Now and then the moral universe finds two wholly different things, sets them side by side, and says, “Look at this amazing connection!” Last week, for me, the connection centered on the ethics of reality television.

On Thursday morning I heard Refik Hodzic, a Serbian Muslim filmmaker, talk about his new documentary on the war in the Balkans. That evening, amid a burst of ethical concern from the punditry, the latest installment of “Survivor,” the CBS reality-TV series, oozed across the nation’s screens. To set Hodzic’s insights against the pop psychology of “Survivor” risks blurring the trenchant with the inane. But each raises concerns about the media’s manipulations of ethnic issues, and each shows how dangerous television can be without the restraint of a shared moral purpose.

Hodzic’s documentary traces a father’s search for his 16-year-old son, who disappeared and was murdered during the family’s panicked flight from Serbian soldiers intent on ethnic cleansing. But the filmmaker also probed the ways in which the Balkan past has been squelched, twisted, and reformulated. Commenting to a small group of us on how such horrors had grown so suddenly virulent in the early 1990s, he leveled a passionate blast at Serbian television, which in the months before the war had deliberately used ethnic stereotypes to lather up mistrust and fear and to engender violence against neighbors of different ethnicities.

By contrast, “Survivor” is thin gruel. To their credit, its producers addressed earlier criticisms that the show was inattentive to racial diversity. In its latest cast of twenty, only five are white. But they then went on to announce, with more than a hint of relish for the controversial, that they were grouping the latest cast into ethnic “tribes” — whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians — and then turning the four tribes loose upon one another.

Despite sharp protests from commentators, that’s a far cry from ethnic cleansing. But that’s the point: In the cheerfully insensitive world of prime time, we’re encouraged not to see any connections at all between interpersonal “reality” and the big-picture realities of international warfare. To keep us from making those connections, “Survivor” indulges a chain of manipulative reasoning that begins innocuously. That reasoning moves through four steps:

• It begins by inviting viewers to focus on racial differences rather than on human commonalities — on what separates, rather than unites, the members of the cast.
• If we accept that invitation, we’re then open to the suggestion that a single five-person tribe can stand in for an entire ethnic culture — much the way an all-star baseball team represents the whole sport for a few games.
• We’re encouraged next to identify ourselves with whatever tribe looks most like us, and to feel vaguely disloyal if we find we actually like, say, the black team better than “our own” white or Hispanic or Asian team.
• Finally, we’re urged to see the relationship between the races as a battle for survival, and to cheer for “our side” as one race seeks to triumph over the others in the program’s grand finale.

But isn’t this just ratings-mad TV — silly and insipid, perhaps, but not dangerous or subversive? That might be so, were it not that some of humanity’s most destructive behaviors — in the old American south, in the apartheid days of South Africa, and in Rwanda and Darfur and Liberia — arise from just such simple roots. They take shape first in language and imagery. Along the way, they generate such unfortunate comments as those from “Survivor” producer and host Jeff Probst, who described the new program as “a social experiment” around “this theme of ethnic pride” — language that, intentionally or not, echoes eerily of Nazi eugenics and xenophobic nationalism.

In our pragmatic age, however, there’s a final argument, which is that programs like “Survivor” really do draw viewers. So, apparently, did Serbian TV before the Balkans war. So does the bigotry and rant on some of today’s talk radio. True, watching the thrills and anguish of “Survivor” isn’t the same as watching with fascination and horror as nationalist leaders churn up ethnic pride to produce a social experiment. But even if “Survivor” is only the little cousin of racism’s big brother, it deserves to be watched carefully. I can’t think of a major war today that hasn’t begun with a heightened sense of ethnic difference and tribal competition.

©2006 Institute for Global Ethics

“Postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi.” Saddam “was distrustful of al-Qaida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime.”

– Text from a recently declassified Senate Intelligence Committee report, including an October 2005 CIA assessment, repudiating Bush administration assertions that Saddam Hussein supported al-Qaida and its operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Despite long-held, pre-war doubts about Saddam’s support for al-Qaida and al-Zarqawi, the administration — even as recently as last month — has continued to claim close ties between the two. The Senate report, two sections of which were declassified last week, refute that position, reported the Associated Press.

SAN FRANCISCO
An embarrassing ethics scandal that now reaches across the continental United States took a new turn last week as some shareholders filed suit, claiming that the behavior of Hewlett-Packard executives has damaged the company’s reputation and, ultimately, its value.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the law firm of William Lerach, which customarily handles high-profile securities-fraud cases, has sued HP directors on behalf of shareholders who claim that revelations that the company spied on directors and journalists will drive up legal costs for the firm and diminish the company’s worth.

Among other things, the plaintiffs want directors to be responsible for their own legal bills.

In another development, on Friday of last week a congressional committee asked four figures central to the case, including HP chairwoman Patricia Dunn and legal counsel Ann Baskins, to testify about the methods used by investigators who gathered phone records while working for the Palo Alto, California, computer firm, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

Also, the threads of the case now appear to extend cross-country to Massachusetts, the Boston Globe reported, as California officials announced they are investigating the role of a firm that specializes in corporate security and apparently consulted for HP.

According to the Globe, the company, called Security Outsourcing Solutions, represents itself as an external source for firms that do not have adequate in-house staff or expertise for certain security issues.

At the heart of the scandal are the techniques used by investigators contracted to plug leaks from the HP boardroom to the press. The HP investigation, started after an outraged Dunn suspected a board member of funneling information to reporters, allegedly involved “pretexting,” a technique in which an investigator assumes a guise or false identity in an effort to obtain information.

In the HP affair, law enforcement officials say crimes may have been committed when pretexting investigators claimed to be board members or journalists and fooled the phone company into providing personal calling records. Those records of calls were later used to connect the dots and document conversations between board members and reporters, according to a report from Forbes.

California attorney general Bill Lockyer said that such tactics are illegal in California.

Chairwoman Dunn has apologized for the methods used and plans to resign from the top spot in January, but said she plans to stay on the board and maintains she had no direct knowledge that pretexting would be used in the probe she ordered.

According to the technology-news network CNET, the legal outcome of this case may hinge on the level of separation between the HP boardroom and the firms that actually carried out the probe.

CNET quoted Rob Douglas, an information security specialist who has testified before Congress about methods used to obtain phone records, as saying he would be “dumbfounded if you could find a corporation the size of HP that turned directly to the pretexter.”

Such investigations, Douglas said, usually “have middlemen and are layered.”

WASHINGTON
In what appeared to be one small step that ended chances for a wider overhaul of ethics legislation this year, the U.S. House of Representatives last week approved a measure that would require members to publicly announce the details of special-interest legislation they sponsor.

Bloomberg reported that the new rule will obligate House committees to fully describe all target funding, known colloquially as “earmarks.” Earmarks are broad categories covering special spending that benefits districts or tax breaks that benefit specific firms or industries.

Lawmakers have been allowed to insert the earmarks into spending packages anonymously, if they so chose. The newly adopted measure could expire at the end of the year unless the House reapproves it, noted the Washington Post.

USA Today reported that the earmarking disclosure requirement is regarded by many as being a dubious step toward openness because some lawmakers routinely brag about special-interest projects in press releases to constituents.

According to a report from the Post, the House rule is a compromise measure that replaces a wider ethics and lobbying reform measure that stalled after disagreements between the House and Senate and was stymied because of lawmakers’ reluctance to limit their interactions with lobbyists.

The Post said the Senate is working on a compromise measure similar to the House’s.

Lobbying and ethics reform became major political issues in Congress after the unraveling of a scandal surrounding the once-powerful lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a GOP-connected insider who pleaded guilty to a variety of corruption charges and then turned government informer, providing information for several current probes.

In a related story, Ohio Rep. Bob Ney last week admitted improperly accepting tens of thousands of dollars in tips, tickets, and casino chips while working on behalf of Abramoff. The Cincinnati Post reported that the six-term Republican congressman, who had been adamantly denying wrongdoing, last week reversed course and filed court papers agreeing to plead guilty to corruption charges.

Prosecutors are expected to recommend that Ney serve 27 months, according to the Cincinnati paper.

WASHINGTON
In the latest volley over one of the most prominent and persistent global-ethics controversies, President Bush last week defended his beliefs about methods of questioning and imprisoning terror suspects.

Acknowledging stiff opposition from some Republicans in the Senate, Bush called on Congress to pass legislation that would allow for the trial of terror suspects by military commissions, restrict defendants’ access to intelligence information that could be used for their defense, and clarify the United States’ requirements for treatment of prisoners under the Geneva Conventions, according to a report from the New York Times.

UPI noted that the most incendiary part of the debate appears to center on Geneva Conventions accords relating to interrogation techniques for people who are captured out of uniform, with the administration asking for an interpretation that would prevent CIA interrogators from being charged with war crimes.

Three Republican senators, Lindsey Graham (S.C.), John McCain (Ariz.), and John Warner, (Va.), have publicly opposed that request, saying it would eventually raise everyone’s level of brutality and result in abuse of U.S. prisoners in foreign nations.

Debate over the measure became even more heated after former State Department head Colin Powell objected to the administration’s proposed reinterpretation of the Geneva Conventions clause about treatment of prisoners, which is known as “Common Article 3.”

“The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism,” In a Powell wrote to McCain, according to a report from the Toronto Star. “To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts … furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk.”

Bush flatly rejected the argument that the United States could lose the ethical high ground on the issue, the Associated Press reported. “It’s unacceptable to think there’s any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective,” Bush said.

NEW YORK
Defying standard practice in a sport known for its code of silence, two of bicyclist Lance Armstrong’s eight teammates from the 1999 Tour de France last week admitted to the New York Times that they used a banned performance-enhancing drug in preparing for the race where they helped Armstrong win one of his titles.

Neither man said they saw Armstrong take any banned substances, and Armstrong last week repeated his denial that he ever engaged in doping.

Only one of the pair admitting drug use to the Times put his name on the record: Frankie Andreu, a retired team captain who now works as a bicycling commentator and analyst.

Andreu told the Times he was admitting that he used EPO, a drug that boosts endurance, because he feels that doping is damaging the sport and that continued stonewalling and denial by riders may permanently drive away fans and sponsors.

The sport was rocked most recently by the failed drug test of Floyd Landis, who won the Tour de France but now is in the midst of a legal wrangle to officially take his title away. Landis still maintains he did not knowingly take a performance-enhancing drug.

According to Times reporter Juliet Macur, who wrote the series of exclusives on Andreu’s admission, “Andreu, a widely respected competitor throughout his career and a member of the USA Cycling board, spoke at considerable risk. The United States Doping Agency can investigate and punish athletes who say they have used performance-enhancing substances.

“Even so, he said, the guilt of using EPO, a synthetic drug that helps boost endurance, had been eating at him. He compared using the drug for a few races to robbing a bank: ‘Does it matter if you stole 10 cents or 10 million dollars?’ he asked. ‘It’s still stealing.’ “

According to a follow-up from the Associated Press, the Discovery Channel Team, for which Andreu rode, is “considering all legal options” against him after the admission. The team cited its no-tolerance policy against doping. Other cycling organizations may investigate Andreu as well, according to the AP.

The enthusiast publication Bicycling, which interviewed Andreu after the Times story was published, noted that his admission could cost him his livelihood.

“I’ve got a lot more to lose now,” Andreu told Bicycling. “Back then I was single, just racing my bike. Now I have a family, now I have a wife and kids.”

VATICAN CITY
Questions relating to the limits of religious dialogue once again surfaced last week as Pope Benedict XVI said he was sorry that some Muslims had found his remarks in a speech offensive.

The Reuters news agency reported that the Vatican released a statement saying, “The Holy Father is very sorry that some passages of his speech may have sounded offensive to the sensibilities of Muslim believers.”

The pope later issued a more direct apology, saying, “I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address,” the New York Times reported.

The statements came amid growing anger about remarks by the pope during a speech last week in his native Germany, during which he appeared to endorse a view that early Muslims had spread their religion by violence.

His comments fueled worldwide outrage that was reminiscent of protests earlier this year after a Danish paper published satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, reported CNN.

Various governments in Islamic nations quickly condemned the remarks. Malaysian prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said the Pope should not “take lightly” the spread of outrage that has been created, the Voice of America reported, noting that Muslim leaders in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and Turkey, also denounced the pope’s comments.

The pope’s remarks have increased diplomatic tensions between some nations and the Vatican, and sporadic incidents of violence have erupted, noted USA Today.

The Aljazeera network also circulated photos of what it said were thousands of Palestinians marching in protest in the Gaza Strip.

But the pope’s supporters insisted the remarks were misinterpreted. According to a report from UPI, German chancellor Angela Merkel said the pontiff had been calling for inter-religious dialogue and made the remarks in a statement that renounced “all forms of violence in the name of religion.”

ISTANBUL
Freedom-of-expression issues once again took center stage last week in Turkey’s latest effort to prosecute those who are critical of the government — in this case the author of a book in which a character makes unfavorable remarks about the country’s actions in 1915.

Elif Shafak, a noted Turkish novelist, goes on trial this week on charges of “insulting Turkishness” in her novel The Bastard of Istanbul, according to a report from MSNBC.

In her novel, Armenian characters refer to a genocide by Turks against Armenians during the last years of the Ottoman Empire, something Turkey denies to this day, claiming that both Armenians and Turks died in a partisan conflict.

The CBC reports that freedom of speech has become a major issue in Turkey and carries heavy political implications. Other visible authors, such as Orhan Pamuk, have been charged with insulting the Turkish nation, and a British artist living in Turkey is facing up to three years in prison after ridiculing the nation’s prime minister in a collage depicting the leader as a dog attached to a Stars and Stripes leash.

At a deeper level, there is speculation that the recent spate of prosecutions are calculated to prevent Turkey’s pending application to join the European Union, which has voiced concern over free-speech issues. According to an article in the Turkish daily newspaper Zaman, author Shafak has speculated that certain nationalists would prefer that Turkey’s application be rejected so the country could stay an “enclosed, xenophobic society.”

ISLAMABAD
A law that makes it virtually impossible to prosecute rapists in Pakistan are under attack by various women’s and human rights groups, which accuse the government of knuckling under to hard-line Islamic lawmakers.

The law, known as the Hudood Ordinance, is based on Islamic religious law and requires a woman who claims she has been raped to produce four male witnesses to the crime — or else face possible prosecution for adultery, according to a report from Reuters India.

According to the Times of London, hundreds of women have been jailed after they brought rape charges but could not produce enough witnesses. In addition, the law has made prosecution almost impossible and the risk of being jailed has discouraged the filing of charges, according to the Times.

CNN and the Associated Press reported that Pakistan’s government had been attempting to transfer rape and adultery from the jurisdiction of Islamic law into the realm of civil enforcement, but ran into fierce opposition from fundamentalist leaders.

A compromise measure will retain the four-witness law, but will allow a woman who alleges she has been raped to prosecute under the Hudood Ordinance if she has the necessary four male witnesses, or under Pakistani civil law if she does not.

But the BBC reported that human rights groups decry the compromise, saying it will allow fundamentalist lobbies to manipulate what is seen as a weak civil judicial system.

NEW YORK
The World Bank’s fight against corruption in poor countries, a program that involves withholding money from nations that don’t do enough to clean up graft, has prompted an unexpected backlash from critics who say that the bank’s get-tough attitude is arbitrary, politically motivated, and will drive those nations deeper into poverty.

According to a report from the Guardian, the anticorruption policies of World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz are opening deep fault lines within the organization.

Last week, Britain’s international development secretary, Hillary Benn, went so far as to threaten to withhold a $50-million contribution in protest of his claim that the world’s richest nations should not be telling poor countries how to manage their economic affairs, according to a report from the London Telegraph.

A report from the Times of London quoted a source inside the bank as saying Wolfowitz, a former U.S. Deputy secretary of Defense who took over the bank 18 months ago, is a member of a group of conservatives who “are trying to impose their own economic and political model on Africa — without recognizing the reality of the situation on the ground.”

Wolfowitz’s anticorruption campaign has resulted in the suspension of loans and contracts to nations including Argentina, Bangladesh, Chad, India, and Kenya.

According to the International Herald Tribune, Wolfowitz recently answered critics of his policies by insisting that “the assistance we provide needs to be used for the intended purposes. And the intended purposes are to send children to school, to help mothers be healthier, to provide jobs for poor people — not to have resources siphoned off into the hands of the corrupt and greedy.”

MONTREAL
An alcohol industry group based in Quebec is asking manufacturers, distributors, and retailers to adhere to a new code of ethics that rules out ads linking drinking with sex appeal.

The group, called Educ’alcool, is asking everyone in the marketing chain to tone down what have become increasingly sexy ads, according to wire-service reports carried by the CTV television network and the Toronto Star.

“We know we have some rules, we have some laws, but we think that we could use a code of ethics,” said organization president Jean-Guy Dubuc.

“We’re not against beautiful women, or fun, or anything like that,” Dubuc said. “On the contrary.”

The proposed code also would bar the use of advertising images using models who look younger than 25, steep discounts on alcohol, and any ad that encourages drinking games.

The CBC reported that a 2,000-member group called the Quebec Bar, Pub, and Tavern Owners’ Association has already signed on, according to association president Renauld Poulin, who said that the code puts in writing practices that have been loosely followed for years.

“These are not ethics that are unknown to bar owners,” he said.

From Harris Interactive®:

“About half (48 percent) of U.S. adults generally trust that the President tells the truth — down substantially from 65 percent in 2002. However, 12 of the 22 professions measured by The Harris Poll® are trusted to be truthful by 60 percent or more of U.S. adults, with doctors (85 percent) and teachers (83 percent) topping the list. In addition, over half of the occupations measured have seen an increase in the eyes of the general public to tell the truth when compared to 2002. This is a turnaround from four years ago when most occupations saw a decrease in feeling about truthfulness.

“In addition to doctors and teachers, those rounding out the top five of generally trusted occupations and professions are scientists (77 percent), police officers (76 percent) and professors (75 percent). Conversely, the five occupations that are least trusted to be truthful include actors (26 percent), lawyers (27 percent), stockbrokers (29 percent), trade union leaders (30 percent) and opinion pollsters (34 percent).

“Specifically the survey found the following changes in responses since 2002:

• “In the past four years the occupations that have received the largest increase in the percentage of U.S. adults who trust that they tell the truth are accountants (up 13 percentage points from 55 percent in 2002 to the current 68 percent), bankers (up 11 percentage points to 62 percent), clergymen or priests (an increase of 10 percentage points to 74 percent), and scientists (up nine percentage points to 77 percent). Doctors and military officers have also shown increases….
• “Others that have shown more modest positive change include police officers (up seven percentage points to 76 percent), stockbrokers (up six percentage points to 29 percent), judges (up five percentage points to 70 percent), teachers (up three percentage points to 83 percent) and lawyers (up three percentage points to 27 percent).
• “Those who have shown the most substantial drop are the President (a decrease of 17 percentage points from 65 percent in 2002 to a current 48 percent) and public opinion pollsters (a drop of 10 points to 34 percent)….
• “Those that have shown little or no change in the past four years are professors (75 percent), the ordinary man or woman (66 percent), journalists (39 percent), members of Congress (35 percent), and trade union leaders (30 percent)….”

“It is harder to kill a phantom than a reality.”

– Virginia Woolf (English author, 1882-1941)