Ethics Newsline®

“I wanted to get your thoughts,” ESPN Radio talk show host Chuck Wilson wrote me the other day, “on the argument that steroid use in baseball, prior to its being banned from the sport, does not constitute ‘cheating.’ I have argued that players who used steroids cheated the sport. My co-hosts and many listeners have argued that it’s only cheating if you break stated rules. What do you think?”

It’s a great question, because it seems to be about only baseball. In fact, it’s about business, government, education, the professions — anything that puts scandals into the headlines. But let’s stick with baseball, where it rings hollow for three reasons.

First, it overlooks the distinction between law and ethics. Law is obedience to the enforceable. When laws or rules are laid down, there’s typically a punishment for breaking them. Rules compel obedience because of fear of penalty.

Ethics, by contrast, is obedience to the unenforceable — to the powerful canons of our culture. What compels ethical obedience is a communal agreement about wrongness. A thing can be wrong even though it breaks no stated rule, calls forth no punishment, and is not illegal.

So if the argument is that “it wasn’t illegal to use steroids before they were illegal,” that’s self-evident. But if it’s that “it wasn’t unethical to use them before they were illegal,” that doesn’t necessarily follow, since ethics and law differ so fundamentally.

Second, the “it’s not cheating” argument doesn’t square with the way we use that word. Some examples:

• Suppose a father, after promising to pay his young daughter for mowing the lawn, withholds the money because he’d rather keep it. Is she being cheated? Most would think so, but show me the law that makes it illegal.
• If I share with you my plan to buy a house for a certain price, and you race out and trump my bid by one dollar, did you do anything illegal? No. Did you cheat me? That’s the word that would spring to my mind.
• We have largely abolished legal penalties for adultery, but we still say someone “cheats” on his wife. As the term implies, we still think of such behavior as wrong.

What about steroids? They’ve long been thought wrong in amateur sports and in public opinion. In the early days of black-and-white television, I remember seeing bulked-up East German athletes at the Olympics and hearing reporters say that steroids were suspected. The very tone of their reports made it clear that this, to them, was “cheating” — maybe not illegal in some countries, but surely wrong.

Why “wrong”? Because, third, steroids aren’t morally neutral. They damage bodies through prolonged use and give unfair advantage to those who use them. In the past, given the public distaste for steroids, many athletes refused them, so the only users were athletes who either felt no moral tug from that distaste or overcame that tug through rationalization. Result: a classically unlevel playing field on which winning arose not from athletic prowess but from unfair competition.

So why cheat? Because it appears to work. It shouldn’t surprise us that those willing to act unethically often seek advantage over those holding to the ethical; it’s been ever thus. But it should sadden us to see the argument of effectiveness used to justify cheating. The notion that a thing is right merely because it works arises from the worst sort of ends-justifies-the-means logic. By that logic, every form of cheating should be embraced and even encouraged, because through it you “win.”

That false logic, in this case, could end up destroying baseball. How? Well, we already have a sobering example of a fine sport — wrestling — still honored at the collegiate level but wholly discredited in the professional arena. It’s hugely popular on cable TV, but nobody treats it as a sport any more. It’s now seen merely as commercial entertainment.

What happened? A surprisingly simple thing: loss of public trust. When you and I say of any game, “That’s a sham,” it begins to spiral downward into mere showmanship. What if the public comes to suspect — after hearing all of the public justifications for cheating voiced by athletes, coaches, and commentators — that the whole thing is a fraud? We’ll start to lose trust. Then the question will not be whether professional baseball joins professional wrestling as a schlock sport, but simply when. Professional wrestling is probably gone for good. If baseball joins it, there won’t be any returning.

The moral: Trust once lost — in baseball, as in business, politics, love, and friendship — is devilishly hard to rebuild. Not incidentally, Chuck Wilson has asked to leave ESPN Radio after 14 years of hosting sports shows that raise questions like this — since, apparently, his managers think their audiences aren’t interested in such ideas. But that’s another column.

©2005 Institute for Global Ethics

“I let my pride get in my way…. I am ashamed to be here today, and I accept full responsibility for my actions.”

– John Rowland, the former governor of Connecticut, speaking last week at his sentencing after being found guilty of corruption while in office. U.S. District Judge Peter Dorsey sentenced Rowland to one year in prison, four months of house arrest, and three years of probation. (“Conn. Ex-Gov. Rowland Gets Year in Prison,” AP, Mar. 18)

NEW YORK
A New York jury last week found former WorldCom chief executive Bernard Ebbers guilty of securities fraud, conspiracy, and filing false documents, rejecting his “know nothing” defense in what many say should serve as a warning to other CEOs awaiting trial for leading their firms into scandal and bankruptcy.

The 12-member jury convicted Ebbers on all counts, agreeing with prosecutors that a man smart enough to turn a tiny phone company into a telecom superpower was not dumb enough to draw a blank when looking at a balance sheet, as Ebbers claimed during the trial.

“You can’t sell yourself as a genius to investors but then portray yourself as someone who flunked math to the jury,” Stephen Meagher, a former federal prosecutor in San Francisco, told the Los Angeles Times.

Ebbers’s efforts to portray himself as unschooled in finance failed to fly with the jury, especially after his evasive testimony compounded doubts raised by former WorldCom chief financial officer Scott Sullivan.

Sullivan, who has pleaded guilty to fraud and faces up to 25 years in prison, testified that Ebbers knew about WorldCom’s financial problems and pushed him to distort numbers to meet Wall Street’s expectations.

While Ebbers’s lawyer accused Sullivan of lying in a bid to lower his prison time, the Times noted that Ebbers’s alleged motives included $400 million in personal loans that hinged on his collateral of WorldCom stock, the value of which crashed after the company’s troubles were exposed.

WorldCom declared bankruptcy in July 2002 under the weight of $11 billion in fraudulent accounting, emerging last year as MCI.

Ebbers, who faces up to 85 years in prison after being convicted on all seven counts, is scheduled for sentencing on June 13. His lawyer said he will appeal.

Asked for reaction to the Ebbers verdict, MCI employee Leanne Tight, who hired on with WorldCom in 1999, said her fellow workers at MCI’s headquarters in Virginia “are pleased.”

“But this wasn’t any great surprise,” Tight told the Washington Post. “And to see somebody else suffer doesn’t bring back any of our retirement plans or help the people who have been laid off or change the impact this has had on our business. He will pay for what he has done, but this is a sad, sad episode in our history.”

Analysts noted that the jury’s rejection of Ebbers’s defense could spell trouble for other fallen chiefs, including HealthSouth’s Richard Scrushy and Enron’s Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, all of whom face charges related to fraud already admitted to by their subordinates, reported the New York Times.

DENVER
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week filed civil charges against Joseph Nacchio, the former chief executive of Qwest Communications International, and 10 other executives accused of orchestrating the firm’s $3 billion bookkeeping fraud.

Nacchio and the others are accused of bullying workers into distorting balance sheets to meet investors’ expectations when the firm, then known as U.S. West, was wooing a 2000 takeover bid by Qwest.

Regulators accused Nacchio of creating a “culture of fear” by putting “extreme pressure” on subordinate executives, resulting in fraud that forced the company to restate more than $2 billion in revenue for 2000 and 2001, reported the Reuters news agency.

Along with Nacchio, the SEC filed suit against 10 Qwest executives, including the company’s former president and two former chief financial officers. The SEC settled immediately with four of them, noted Reuters.

The SEC, which settled its complaint with Qwest itself last October for more than $250 million, now is targeting individual executives for their salary raises, bonuses, and stock sales during the time of the alleged fraud.

The government wants Nacchio to surrender $216 million and is eyeing $84 million from the other alleged co-conspirators, reported the New York Times.

Nacchio and others last week released statements denying any wrongdoing.

The charges come at a particularly inopportune time for Qwest, which is vying to outbid Verizon for ownership of MCI, the firm formerly known as WorldCom, whose one-time head, Bernard Ebbers, was convicted of fraud and conspiracy last week.

WASHINGTON
Questions about U.S. contracts in Iraq resurfaced last week with reports examining fraud allegations against Halliburton and the murder of a subcontractor who warned about corruption. Among the developments:

• Pentagon auditors said Halliburton may have overcharged the U.S. government by more than $100 million, according to an October 2004 audit obtained and detailed last week by the Los Angeles Times.

• Also last week, a former procurement manager at Halliburton, was charged with fraud for allegedly rigging a fuel contract to overcharge the U.S. military by more than $3.5 million.

• The Los Angeles Times last week published a report on the murder of Dale Stoffel, a U.S. subcontractor who suspected Iraqi officials were skimming funds with the help of a Lebanese middleman. Stoffel, who told U.S. officials that he was considering going public with his concerns after they failed to intercede, was shot to death shortly afterwards. A previously unknown militant group claimed responsibility.

WASHINGTON
Rejecting criticism that public relations pieces designed to look like genuine television news reports are unethical, the Bush administration last week said it will continue making and distributing video news releases, and that it is the responsibility of television stations to inform viewers of the source of the videos.

Last month, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress’s nonpartisan investigative arm, again warned that such releases may cross the line into illegal “covert propaganda” if funded with taxpayer dollars.

The releases in question mostly include video segments featuring pseudo reporters who pose rehearsed questions to officials and praise government programs without addressing criticisms or problems.

While the exterior packaging discloses the government’s role, the videos themselves often omit the disclosure, leading viewers to believe they are watching news from an objective source, noted the New York Times.

Last week, the Justice Department issued a memo directing government agencies to ignore the GAO’s warnings, saying it does not agree “that the covert propaganda prohibition applies simply because an agency’s role in producing and disseminating information is undisclosed or ‘covert,’ regardless of whether the content of the message is ‘propaganda.’”

The Justice Department memo also said the GAO’s ruling is unenforceable, noting that only its own Office of Legal Counsel provides binding legal interpretations, according to the Times.

President Bush last week agreed, saying his administration would continue making video news releases, which he defended as factually based and unbiased, even if their provenance remains undisclosed.

The government contends that its packaging provides sufficient disclosure, saying the blame lies with local TV stations that fail to tell viewers when the fake news segments are coming from the government.

GAO Comptroller David Walker last week faulted the administration for adopting a legalistic, compliance-based approach that sidelines the ethical aspects of providing fake news segments to the public.

“This is more than a legal issue. It’s also an ethical issue and involves important good government principles, namely the need for openness in connection with government activities and expenditures,” Walker told the Washington Post. “We should not just be seeking to do what’s arguably legal. We should be doing what’s right.”

Noting the administration’s argument that its actions are within legal bounds, Walker said the battle likely will be taken up elsewhere. “Congress has got to settle it — either Congress or the courts,” he said.

SAN JOSE, California
A California judge last week gave Apple Computer the green light to subpoena email records from three bloggers who printed information on an upcoming product, saying journalistic freedoms were secondary when a law had been broken.

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg said the email records may help Apple identify employees who violated trade secrets laws by leaking information on forthcoming music software.

The ruling was watched closely for its impact on the blogging world, where information is posted fast and furiously by people who do not fit the traditional definition of “journalist.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which provided legal counsel for the three bloggers who lost last week’s case, has argued that bloggers have the same rights as traditional journalists to protect sources.

Judge Kleinberg last week said that the issue of distinguishing bloggers from journalists was moot in this case because a crime had been committed under the state’s trade secrets law. Whether the defendants fit the definition of “journalist, reporter, blogger, or anything else need not be decided at this juncture,” he noted, according to NewsFactor.

While California is one of several states with a “shield” law protecting journalists’ rights not to reveal their sources, the judge said Apple’s right to protect trade secrets was more important than feeding the rumor mill about an upcoming product.

“An interested public is not the same as the public interest,” Kleinberg said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation said it would appeal the ruling.

SEATTLE
The family of a U.S. activist killed by Israeli forces while she was trying to block the demolition of a Palestinian home filed suit last week against Caterpillar, accusing the company of exporting specially armored bulldozers that the company knew would endanger people.

U.S. student Rachel Corrie was killed in March 2003 by Israeli Defense Forces who ran over her twice with a bulldozer while demolishing a Palestinian home in Gaza, reported the Associated Press.

While an Israeli investigation ruled her death to be an accident, fellow protestors say the bulldozer’s driver could not have missed Corrie as she knelt in front of the Palestinian home wearing a fluorescent orange jacket.

Last week, Corrie’s family sued industrial equipment maker Caterpillar, accusing the company of violating U.S. and international law by providing Israel with specially armored bulldozers it knew would be used to “demolish homes and endanger civilians,” reported Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald.

Caterpillar last week declined to comment on the suit, but released a statement saying that “more than 2 million Caterpillar machines and engines are at work in virtually every region of the world each day. We have neither the legal right nor the means to police individual use of that equipment.”

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

VANCOUVER
Justice Ian Josephson of the British Columbia Supreme Court stunned Canadians last week by acquitting two alleged masterminds of the worst terrorist incident in Canadian history.

The judge found Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri not guilty of eight charges connected with plots to blow up two Air India airliners in 1985.

One of the Air India planes exploded when a suitcase bomb detonated over the Irish Sea, killing all 329 on board, including 80 children and 200 Canadians. Two Japanese baggage handlers were killed also in Narita Airport in Japan when baggage they had taken from an Air India plane exploded prematurely.

The judge ruled that he could not find the defendants guilty beyond a reasonable doubt even though the conspiracy to conduct the bombing took place in Canada, with both bombs originating in Vancouver.

While most families of the victims and most Canadians expected a guilty verdict after one of the longest trials in Canadian history — 233 trial days involving 115 witnesses and testimony based on events nearly two decades old — Justice Josephson insisted that the testimony of key Crown witnesses was contradictory and not credible and that the prosecution failed to prove the required criminal standard of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

However, the judge indicated that the result of the trial may have been different if there had not been “unacceptably negligent” destruction of wiretap evidence by the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) not long after the bombing had taken place.

Some commentators have started debates on the ethical behavior of CSIS in investigating the bombing conspiracy, and some family members of the victims have started questioning the decision of the judge.

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina
NASCAR last week slapped three crew chiefs with suspensions and fines after discovering rigged cars and other rules violations, saying the time had come to put an end to the sport’s tradition of cheating.

The crew chiefs incurred suspensions ranging from two to three weeks and fines from $25,000 to $35,000 following a race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway two days earlier, reported the Associated Press.

While the penalties also included points that knocked race winner Jimmie Johnson from first place to second, NASCAR said it would not strip him of the win, though such steps may come if cheating continues.

“It is not fair to the fans or to the cars that are legal for a victory to be tainted,” NASCAR spokesman Jim Hunter told the Associated Press. “We’ve tried money and we’ve tried points and nothing works. Hopefully … we won’t have to do anything else. But if we have to consider further action, we will.”

Todd Berrier, crew chief for Kevin Harvick, received the harshest of last week’s penalties for rigging a car’s gas tank to read full even though it had only 5 gallons, allowing the car to be driven lighter and faster.

Berrier last week was unrepentant, telling NASCAR.com, “If I had to do it again, I’d still play it to try to get away with it, because I know how I got caught,” according to the AP.

All of the penalized teams said they would appeal.

From the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press:

“A comprehensive study of long-term public values finds that beliefs about national security are now twice as important as economic or social values in shaping a person’s partisan identification….

“The survey of the public’s values by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press … finds considerable evidence of the nation’s political divisions. It also shows the public is attuned to the increasingly partisan environment — two-thirds (66 percent) believe the country is more politically divided than in the past, and roughly half say the people they know [are] more divided.

“The war in Iraq is seen as the primary cause for the increasing divisiveness….

“Yet this survey cannot be viewed as simply a study in rising partisanship. It also confirms that a number of consensus values endure, which may be a surprising finding in today’s political climate. For example, Americans overwhelmingly agree on the importance of religion, on the power of personal initiative, and on the need to protect the environment. They are likewise bound by skepticism toward big business and they generally agree that there has been movement toward racial progress….

“Significantly, the values study found little change in the public’s overall views on basic foreign policy attitudes, even as Republicans and Democrats have grown further apart. A modest majority of all Americans (55 percent) said in December 2004 that good diplomacy, not military strength, is the best way to ensure peace. That was the same number who held that view in 1999 and virtually the same as in 1996 (53 percent).

“However, an increasing number of Republicans subscribe to the view that military strength — rather than effective diplomacy — is the best way to ensure peace. The percentage endorsing diplomacy as the better option dropped from 46 percent in 1999 to 32 percent in 2004.

“The movement among Democrats — in the opposite direction — has been just as dramatic. In the 1990s, roughly 60 percent of Democrats expressed the view that good diplomacy was the best way to ensure peace; that number rose to 76 percent in 2004.

“A similar pattern is evident in views on the obligation to fight for the country, whether it is right or wrong….

“By 66 percent to 27 percent, Republicans said that people should fight for the country, right or wrong; Democrats, by a comparable margin said it is acceptable to refuse to fight in a war that one sees as morally wrong….

“However, what is frequently overlooked in discussions of public values is the extent to which there is a large measure of agreement, at least on general principles.

“For example, roughly three-quarters of Americans said that ‘religion is a very important part of my life.’ And slightly more — 78 percent — believe that everyone has it in his or her own power to succeed. These are values that transcend politics and set Americans apart from people in other wealthy nations.

“There also are more concrete issues on which much of the public holds similar values. By more than four-to-one, Americans said the country ’should do whatever it takes’ to protect the environment. And by a similar margin — 77 percent to 16 percent — the public felt that the largest companies have too much power….

“Although Americans are bound by their sense of the personal importance of religion, they divide almost evenly over whether belief in God is a prerequisite of personal morality. Roughly half assert that it is necessary to believe in God to be a moral person, while nearly as many disagree.

“This is not a partisan question; Democrats and Republicans are each split on the issue. But the link between faith and morality divides the public in other ways. Only about a third of college graduates (35 percent) believe a person needs to believe in God in order to be moral, while more than two-thirds (68 percent) of those with no high school diploma feel this way. Whites are split evenly on the question, but blacks by a three-to-one margin (72 percent to 24 percent) see faith in God as necessary for a moral life.

“Americans not only overwhelmingly believe that all people have it in their power to succeed, they also see hard work as the key to success….

“As in the past, opinion is split fairly evenly over whether there are any limits to growth in this country. A narrow 51 percent majority said there are no limits to growth, but as many as 41 percent thought that Americans ’should learn to live with less.’…

“Americans continue to take a positive view of the amount of progress achieved by African Americans. By more than three-to-one (73 percent-20 percent), the public said that the position of blacks in Americans society has improved in recent years.

“There was a sizable split between whites and African Americans on this question, though even among blacks a majority (56 percent) said progress has been made….

“On the broad question of the government’s role in upholding morals, about half of all Americans — 51 percent — agreed with the statement ‘I worry the government is getting too involved in the issue of morality,’ while 41 percent favored the government doing more in this area.

“Republicans were more supportive than Democrats of greater government involvement in protecting morals. Still, Republicans were somewhat ambivalent — 53 percent believed the government should do more to protect morality while 41 percent said they worry that the government is getting too involved in morality.

“The values survey showed the public is evenly divided on the impact that immigrants are having on American culture and the economy. It also found no evidence that concerns about terrorism and homeland security have led to significantly more negative views of immigrants.

“About as many people said immigrants strengthen the U.S., because of their hard work and talents, as said they are a burden because of the impact on jobs, schools, health care and the like….

“The nation’s contentious political atmosphere is not lost on the public. In fact, it is a rare point on which majorities of both parties agree. In December 2004, Pew found 77 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of Republicans saying the country is more politically divided than in the past….

“Why do Americans think the country is more divided today? Not surprisingly, the war in Iraq is seen as the most important reason. Roughly a third (32 percent) of those who believe the nation is more divided than in the past point to the war as the primary factor; far fewer cite economic issues, or moral values and such social concerns as gay marriage….”

“The man who goes up in a balloon does not feel as if he were ascending; he only sees the earth sinking deeper below him.”

– Arthur Schopenhauer (German philosopher, 1788-1860)