Ethics Newsline®

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)

You might think bankruptcy reform would be a dust-dry topic. But the bill that passed the U.S. Senate last week raised a tough ethical question: How easy should it be to declare bankruptcy?

Not very easy, say those who see ethics as a matter of responsibility. They insist it’s irresponsible for people not to pay what they owe. They worry about millionaires, deadbeat dads, and credit card addicts hiding their assets and walking away from their debts by declaring bankruptcy.

But those for whom ethics is a matter of compassion take a different view. They worry about single mothers plunged into debt when alimony payments don’t show up, or about uninsured patients running up huge medical costs. From this perspective, these people need a system that lets them clear their records and start afresh.

Last week, senators voted 74-to-25 for the former arguments. The bill, which requires those filing for bankruptcy with incomes above a certain level to repay some portion of their debt, now goes to the House of Representatives with President Bush’s support.

Banks and businesses, which depend on extending credit and receiving predictable repayment, have been pushing this legislation for eight years. Why does it finally pass now, and by such a solid margin? One answer lies in current presidential priorities. But something larger is at work. Bankruptcy, which is a deliberate breaking of a promise to pay, is only a symptom a deeper issue. We’re confronting a national epidemic of promise breaking — an unwillingness to accept responsibility for keeping one’s word, doing what’s been agreed, and honoring commitments.

This irresponsibility shows up in academic cheating, despite standards of integrity that students are expected to uphold. It shows up in illegal steroid use among athletes, despite expectations that sports will be played fairly. It shows up in the abandonment of mothers by fathers, despite mutual obligations for caring and nurturing that come with childbearing. It even showed up last week at Boeing, where CEO Harry Stonecipher was ousted for breaking his promise to uphold the company’s ethics policy — a breach that cost him the trust of the board of directors once they learned of his affair with a colleague.

What do all these have in common? Promises given and promises broken. Some of these promises are explicit: Marriage vows, sports rules, and honor codes all involve a conscious agreement to do certain things in certain ways. Some promises, including mortgages and credit card contracts, are so explicit that they’re legally binding.

But some of our most important promises are implicit, secured by ethics rather than law. Parents don’t sign child-raising contracts with the state, nor do they expect their children to be required by law to care for them in later years. And which of us, when a luncheon partner fails to show up at the restaurant, will file suit? These relationships are based not on law but on implicit promises. Yet those promises are no less important just because they’re ethical rather than legal.

Keeping promises, then, is crucial to social stability and progress, whatever form it takes. So (to get back to the bankruptcy bill) can there be any moral justification for those who argued in the Senate for compassion? If we set aside arguments about catastrophic medical costs — a problem that takes more than bankruptcy legislation to fix — the moral case for compassion is that the epidemic of promise breaking is paralleled by a broad public indifference to debt. That indifference shows up in discussions about the national debt, which few understand and even fewer take seriously. It shows up in the current debate about Social Security, a system of future-payment promises that many say can’t be kept. And it shows up in relentless and sophisticated campaigns by banks and businesses to persuade inexperienced users of debt — like college students and low-wage employees — to sign up for credit cards that can lure them into purchases far beyond their means.

If there’s an argument for compassion, then, it’s the double bind created by our current financial culture. If we create indifference about debt, and then set up irresistible temptations to fall into it, can we honestly blame only those who fall? Didn’t we help create the conditions that caused their collapse? Don’t we collectively have some obligation to help the victims?

The right path, which the bankruptcy bill seeks to find, must balance these two core values of responsibility and compassion But unless we go beyond symptoms and face up to the root ethical causes — the culture of promise breaking, indifference, and temptation — it’s hard to see how we’ll make the real social progress that this issue demands.

©2005 Institute for Global Ethics

“Our top choice would be to win the war on terrorism and declare an end to it and repatriate everybody. The next best solution would be to work with the home governments of the detainees in order to get them to take the necessary steps to mitigate the threat these individuals pose.”

– A senior Defense Department official, discussing the government’s efforts to accelerate the transport of terrorist suspects to foreign countries. While the program would have wider oversight than the current CIA program of rendition, in which suspects are sent to nations where abuse and torture are common, critics say safeguards are insufficient both for U.S. security and for the prisoners, reported the New York Times. (“Pentagon Seeks to Transfer More Detainees From Base in Cuba,” New York Times, Mar. 11)

CHICAGO
Scandal-plagued Boeing Co. last week forced CEO Harry Stonecipher to resign, saying the man hired to restore the company’s reputation had violated the ethics code he championed by actions related to an affair with an employee.

Board chairman Lewis Platt said the affair was not the reason for the firing, citing unspecified related factors that made the board question Stonecipher’s judgment and ability to lead the company.

Stonecipher was tapped to head Boeing 15 months ago after CEO Phil Condit resigned amidst a still-unraveling scandal involving two executives now serving jail time for biasing contract bids with the government.

Brought out of retirement to restore the aerospace giant’s tarnished image, Stonecipher aggressively pushed an agenda that included strict ethics policies for Boeing employees.

Last week, he said that he was brought down by a violation of his own codes. “We set — hell, I set — a higher standard here,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “I violated my own standards. I used poor judgment.”

Stonecipher’s affair was exposed by an anonymous tip to management. When the company’s board asked Stonecipher about the relationship, he did not lie, reported the New York Times.

Ten days after the tip-off, Stonecipher was given his walking papers as well as a “standard retirement package,” the Associated Press reported. The employee with whom he had the affair was not identified and remains on the job.

While many observers credited Boeing with taking swift action — Stonecipher was fired 10 days after the tip-off — others said the quick ouster may hint at an itchy trigger finger by boards who have been spooked by recent scandals involving CEO misconduct, the AP noted.

“Companies are really wrestling with what is the line between business behavior and private behavior,” said corporate consultant Freada Klein, who specializes in sexual harassment and bias issues, “and when does that private behavior compromise the confidence that employees have in a senior person.”

WASHINGTON
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) skewed the science behind its controversial industry-backed proposal for regulating mercury pollution from power plants to make it look better than the proposal supported by environmental groups, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded last week.

The GAO’s determination echoes a recent report from the EPA’s inspector general, who also reported finding evidence of bias in the mercury rule backed by the Bush administration and energy sector.

While the industry supports a rule that allows trading in pollution credits among several power plants, environmental groups support a plan that would set strict caps on individual power plants, reported the Washington Post.

The EPA manipulated its analysis of both proposals to make the industry-favored plan appear more beneficial, the GAO said last week, chastising the EPA for a lack of “transparency” in its process.

Given the findings of faulty science, the GAO, Congress’s investigative arm, urged the EPA to rectify the proposed rule before putting it into effect, according to the Post.

EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman last week said the agency is holding to its plan to issue the rule this week.

BROOKLYN
A federal judge last week dismissed a lawsuit accusing more than 30 U.S. chemical companies of participating in war crimes by supplying the U.S. government with Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

The suit was filed on behalf of millions of Vietnamese people suffering illnesses, birth defects, and deformities they say are linked to the chemical dioxin, which is a component of Agent Orange.

The U.S. government dumped more than 21 million gallons of defoliant, mostly Agent Orange, on Vietnam between 1962 and 1971 in an effort to kill crops and destroy cover for the enemy.

The Vietnamese lawsuit argued that the companies knew Agent Orange was poisonous, making its provision to the U.S. government a war crime, reported the New York Times.

U.S. District Court Judge Jack Weinstein last week dismissed the case, saying neither U.S. nor international law provides a legal basis for holding the chemical companies, which include Dow Chemical and Monsanto, responsible.

Dow spokesman Scot Wheeler praised last week’s decision, saying the private sector should not be held to account for the government’s use of its products, according to the Associated Press.

Wheeler also contended that Agent Orange “did not create adverse health effects.” Press reports, however, noted that many studies indicate Agent Orange’s dioxin has been linked to cancer, organ dysfunction, birth defects, and diabetes.

While the chemical companies have been fighting the Vietnamese lawsuit, they settled domestic claims in 1984, agreeing to pay $180 million to U.S. veterans suffering health problems, reported the New York Times.

Nguyen Trong Nhan, vice president of Vietnam’s Association for Victims of Agent Orange, last week called the decision “unfair” and said his group would appeal.

“This is just another war that could be long and difficult, as was the Vietnam War,” he told the Agence France-Presse. “We are determined to pursue it until the very end, until the day we will be able to ask for justice.”

BOSTON
Two of the nation’s top business schools came out swinging last week after being hacked by prospective students, saying candidates who sneaked a peek into their admissions files would be barred from enrolling.

Harvard Business School and MIT’s Sloan School of Management last week said they would follow the lead of Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business in barring students who hacked their way into an admissions site one week earlier.

Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, and Stanford’s Graduate School of Business each said they are considering similar steps, reported the Boston Globe.

Last week’s actions follow the hacking of a site used by the business schools to handle admissions applications. Applicants followed directions posted in a BusinessWeek Online forum by a hacker, exposing the system for about ten hours before administrators figured out how to shut the hole.

“This behavior is unethical at best — a serious breach of trust that cannot be countered by rationalization,” said Kim Clark, dean of Harvard Business School, which will reject 119 applicants for hacking the system.

While at least one admissions expert said the schools were overreacting, MIT business school dean Richard Schmalensee said the hacking was a clear violation of trust, warranting the school’s rejection of 32 applicants.

“Our mission statement talks about principled, innovative leaders and we take the principled part seriously,” Schmalensee said in an interview with the New York Times.

”Business schools teach students to make decisions and to be accountable for those decisions,” said Derrick Bolton of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, which has asked the hacking applicants to explain their reasoning before the school makes a decision.

”We hope that the applicants who accessed their accounts might contact us to explain their behavior and to take ownership for their actions,” Bolton said.

WASHINGTON
Smarting from a legal rebuke for mistreating Mexican prisoners sentenced to death in the United States, the Bush administration last week said it will pull out of the international protocol that gave the prisoners the right to appeal their treatment to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague.

The ICJ last year agreed with 51 Mexicans now on U.S. death rows who complained that officials violated their international rights by failing to allow them to contact their consular officials after being arrested.

By blocking access to consular officials, the United States violated the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a treaty guaranteeing people arrested abroad quick access to their government representatives.

The Bush administration, which views the ICJ ruling as interference with its use of capital punishment, last week said that while it will honor the court’s ruling in this case, it will no longer adhere to the optional protocol allowing detainees to appeal their cases to the ICJ.

The United States authored the optional protocol in 1963, ratified it in 1969, and was the first to invoke it before the ICJ, successfully suing Iran for seizing 52 U.S. hostages in Tehran in 1979, noted the Washington Post.

Last week, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Darla Jordan said the optional protocol no longer serves U.S. interests because it played out “in ways we did not anticipate when we joined the convention.”

Characterizing the ICJ’s ruling as a disruption of the U.S. domestic criminal system, Jordan said the Bush administration decided to prevent future rebukes from the ICJ by refusing to recognize its jurisdiction.

“By withdrawing from the protocol, the United States has joined the 70 percent of the countries that do not belong. For example, Brazil, Canada, Jordan, Russia, and Spain do not belong,” she said, according to the New York Times.

Countries that continue to support the measure include Australia, Britain, Germany, and Japan, noted the Times.

BOULDER
With her university caught up in scandals, Elizabeth Hoffman, the president of the University of Colorado at Boulder, last week announced her resignation, saying she needed to put the school’s welfare ahead of her own.

UC Boulder, most recently beset by controversy over the 9/11 comments of tenured professor Ward Churchill, is still struggling to recover from allegations of sexual harassment and assaults by the school’s football players.

Last week, Hoffman said her resignation seemed like a needed step to help the school emerge from scandals’ shadow.

“It was becoming increasingly difficult to be strong on the issues that were important in the long run because it kept coming back to questions about me,” Hoffman told the New York Times, “so I decided I had to take my future, my job, off the table.”

Hoffman, who recently lost the support of some of the school’s board of regents, also caught recent headlines for warning that the nation may be headed toward a “new McCarthyism” stifling vital debate.

“I was referring to the deep divides in this country — the red states and blue states,” she told the Times. “I’m much more concerned about the fact that whatever you say today, someone is going to take offense at it.”

WASHINGTON
Upping the pressure on professional baseball to come clean about steroid use, Congress last week slapped seven players and four Major League Baseball executives with subpoenas to testify at a hearing this week.

The subpoenas target some of the game’s biggest names, including Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Jason Giambi, Curt Schilling, and the retired Jose Canseco, whose recent tell-all book “Juiced” names names and alleges widespread steroid use in the sport.

While Major League Baseball (MLB) has adopted tougher testing measures, critics in Congress say the organization’s “what’s past is past” attitude is unacceptable given the spread of steroids into youth athletics.

Stanley Brand, a lawyer representing the players and MLB, said he would fight the subpoenas, claiming that the House Government Reform Committee is exceeding its authority with the steroid investigation.

Committee chairman Rep. Tom Davis (R-Virginia) warned Brand that MLB had abdicated its responsibility and compelled the congressional effort, adding that it would be “unwise and irresponsible” to fail to comply with the subpoenas, reported the New York Times.

Last week, Jose Canseco and Curt Schilling both agreed to testify before Congress.

While many players are ignoring the controversy, according to New York Yankees relief pitcher Mike Stanton, others say the recent push by Congress is understandable, even if a bit fuzzy in its aims.

“In light of what’s happened in the last year or so, people are looking for some answers,” Yankees starting pitcher Mike Mussina told the Times, but added, “I don’t know what they’re ultimately trying to get out of it.”

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the committee’s ranking minority member, last week told the Associated Press that the goal was to examine the role of steroids and its effects on young athletes, not to hunt down individual offenders.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

OTTAWA
The Canadian Press is reporting that the Canadian government is offering a compromise to settle a long-running trade dispute with the United States over softwood lumber despite numerous legal victories against the United States under international trade rules.

Canada is offering a five-year proposal to impose its own export tax on softwood lumber exports to the United States in return for the withdrawal of countervailing duties that have crippled the Canadian lumber industry, costing an estimated $124 million each month.

However, an influential U.S. lumber lobby group, the U.S. Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports, wants both Canada and the United States to stop further legal actions before serious negotiations begin on the Canadian proposal.

Bolstering the position of the U.S. lobby group is the strong support of former Montana Governor Marc Racicot, an advisor to the group and the chair of the Republican National Committee for the re-election of President Bush.

Canadian International Trade Minister Jim Peterson has rejected the call to stop further legal action, and critics of the Canadian proposal argue that the imposition of the export tax would further cripple the Canadian lumber industry.

From the International Federation of Journalists:

“After one of the worst years on record for the killing of journalists, the International Federation of Journalists today launched its annual report on media deaths with a renewed call for the United States and other governments to take seriously their responsibility to investigate media killings.

“‘Too often governments display a heartless and cruel indifference to the suffering endured by the victims and their families,’ said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary. ‘Too often so-called investigations into the killings of our colleagues are merely a whitewashing exercise.’

“The IFJ … today said 129 journalists and media employees were killed last year, the worst 12-month toll on record….

“In a wide-ranging report that covers media deaths in 34 countries, the IFJ has attacked the impunity and injustice in the way governments respond to media deaths.

“‘There tends to be a few meaningless words of regret, a cursory inquiry and a shrug of indifference,’ said White. ‘It is inexcusable in an age when the world relies more than ever on media to tell the story that many governments fail to bring the killers of journalists to justice or excuse themselves when their own people are involved.’…

“The IFJ says that the unexplained killing of media staff and journalists in Iraq, involving 12 of the 69 violent deaths since the war began, shows why new international rules are needed to force independent investigations of media killings….

“The IFJ report also highlights a similar ambivalence among political leaders in the Ukraine where the Federation has been pressing the authorities to come clean over the case of journalist Gyorgy Gongadze, brutally murdered more than four years ago by anonymous killers linked to the authorities in the Ukraine.

“The IFJ report, which carries a special focus on how the Asian Tsunami disaster hit media in the affected areas, also criticises the government of the Philippines, where 13 journalists died last year. There were only two serious investigations and these failed to lead to any prosecutions….

“Despite graphic evidence of a deteriorating situation for journalists in many areas, the IFJ also provides some evidence of a new determination within media and journalism to confront the crisis.

“Almost 30,000 Euro has been donated from the IFJ’s International Safety Fund to the victims of violence and their families. ‘This is real solidarity from journalist to journalist and we are going to need much more of it in the years to come,’ said White.

“The IFJ also welcomed the news that, at the year’s end, the International Safety Institute opened up safety offices in Latin America and Africa with new offices to open in Asia and the Middle East before the end of the month.

“‘The INSI is a response from within the media industry to the safety crisis,’ said White. ‘It is a practical and determined effort involving media organizations and employees to reduce the risks we face and to put pressure on governments to deliver on their responsibilities….’

“Every civilization rests on a set of promises…. If the promises are broken too often, the civilization dies, no matter how rich it may be, or how mechanically clever. Hope and faith depend on the promises; if hope and faith go, everything goes.”

– Herbert Agar (U.S. newspaper editor and Pulitzer-winning author, 1897-1980)