Ethics Newsline®

What was that all about?

Like an autumn storm that nobody foresaw, the O. J. Simpson story blew into mid-November, churned furiously across the news, and vanished abruptly. Coming out of nowhere, headed for no particular goal, it was never going to be a story about anything but its own story.

Yet it leaves some encouraging lessons in its wake — not about Simpson, but about our surprising collective willingness to stand firm against public inanity.

Surprising? Yes, if you remember that only 12 years ago, when Simpson was accused of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman outside her Brentwood condominium, the slow-motion car chase and subsequent trial became one of the most-watched television events in U.S. history. And for good reason. The tale had all five of the key ingredients of the perfect tabloid grabber: violence, sex, fame, wealth, and power. It came with two gruesome deaths, apparently sparked by sexual rage, and implicated a celebrity living the lush life who had the kind of powerful connections that cash and notability confer. How could editors and producers resist?

Nor was the 1995 trial void of suspense. Its not-guilty verdict was a shocker, leaving many viewers feeling that Simpson had been let off on mere technicalities. That feeling solidified in 1997 when, with far less fanfare, a civil court in Santa Monica, California, found Simpson liable for the wrongful death of Goldman and for battery against both Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, ordering him to pay $33.5 million in damages.

Fast forward to 2006. Here’s a celebrity who, by his own account, needs money. He’s probably possessed of some lurid details about the slayings — either because he did them or because he thinks he knows who did. So he agrees to release a book tauntingly titled If I Did It. Luring in readers with hints of a veiled confession, it in fact offered only coy speculation about how he might have carried out the killings — which, he still maintains, he didn’t do. Tied into the book was a two-part interview on Fox TV.

Why now? Because this might have been his last possible moment for a public splash. O. J. Simpson, once a household name, is slowly fading into obscurity. Does that also mean he’s rising in respectability? Perhaps America’s well-documented tide of public forgiveness had finally produced some sympathy for his case. Perhaps it had reached high enough to meet the downward curve of his evaporating name recognition. In the future, when that name carries for most people only a vague aura of romanticized disrespectability — like the names of Jesse James or Jack the Ripper — how much will it be worth? Hardly enough to pay off that $33.5 million. Is this, then, the magic moment when those two curves cross, when people will have forgiven but not forgotten?

Yes, said his publisher, Judith Regan, whose ReganBooks imprint was set to release the book. But an outraged public said no. With impressive speed, some bookstores announced they would not stock the book. Potential advertisers for the TV interview refused to ante up. Network affiliates refused to schedule airtime for the interview. Fox News Channel celebrities like Bill O’Reilly condemned the arrangement. Eventually Rupert Murdoch himself — whose News Corp. owns both Fox TV and ReganBooks’s parent firm, HarperCollins — pulled the plug, describing it as “an ill-considered project.”

That verdict, too, was a shocker. Why, given the public taste for tabloid sensationalism, did this commercial ploy fail so miserably? Was it because public forgiveness accrues only to those who have made amends and done their time, rather than to those who are perceived to have eluded punishment? Was it because the sly trickery of a speculative book annoyed those who wanted either a true confession or powerful new evidence leading to the killer? Was it because the thought of a man making vast sums from a relationship riddled with domestic abuse and ending in merciless violence — themes all too common in the lives of women today — was so repugnant?

Or was it also because, at bottom, there remains a core of public moral conviction that, when stretched too far, rebels and stands fast? For a public longing for moral clarity, the last few years have not been easy times. There is an inordinate ethical confusion in the air, as well as a yearning for a visible sense of integrity. Yes, many Americans are forgiving, tolerant, experimental, and progressive. But when the bewilderment rises too far, and the moral barometer seems so wobbly, there comes a time to draw the line.

O. J. Simpson’s November spectacle was such a time. Now that it’s behind us, one question remains: Was our response to it a blip, or does it presage a new ethical firmness?

©2006 Institute for Global Ethics

“When I get calls from people thinking of blowing the whistle, I tell them ‘Don’t do it.’ Most of the time they go ahead and do it anyway and end up with their lives destroyed.”

– William Weaver, a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso and a senior adviser to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, talking to USA Today about the often-devastating consequences for government whistle-blowers. The paper’s report chronicles the difficulties, including destruction of career and reputation, encountered by many government employees who raise alarms about wrongdoing.

LOS ANGELES
In one of the more odd and unsettling media ethics cases in recent memory, O. J. Simpson last week denied that his book If I Did It was a confession, and claimed the only thing he is guilty of was trying to make money.

Simpson admitted to the Associated Press that profits from his book and unaired interview are “blood money,” but said, “unfortunately, I had to join the jackals … it helped me get out of debt and secure my homestead.”

While the book and a television interview package were both canceled after expressions of outrage from the families of Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, as well as from various media commentators, Simpson will get to keep the advance paid for the book. He would not specify the size of the advance and told the AP that much of it had been spent already for back taxes.

The “hypothetical” account of how Simpson “would have” killed his ex-wife and her friend was touted as a confession by his publisher, Judith Regan, who runs her own imprint, ReganBooks, under the HarperCollins roof, which is in turn part of Rupert Murdoch’s gigantic News Corp. media empire. News Corp. also owns the Fox TV network, where a two-part interview promoting the book was scheduled and then cancelled, in part because of protests by some of the network’s celebrities, including Bill O’Reilly and Geraldo Rivera.

Newsweek, in an advance Web copy of an article to appear in its Dec. 4, 2006, issue, reports that Regan had been given free rein because of her string of sensational and highly profitable books. Now, however, News Corp. insiders say the parent company is probing the circumstances that led to the debacle and reevaluating Regan’s autonomous role within the firm.

Simpson was found innocent of the murders in a criminal trial but was found liable for the wrongful death of Goldman in a later civil case. Simpson was ordered to pay $33.5 million to Goldman’s family. The judgment still has not been paid.

The Simpson affair caused further embarrassment for the Murdoch empire after it was revealed that News Corp. offered money to the Brown and Goldman families prior to the publication of the book. The London-based Independent reports that while representatives from both families have stated that they were offered millions of dollars to buy their silence, News Corp. has maintained that there were “no strings attached” to the negotiations and has not confirmed the size of any offer.

Meanwhile, the few editions of the book that survived the publisher’s mandatory recall and destruction led to another ethics controversy as some wound up being hawked on eBay.

The New York Times reports that eBay said it would pull the online auctions for three copies.

WASHINGTON
House Democrats plan on introducing several pieces of ethics legislation as soon as the new Congress convenes in January, but are split on exactly what shape ethics reform should take.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Democrats are divided over whether to leave the enforcement of ethics issues up to members or create an outside oversight and investigative office.

Those who favor internal enforcement say an outside authority would diminish Congress’s responsibility to police itself and would spawn a new, unnecessary bureaucracy. But proponents of outside monitoring, such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Conn.), a Democrat who was reelected as an independent, argue that independent enforcement is the only realistic solution.

“This is an area where there is an opportunity to make the rhetoric of self-reform of Congress real by having the guts to set up an independent office,” Lieberman told the Journal.

As the Democrats prepare to take control of Congress, party strategists regard ethics reform both as key to consolidating their power and as a possible landmine if they don’t carry through with it. Robert Novak, in a column carried by the Chicago Sun-Times, notes that Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), newly elected chair of the House Democratic Caucus, has circulated a memo saying that “real ethics reform” is critical to the party’s success in future elections.

“Failure to deliver on this promise,” Emanuel said in his memo, “would be devastating to our standing with the public and certainly jeopardize some of our marginal seats.”

Press reports indicate that the Democrats probably will construct ethics reform piece by piece rather than push one big bill. The Washington Post says that breaking up reform measures into packages — dealing separately with items such as gifts, meals, travel, and control over budget deficits — is likely to receive more sustained publicity than a single package, providing sustained publicity both for advocates and for those opposed to ethics changes.

In an unusual move, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) plans to keep the House in session after the 110th Congress is sworn in on Jan. 4 and she is elected as Speaker. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that although there is usually a vacation between the ceremony and the reconvening of Congress for the State of the Union speech in late January, Pelosi says she wants to work over the traditional break period to move forward on ethics reform and other issues.

TOLEDO, Ohio
A corruption scandal that has rocked Ohio politics and affected the outcome of at least one national campaign culminated last week in an 18-year prison sentence for a rare coin dealer and once-prolific GOP contributor.

Tom Noe, who was accused of pocketing about $2 million in state pension funds invested in coins, was sentenced to 18 years in prison, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports.

Noe also pleaded guilty in May to illegally channeling about $45,000 to President Bush’s reelection campaign, according to a report from the Cincinnati Enquirer.

The Toledo Blade reports that Noe will begin his 18-year state sentence after first serving 27 months in a federal penitentiary on the election charges.

He also faces a civil suit in which Ohio’s attorney general is attempting to reclaim about $4 million that state officials say Noe pocketed from the Ohio Bureau of Pensions, notes the Akron Beacon-Journal.

The scandal surrounding the investment has plagued state Republicans for more than a year, reports the Associated Press, resulting in ethics charges against Republican governor Bob Taft, who pleaded no contest, and four of his aides, who entered similar pleas. The scandal contributed to the Republicans’ loss of a Senate seat and four out of five statewide offices, according to the AP analysis.

Taft was not eligible to run again because of term limits, and the Republican who attempted to succeed him lost to a Democrat.

SEOUL
A year to the day after he admitted violating national bioethics rules, the disgraced South Korean professor at the heart of what arguably might have been the world’s most visible case of academic fraud announced last week that he again is researching stem cell technology.

On November 24 of last year, Hwang Woo-suk held a press conference to confess that two subordinates had donated eggs for stem cell research, a violation of South Korean ethics codes. At the time, he denied accusations that results from the research were faked.

Later, though, an investigation determined that results of stem cell experiments were fabricated by members of Hwang’s staff, and South Korea’s grand plans to become a hub for stem cell research came crashing down, as did Hwang’s career.

Last week, though, Hwang’s lawyer said the discredited scientist is back in business, working on animal cloning experiments and attempting to develop a method to create patient-specific stem cells as a way to apologize for “the stir” he caused, according to the Korea Times.

The news came as Hwang is standing trial for fraud and embezzlement. According to a report from the Associated Press, during the hearings Hwang has admitted inflating some data but has denied charges that he misappropriated funds.

Ramifications of the case continue to echo through the nation’s scientific community. According to the Seoul-based Chosun Ilbo newspaper, the government is planning to set up a comprehensive set of ethics guidelines to allow women to donate eggs for research only three times in their lives.

Part of the controversy over Hwang’s discredited research, reports the South Korean news service Yonhap, was the discovery that he had taken more than 2,000 eggs from about a hundred donors, far more than what he had reported to his university’s institutional research board.

BERLIN
A controversial traveling exhibit featuring preserved human corpses is causing controversy across the globe, while attracting record attendance at museums in 35 cities since opening in 1996.

The next venue, the Arizona Science Center in Phoenix, is expected to welcome more than half a million visitors to the exhibit, which is scheduled to open in January.

According to a report from KESQ-TV in Phoenix, the show features 200 bodies and body parts preserved with a new process known as “plastination,” in which body fluids are replaced with a liquid plastic that hardens in a way that leaves tissues intact. As a result, bodies can displayed without chemical preservatives or glass cases.

Often, the bodies are in various stages of dissection and organs and viscera are plainly visible.

The exhibit has drawn praise from many, and bodies reportedly are donated by people who express their wishes in their wills or sign consent forms before their deaths.

Critics nevertheless have dogged the exhibit’s creator with charges that the display is immoral, the Tucson Citizen reports. Some American Indians in Arizona, contacted by the Science Center’s ethics committee, asked that the upcoming Phoenix exhibit not be mounted. Other protestors have charged that using dead bodies to sell tickets is ethically indefensible.

The headquarters for the exhibit is located in the struggling German town of Guben, where anatomist Gunther von Hagens has established a profitable business creating the preserved corpses. The German news service Deutsche Welle reports that the display of corpses, many posed in lifelike postures, has revived the local economy.

“They say I earn money with bodies,” von Hagens told the Australian Age. “”It’s true, but owners of funeral houses do too, and nobody censures them. And besides, I create jobs.”

Last week, according to the Associated Press, the education minister of the German state of Brandenburg banned schools from taking students to the Body Worlds headquarters, saying he felt there was nothing scientific or instructive about “cutting up dead people in full public view.”

LONDON
Some British physicians are being forced to delay providing treatment to patients under a new policy from the financially strapped National Health Services, according to press reports.

The BBC says that hospitals in some regions are being told to delay routine appointments for eight weeks or risk not being reimbursed. The waiting period is being enforced because a previous effort to speed up the process of seeing a doctor caused patient lists to swell and eventually cost too much money, according to the report.

According to the Brighton Argus, Tory MP Tim Loughton called the restriction “unethical,” saying its true aim is delaying appointments until the next financial year or getting patients to drop off the public-health waiting list and pay for a private physician.

Other reports form the British press note that the budget crunch faced by the socialized medical system is reaching such a severe state that at least one of the local health authorities is considering raising the “threshold levels” for care, reports the North Norfolk News. The paper says a proposal to reduce the district’s debt would involve putting off minor surgery, cataract operations, and urology procedures until the underlying condition becomes more serious.

BRUSSELS
Microsoft Corp. found itself at the center of two ethics controversies last week — one an encore of an old issue and the other a foray into uncharted legal and ethical territory.

In Brussels, Microsoft handed over reams of data last week to European Union regulators in a case dating back to 2004, when the EU ruled that the software giant had abused its monopoly by withholding information that would have allowed rivals to write software to interact with Microsoft-powered servers.

The Associated Press reports that the EU now will turn the material over to the complaining companies, which will test it and report back about whether the information allows complete interoperability.

In a new twist, the Mapuche Indian tribe of Chile is threatening to take Microsoft to court in a case that centers on whether people can “own” the language they speak.

According to the Reuters news agency, the dispute began last month when Microsoft released a version of Windows in Mapuzugun, a dialect spoken by about 400,000 indigenous Chileans.

While Microsoft said it wanted to “open a window so that the rest of the world can access the cultural riches of this indigenous people,” Mapuche tribal leaders say the firm violated their heritage by translating the software without their permission. They have accused Microsoft of “intellectual piracy,” Reuters reports.

PARIS
Increasingly, business schools are educating future leaders on how to operate in an ethical and socially responsible manner, according to a report last week from CNN.

Reporter Peter Walker notes that some institutions, such as Harvard and Oxford, have departments specializing in socially conscious entrepreneurship.

Another example Walker cites is the ESSEC Business School in France, which created a Chair of Social Entrepreneurship in 2003.

The CNN report profiles one 2006 MBA graduate of the ESSEC program who put principle into practice by creating an innovative chocolate company, Puerto Cacao, that is built on the foundation of improving the “standard of living of small producers in less developed countries” as well as providing jobs to the disadvantaged in France.

The firm buys cocoa beans from small producers in South America at a guaranteed minimum and commits to buy from them for a minimum of five years. The company was started through ESSEC’s seed fund program, which helped line up investors.

BEIJING
Xinhua, China’s official news agency, reported last week on an entirely new business model in that expanding nation, one that is raising some perplexing ethical questions.

At issue is a firm that sells “white lies,” making up explanations and excuses for about $7.50 each.

Employees of the firm will assume various guises to extricate customers from their problems. In one case profiled in the Xinhua piece, a young man who had just taken a new job hired the white lie company to impersonate his “company manager” and tell his worried parents that he was doing fine at his new job.

While the founder of the firm maintains that his service is “an intermediary to offer explanations or white lies that preserve interpersonal relations,” others are not so sure that the business is ethical — or even legal.

An official interviewed by Xinhua warned that if the company offered excuses for extramarital affairs, it would be violating the General Provisions of Chinese Civil Law, which requires citizens to abide by society’s code of ethics.

An ethics professor at Shandong Normal university offered a mixed view, noting that while white lies can sometimes be conducive to social harmony, “selfish and dishonest explanations could threaten social ethics,” Xinhua reports.

Incidentally, the business offers no guarantees or refunds if the lies do not work.

From Harris Interactive®:

“An estimated 49 million adults in the U.S. indicate that they have been told that their personal information had been lost, stolen or improperly disclosed over the past three years. Most of this notification has come from government agencies and financial institutions. While many of these people do not believe anything has happened to them as a result of the lost information, a small but significant number do think that something may have happened….

“Specifically the survey found that:

• “Just over one in five (22%) U.S. adults claim that in the past three years a business, government agency or other organization notified them that the organization had lost, had stolen or otherwise improperly disclosed their personal information. This translates into approximately 49 million adults.
• “Among those adults who say that they have been notified, most indicate that the notification was made by a government agency (48%), a financial company (29%) or a commercial company (12%). Other organizations that have made notifications include educational institutions (6%) and health care facilities (5%).

“Furthermore, eight in 10 (81%) adults who have been notified about lost or stolen personal information perceive that nothing harmful happened to them as a result. However, a significant 19 percent — representing abut 9.3 million persons — do believe that something harmful happened to them. Among this group who indicate that something happened to them, the following occurred:

• “Merchandise was charged in their name (43%)
• “Some kind of fraud was committed that cost them some money (35%)
• “Money was taken from their bank account (18%)
• “A credit card was taken out in their name (11%)
• “Someone posed to get government benefit or service (8%)

“…’We know from detailed studies of ID theft that many of these harms are caused by actions of friends and family of the victims, stolen wallets or purses, pilfering identifying information from mailboxes or trash containers, and from insider theft of personal data by employees of organizations,’ Dr. Alan Westin commented about the findings. ‘However, our survey shows that almost 10 million persons out of the almost 50 million persons notified of a data breach over the past three years believe that direct harm to them resulted from the breach. This documents the importance of business, government, and other types of organizations applying stronger data security measures when handling personal information — if they are to retain the trust of their customers, members, or citizens.’ “

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.”

– C. S. Lewis (English novelist and essayist, 1898-1963)