASHINGTON
Corporate America took some hits last week as regulators ramped up investigations of some of the nation’s biggest firms, issuing subpoenas and filing settlements. Among last week’s developments:

• Energy services firm Halliburton agreed to pay $6 million to settle 20 shareholder lawsuits accusing the firm of using deceptive accounting practices to boost its image under the leadership of Dick Cheney, now U.S. vice president. A separate investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is still pending, reported the Guardian.
• Six former executives at Xerox Corp. agreed to pay $22 million to settle civil fraud charges filed by the SEC, which accused the men of using deceptive accounting tricks to inflate the firm’s stock price and public image.
• IBM last week admitted that it was under investigation by the SEC for accounting practices concerning the company’s revenue reporting in 2000 and 2001. Analysts told the New York Times that the inquiry, sparked by an SEC investigation of one of IBM’s clients, did not appear to indicate widespread fraud at the firm.

Also last week, the SEC ordered the nation’s leading brokerages to turn over millions of emails, memos, and documents in a widening probe of conflicts of interest between investment banking and analysis.

The SEC subpoenas hit at least 11 firms, including Citigroup, Credit Suisse First Boston, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley, shifting the federal investigation from star analysts to their high-ranking bosses.

“I think we have to pursue this to its ultimate end,” New York Stock Exchange chairman and chief executive Richard Grasso told Bloomberg news.

BOSTON
University of Massachusetts president William Bulger was targeted last week by two of the state’s top officials, who said Bulger should lose his post for protecting his fugitive brother from federal authorities in 1995.

State attorney general Thomas Reilly and Governor Mitt Romney last week both took aim at Bulger, saying he was unfit to lead the University of Massachusetts and should step down, reported the Associated Press.

Romney warned that if Bulger failed to leave of his own accord, the governor would try to eliminate Bulger’s university position altogether.

The criticism comes eight years after Bulger told his brother, reputed mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, to remain on the run instead of surrender for indictment in connection with roughly 24 homicides, reported the Washington Post.

William Bulger told a grand jury that he advised his brother — an FBI informant who went on the lam — to not surrender because he did not “think it would be in his interest to do so,” the Post noted.

After being subpoenaed in December by a congressional committee investigating the FBI’s handling of mob informants, William Bulger pleaded the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify. He was granted immunity from prosecution in April and is scheduled to testify before the same committee later this month.

Last week, Massachusetts attorney general Thomas Riley said Bulger’s behavior made him unfit to serve as university president.

“You can go down one path or the other, but you can’t go down both,” Reilly told the Boston Herald. “He made a choice to defend his brother, to counsel his brother, to advise his brother.”

Bulger fired back, accusing Reilly — an expected gubernatorial candidate — of exploiting a tough situation for political gain.

“Changing the course of my brother’s life is something I tried to effectuate for many years,” Bulger said in a statement. “That I was not successful is a matter of great personal pain.”

Gov. Mitt Romney joined the fray last week, taking aim at Bulger. “I believe that President Bulger’s leadership of the university is being affected, that he is in fact putting his personal interests ahead of those of the university,” Romney said.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D) disputed Romney’s claim last week, issuing a statement in support of Bulger.

“I have immense respect for his ability, his dedication to the university, and his outstanding record of public service. There should be no rush to judgment in the current controversy,” the statement said. “The investigation should be allowed to run its course.”

CALGARY
The University of Calgary last week took heat for its decision to teach students how to write computer viruses, insisting that the class was the best course for preparing students to fight the tech scourge.

The university’s “Computer Virus and Malware” class will give students a chance to try their hand at recoding existing viruses to make them more lethal — all so they can better fight them as a career, reported InformationWeek.

The school says its computer lab will adopt strict safeguards — from pulling the lab off the network to wiping clean all hard drives and media at the end of each semester — to keep student projects from leaking out and wreaking havoc. The course will also include ethics training.

“Is there another way to teach about stopping viruses without providing adequate knowledge so that the students could write a virus? The answer is simple: No,” the university wrote in a statement to InformationWeek.

A broad array of computer experts assailed that position as nonsense.

“There’s no value teaching people to write viruses. They are extremely simple,” David Perry, global director of education at Trend Micro, told PCWorld.com. “Looking at the 10- or 12-line replication routine once tells you all you need to know about [a virus]. That’s why they’re being written by 15-year-old kids.”

“You can quote me on this: Please don’t do this, please don’t teach people to write viruses,” added antivirus researcher Robert Vibert.

Last week, the university refused to budge on the issue, saying the course would go forward as planned.

“The course is about understanding viruses adequately in order to stop them from happening,” Dr. Ken Barker, chair of the Department of Computer Sciences at the university, insisted. “We want to create the next antivirus professional who can be proactive at anticipating the next kind of virus software, the next innovators in antivirus.”

Experts quoted by PCWorld.com said that plan is likely to backfire since most antivirus firms have strict rules against hiring people who have written computer viruses.

“If these students had this course on their résumé, I wouldn’t hire them because, among other reasons, it might perpetuate the myth that antivirus companies write the viruses we’re paid to eradicate,” Vincent Gulotto, vice president of AVERT for Network Associates, vowed.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

OTTAWA
The Globe & Mail is reporting that a Health Canada scientist who has a history of whistle-blowing is alleging that he has been suspended and fined three months’ pay after urging his department to ban animal feeds that contain rendered materials from other animals.

Dr. Shiv Chopra wrote to his departmental officials that the ban should be instigated due to his assessment that the primary cause of transmission of mad cow disease is animal feed that contains the rendered materials of other animals.

Such a ban would follow the practice already instigated in the United Kingdom and other European Union countries.

Dr. Chopra, who works in Health Canada’s veterinary drugs directorate, has been disciplined before for publicly divulging concerns about the integrity of Canada’s food supply. Health Canada officials are claiming that the reason Dr. Chopra was suspended is that while he was allowed to work from home, he was recently ordered to return to the workplace but did not comply.

According to the Globe & Mail, Dr. Chopra emphasizes that the disciplinary measures took place shortly after he wrote the letter urging the ban on animal feed containing rendered animal parts.

BOSTON
The federal government last week joined sides with a whistle-blower accusing drug giant Pfizer of illegally pushing doctors to prescribe the epilepsy drug Neurontin for unapproved uses.

The suit, filed in 1996, centers on the behavior of Warner-Lambert, which was purchased by Pfizer in 2000. Dr. David Franklin, a Warner-Lambert whistle-blower, has accused his former employer of subverting federal restrictions on marketing drugs.

While federal law bars drug companies from marketing their products for uses other than those approved by the Food and Drug Administration, doctors are free to prescribe drugs for any malady, reported the Associated Press.

Since its hands were tied in marketing Neurontin, Warner-Lambert paid doctors to do the firm’s marketing work — giving cash and gifts to doctors who would tell their colleagues about prescribing Neurontin for unapproved uses, the suit alleges.

A survey of more than 500 doctors approached by Warner-Lambert sales reps between October 1995 and December 1998 found that almost half had been urged by the firm to prescribe Neurontin for unapproved uses, according to company documents, the New York Times reported last week.

After paying dozens of doctors tens of thousands of dollars each to do similar marketing at “educational” forums, 88 percent of Neurontin sales were going toward unapproved uses by the year 2000, noted the Times.

After seven years of standing on the sidelines, the U.S. government got involved in the case last week, filing a brief on behalf of the civil whistle-blower suit — a move prompted by a Pfizer motion to have the case thrown out of court.

Investigators have found “evidence of an illegal off-label marketing scheme that is rife with false statements and fraudulent conduct,” Michael Sullivan, the U.S. attorney in Boston, claimed in the brief.

CHICAGO
A cloud of suspicion hung Chicago Cubs superstar right fielder Sammy Sosa last week after he was ejected from a game at Wrigley field for using an illegal corked bat.

Sosa immediately claimed it was a mistake, stating that he inadvertently grabbed the wrong bat — one he uses only in practice to impress fans who may be watching.

After Tuesday’s game, Sosa told the New York Times, “I just want to say that I first want to apologize to my teammates, the fans, and the commissioner of Major League Baseball. What happened today was something that wasn’t meant to have happened. I took the wrong bat and I went up there and it happened. It’s a mistake.”

According to the Times, Major League Baseball confiscated the remaining 76 bats in Sosa’s locker and subjected them to X-ray tests to determine whether or not they also were cork-cored. All 76 bats were determined to be clean.

Filling a bat with cork makes the bat lighter, letting a batter swing faster and hit farther, reported the Times. The cork was discovered after Sosa’s bat broke when he hit a pitch.

Previous players caught using corked bats have been subjected to suspension for anywhere from 7 to 10 games. Last Saturday, Sosa was suspended for eight games, but is appealing the ruling, noted USA Today.

While Sosa maintains the use of the cork bat was a mistake, some are skeptical, including Peter Roby, director of Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society

“There are cheaters in sports, just as there are on Wall Street and in corporate America — people who try to gain an unfair advantage,” Roby told the AP. “It certainly does put a shadow on all [of Sosa's] accomplishments. And it sends an unfortunate message to fans and young players that cheating goes on at the highest levels of the game.”

Many more worry about the continued decline in integrity and public confidence for the sport. Greg Buell, a Wichita State sports psychologist, told the AP that “the whatever-it-takes-to-win mentality has overtaken any sense of fair play and ethics. What Sammy Sosa did was nothing less than cheating. He said he made a mistake but people are always going to say, ‘Yeah, right, but how many of those homers were hit with an illegal bat?’”

Nevertheless, the Times noted that Sosa’s fans in Chicago were in a forgiving mood when he returned to the field the next night, giving Sosa a standing ovation and holding up signs honoring him — one of which read “Still loving Sammy.”

From PricewaterhouseCoopers:

“Managing for sustainability, particularly in the area of corporate governance, has become a top strategic priority for U.S. multinational companies. More than 80 percent of executives at such companies rate sustainability as essential (43 percent) or very important (38 percent) to their company, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers Management Barometer survey.

“Among the aspects of sustainability, 55 percent of executives say their company is planning to increase spending on corporate governance; 49 percent see increases on hiring policies, work conditions, and benefits; 43 percent on business ethics; 32 percent on economic impacts; and 27 percent on community involvement.

“Only half of senior executives give their own company high marks for its social performance (51 percent) or environmental performance (52 percent). And only 15 percent of executives expect funding increases for social or environmental programs in the next 12 to 18 months.

“‘Executives say sustainability is a top management priority, yet spending on environmental and social impacts is receiving far less attention than economic concerns,’ said Sunil Misser, global and U.S. leader of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ sustainability practice. ‘Senior executives view sustainability issues with an emphasis on financial performance, often at the expense of other areas.’…

“‘Senior executives clearly equate sustainability with positioning for long-term profitability, and most also cite corporate governance, investors, and other stakeholders as high priorities,’ said Misser. ‘But environmental issues, community involvement, and social impacts were cited by comparatively few.’

“Almost all senior executives (92 percent) rate their own company’s business ethics as excellent or good….

“‘Nearly all executives give their company a high rating on business ethics,’ said Misser. ‘But there is still lots of room for improvement in other areas, particularly in social impact, environmental impact, and community involvement.’

“Most senior executives believe their reporting about their company’s sustainability practices is important to four primary stakeholder groups: employees; customers; investors and analysts; and government and regulators. A majority, however, considers environmental organizations and activist groups neutral or not important….”

“Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience.”

– Eric Hoffer (U.S. writer, 1902-1983)