Last week, when Iran released fifteen British sailors and marines captured March 23 in the Persian Gulf, the global sigh of relief was almost audible. Now that they’re safely home, the big question arises: What was that all about? Looking back, the situation modulated through three phases, each raising vital ethical points.

Phase One involved Britain’s measured response to Iran’s provocative move. When Revolutionary Guards seized the two British inflatables, their crews apparently were performing a routine, United Nations-mandated check of an Indian vessel in the Shatt el Arab’s long-disputed waters between Iraq and Iran. The British government insisted they were on the Iraqi side of the border. Iran, claiming otherwise, hauled the fifteen off to prison and demanded an apology from Britain for invading its territory.

A century ago, such a claim might have worked. In those days, before Loran or radar, each side’s navigators would have pored over questionably accurate charts with sextants, compasses, and parallel rulers — along with skill, science, and art — to determine longitude and latitude. These days, global positioning systems provide real-time coordinates that are accurate within a matter of yards. On that basis, the British crew pinpointed the site of the attack, which they said occurred 1.7 nautical miles outside of Iran’s waters.

Being so visibly and technologically in the right, the British lion could have reared up in righteous indignation, fulminating against Iran and escalating the crisis. Instead, prime minister Tony Blair chose a level-eyebrow diplomatic approach. It was clear from the beginning that the issue was not about who was where. It was about Iran’s increasing isolation. Stung by a recent United Nations resolution censuring its nuclear program and by Western moves to sanction its financial institutions — and threatened by president George W. Bush’s authorization to seize suspected Iranian insurgents in Iraq and by the dispatch of a U.S. aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf — Iran lashed out. The British government, to its credit, found a way to align political efficacy with moral principle, producing a solution that (unless further revelations prove otherwise) won the captives’ release but gave nothing away.

Except, that is, the unofficial apologies from the crew. Enter Phase Two. Here the ethical case is less clear. Under what now appears to have been intense psychological pressure from their captors, the captives publicly apologized for invading Iranian waters. Did that constitute an unpardonable compromise — an expedient but unprincipled pliancy that abetted the enemy? Or were their comments an effective, perhaps even essential, element in giving Iran the pretense of victory that made resolution possible?

Those who see this situation in classically military terms expect captured combatants to give only name, rank, and serial number, offering no other information and certainly not capitulating to the enemy’s viewpoints. To them, the fifteen behaved poorly: They said whatever was demanded of them rather than stand up for the truth. Others, however, see this situation as part of an Iranian play to the global media. Such a play is typical in the context of terrorism and low-intensity warfare, which require widespread publicity in order to be effective. From this point of view, statements made by captives, particularly when they result from psychological coercion, should be discounted as obvious fabrications that bear little resemblance to truth. In this view, the fifteen merely said whatever their tormentors forced them to say, knowing that the world would understand their words to be nothing but ideological ventriloquism.

Ethically, then, this second phase raised a classic right-versus-right dilemma. Is it right to tell the truth no matter how much you are pressured to lie? Of course. Is it right to remain loyal to your fellow captives and bring a potential multiyear crisis to a quick conclusion? Of course. Since a powerful moral case can be made for each side of this dilemma, there’s little to be gained by pretending it’s a black-and-white issue and accusing either side of a failure of integrity.

That’s less true of Phase Three, in which the British government over the weekend indicated its willingness to allow the fifteen to sell their stories to the media. Here the ethical lens suddenly goes cloudy. True, there’s a faint argument for getting these stories out quickly and dramatically in order to counter Iran’s version of the truth and deflate its triumphalism. But the accuracy of such so-called “checkbook journalism” — where sources are handed hefty sums to elaborate fulsomely on their stories — is more suitable for sensationalist tabloids or ranting blogs than for mainstream media and newspapers of record. Like torture in reverse, checkbook journalism creates a pay-me-enough-and-I’ll-say-whatever-you-want atmosphere that immediately renders such stories suspect.

As for allowing these fifteen to benefit financially from their inordinate hardship, that case is even shallower. There’s a manifold unfairness in enriching these fifteen, no matter how intense their hardship, while denying similar benefits to hundreds of other military personnel whose hardships didn’t happen in the glare of global publicity. If a pay-to-say precedent were established, who could blame future warriors for seeing themselves as players in a grand game of reality TV, where the chance for lucrative publicity might at any point trump their duties to their country?

Was the British government’s role in this standoff, then, an ethical success? It began on the moral high ground. It moved to a right-versus-right dilemma. Unfortunately, it then descended into moral hazard. Two out of three isn’t bad. But there’s room, and perhaps still time, for improvement.

©2007 Institute for Global Ethics

[Ed. note: Tuesday's New York Times reports that following strong protests over the policy, Britain's defense secretary has rescinded the decision allowing the fifteen service members to sell their stories. The reversal is too late for two of the fifteen, who already have made such a deal; seaman Faye Turney, the only woman in the group, says she plans to donate a portion of her payment to "a charity for her fellow service members aboard the frigate Cornwall," notes the Times.]

“It’s incumbent on everyone to roll their sleeves up, if they haven’t already, to deal seriously with this problem. If pain concentrates the mind, there will be more concentration on the issue now.”

– Luke Popovich of the National Mining Association, a trade group for coal mine operators, talking about negotiations over looming industry mandates to cut greenhouse-gas emissions in the wake of last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the right of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

WASHINGTON
Ethics stories continued to consume many of last week’s headlines from Washington. Among the stories:

• In another development related to the evolving ethics investigation centering on the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, a senior aide to attorney general Alberto Gonzales resigned late last week. The Washington Post reports that Monica Goodling quit about two weeks after she saying she would invoke her Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer questions from Congress about the firings, which critics have contended were politically motivated. In addition to sparking a political firestorm in Congress, the controversy swirling around Gonzales has damaged morale among federal prosecutors and their staffs, according to the Post report, causing three top managers in Minneapolis to demote themselves rather than work for a newly confirmed U.S. attorney, who is a former Gonzales aide.
• Ethics rules are complicating life in Washington now that springtime — the unofficial start of the season of charity balls — has arrived, according to a report from the Hill, a publication covering Congress. The problem: Under newly implemented ethics provisions, lawmakers cannot accept gifts from groups that employ lobbyists, but the rules are unclear as to whether they can accept free dinners from charities that employ lobbyists. Also at issue is whether congressional spouses can raise money for charities or social clubs. According to Hill reporter Jonathan E. Kaplan, some lawmakers have been attending fundraisers but not eating the dinners, while many others skip the events altogether, prompting a surge in last-minute cancellations and possibly stanching the flow of money to charities. Congressional leaders so far have not offered a timetable of when they plan to offer guidance on the issue.
• A government investigatory agency has charged that NASA’s inspector general, Robert Cobb, routinely tipped off department officials about internal investigations and interfered with a report about the explosion of the Columbia space shuttle in order to avoid embarrassment to the agency, according to the Associated Press. A thousand-page report from the government Integrity Committee claims that Cobb created an “appearance of a lack of independence” and that NASA has not properly disciplined him. Cobb says he cultivated friendships within the agency but did not compromise his role, the AP reports.

BEIJING
Apparently bowing to international outrage over the ethics of so-called transplant tourism — where wealthy foreigners visit developing nations in order to receive organs that may have been purchased from impoverished locals or taken from executed prisoners — China last week announced new regulations cracking down on the process.

Reuters reports that the new rules promise to pull the licenses of medical professionals involved in transplant tourism.

A dispatch from the official Chinese government news agency Xinhua also notes that hospital ethics committees will be required to review and approve every transplant operation that is conducted.

The prohibitions are limited to the selling of organs. Sales of tissues, such as marrow, corneas, and cells, are still permitted, according to the Jurist, a publication of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

Transplant tourism was the focus of a meeting of international experts last week sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO), a United Nations agency. WHO official Luc Noel told the CBC that the organization believes that 5 percent to 10 percent of all kidneys transplanted in 2005 were from the illicit market.

In its report, Reuters notes that much of the black market growth is due to a shortage of organs in the legitimate donation system, a shortage partly due to increasing rates of kidney failure in wealthy countries where obesity and high blood pressure are common.

LONDON
Britain is engaged in an emotional ethical debate over the possibility of using embryos that are part human and part animal in order to produce stem cells that could in turn be used to replace diseased human tissue and possibly cure ailments resulting from disease or injury.

While the government has proposed a ban on the process, an influential committee of members of Parliament says that banning the research could block cures to devastating diseases, reports the Scotsman.

According to an analysis from the BBC, the government says it advocates a ban on human-animal cell mixing because of what it calls “public unease.”

But in addition to the dissenting parliamentary Commons Science Committee, about 223 medical charities are also opposing the ban, reports the London Daily Telegraph.

Guardian science correspondent Ian Sample notes that scientists who advocate the human-animal egg process say it may solve ethical as well as practical problems. The procedure involves removing a cell from a human and inserting into a cow or rabbit egg. The cells would be fused to make an embryo that is 99.9 percent human, providing a source of stem cells while at the same time overcoming the shortage of human donor eggs and the ethical issues involved with harvesting and disposing of human eggs.

NEW YORK
The ethical boundaries of free speech over the airwaves were tested once again by radio provocateur Don Imus, who last week referred to women who played for the Rutgers University Women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed ho’s.”

According to a report from the New York Times, Imus’ remark was widely interpreted as a slur against both the racial and moral characteristics of team members, and was viewed as an outrageous statement even for the nationally syndicated radio host known for being over the top.

On Friday, two days after his initial remarks, Imus issued an on-air mea culpa. After a weekend of backlash, MSNBC announced late Monday that it would suspend the telecast of Imus’s show for two weeks. The blackout will begin next Monday, reports the Associated Press.

“[I] want to take a moment to apologize for an insensitive and ill-conceived remark we made the other morning referring to the Rutgers women’s basketball team,” Imus said Friday, according to a report from CBS News. “It was completely inappropriate, and we can understand why people were offended. Our characterization was thoughtless and stupid … and we’re sorry.”

A report from the Los Angeles Times notes that Imus’s antics have drawn criticism before, but this time it was particularly blistering. The NCAA and Rutgers University issued statements condemning the remarks, and the National Association of Black Journalists called for the shock-jock to be fired.

Imus’s show is syndicated on more than 70 stations across the United States. The station that produces the show, WFAN, issued a statement saying it was “disappointed by Imus’ actions earlier this week, which we find completely inappropriate,” and pledged to monitor the program’s content, reports New York City radio news station WINS.

SAN FRANCISCO
A well-known financial columnist for the Dow Jones and Co.’s MarketWatch website resigned last week after it was revealed that she had written about companies that did business with a start-up firm in which she had invested.

Bambi Francisco, who has covered Silicon Valley for almost a decade, resigned after a series of reports saying she had written about firms involved with a start-up called Vator.tv, in which she had a financial stake, Reuters reports.

In a statement, Dow Jones executive vice president Gordon Crovitz said that Francisco was allowed to start Vator.tv on her own time, with Dow Jones’ approval. But she was not allowed to write about companies affiliated with Vator.tv, a website that matches small companies with venture capitalists by posting their videos online.

Dow Jones, which owns the Wall Street Journal, prohibits its employees from investing in companies or industries that they write about, according to a report in the Journal.

Dow Jones’s code of conduct, which all employees must sign yearly, says employees must “conduct themselves at all times in a manner that leaves no grounds for belief, or even suspicion, that an employee is beholden to newsmakers, information providers, advertisers or market participants, creating a temptation to violate these rules.”

The situation became complicated when she wrote about companies that posted videos on Vator.tv, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

In announcing her resignation, Francisco said that she had decided to pursue her entrepreneurial venture full-time. “The understanding had always been that if it got to a point at which I could not proceed without conflicts of interest, then I would leave MarketWatch to focus on Vator.tv,” she wrote in her final column.

VARIOUS DATELINES
Efforts to fight alleged corruption were the focus of a several stories appearing last week in the world press. Among them:

• An anticorruption forum in South Africa concluded last week with participants urging adoption and implementation of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption. The news service AllAfrica.com cites Joseph Gangloff, deputy director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, as saying the next step will be for participating nations to complete a self-study that shows what sort of deficiencies exist in individual countries’ abilities to fight corruption and where outside expertise can be found. He said that the top priorities are for developing nations to deny safe havens to corrupt officials and the recovery of looted assets.
• Kenya’s ongoing fight against graft has been given a boost with a $12 million grant from the United States. The Kenya Times reports that the grant has no strings attached, but is likely to be used to probe two major corruption cases and to overhaul the system used for procurement of supplies and contractors for public projects.
• Saudi Arabia has approved a national strategy for fighting corruption and set up a high-level agency to implement it. The Khaleej Times, an English-language daily based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, reports that the National Authority for Combating Corruption will probe the dealings of government officials, regardless of their rank. The move comes after high-profile allegations of corruption in various Saudi industries and utilities, according to the report.
• Reacting to pressure to restore democracy in Pakistan, president Gen. Pervez Musharraf appears to be negotiating a deal with exiled former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who heads Pakistan’s largest political party despite having fled the nation to avoid arrest on graft charges that she claims were politically motivated. The Associated Press reports that the latest development in the case was the transfer of the prosecutor who had pursued Bhutto to a job in provincial administration. Analysts tell the AP that protests against Musharraf are threatening his popularity and a reconciliation with Bhutto could allow him to stay in power if her party backs his presidency.
• Bangladesh’s military-backed government, granted emergency powers in a drive to crack down on graft, last week arrested the mayor of Sylhet City, a municipality about 120 miles north of the capital of Dhaka. According to reports from the International Herald Tribune and the Bangladesh Daily Star, police arrested Uddin Ahmed Kamran in front of dozens of assembled journalists. Kamran says he is innocent. The case is part of a massive anticorruption drive, so far involving the arrest of more than 160 former politicians, implemented after the government declared a state of emergency in January to subdue months of violent protests over election procedures, which opponents claim are tainted by corruption.
• Corruption, often cited as the most difficult issue facing the post-Soviet government in the Czech Republic, has become the focus of a tough new proposed law, according to reports from Czech Radio and the Prague Daily Monitor. The measure would increase the maximum sentence for taking a bribe from eight to 12 years, and would ban any official convicted of corruption from working in a public post.
• China’s highly visible anticorruption campaign continued to make headlines in the state-controlled press last week as official news agencies trumpeted the investigation of a former Shanghai land use official. Yin Guoyuan, former deputy director of the Shanghai Housing, Land, and Resources Administrative Bureau, is the focus of a probe involving alleged irregularities in the real-estate business, a sector that has boomed after certain private property deals were authorized by government reforms. Communist Party officials say the massive sweep is an effort to revitalize the nation’s economy, but critics charge that the purges — many of them centered in Shanghai, a power center for opponents of the Beijing-led government — are politically motivated.

MIAMI
In an incident that is becoming a test case for the clash of values between protecting society and preserving the rights of sex offenders, officials in Miami grudgingly have given approval for a group of sex offenders to live under a bridge because laws designed to keep them from living near children make it virtually impossible to find housing.

UPI reports that the situation stems from laws in Miami-Dade County barring sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet — roughly a half-mile — from schools, some of the strongest regulations of their kind in the nation.

Six sex offenders now live under the Julia Tuttle Causeway, a bridge linking Miami to Miami Beach. And while the site has no running water, no electricity, and offers little shelter from the weather, state officials tell CNN Miami bureau chief John Zarrella that the state condones the arrangement because at least their location is known.

The men must stay under the bridge from 10 P.M. until 6 A.M., the time period during which their parole officer performs checks on them, according to a report from Miami television station WPLG.

The Associated Press reports that the men use fishing poles to catch food, cook on camp stoves, use battery-powered TVs and radios, and store their belongings in plastic bags.

County commissioner Jose Diaz says he has no qualms about the consequences of the ordinance he created, saying his “main concern is for the victims, the children that are the innocent ones that these predators attack and ruin their lives.”

A corrections department spokesman admits, though, that the conditions are far from ideal and that the state and the offenders are attempting to find new housing options.

Charles Onley, a research associate for a federal center that studies sex-offender management, noted in an interview with the AP that it has often been said “that some of these laws will force people to live under a bridge. This is probably the first story that I’ve seen that confirms that.”

NEW YORK
Financial aid officers at several major universities and a federal education official are the focus of a probe into their ties with student-loan providers.

The New York Times reports that directors of financial aid at Columbia University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Southern California held shares in a loan company that each of the universities recommends, and in at least two cases profited from the arrangement, according to revelations in an expanding investigation by New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo.

Their ties surfaced as part of a probe by Cuomo into alleged kickbacks by the $85-billion college loan industry, according to a report from the Associated Press. In some cases, Cuomo’s investigators claim, arrangements often benefited schools at the expense of students, and lenders provided expense-paid luxury trips to college financial aid officers who directed students to the lenders.

USA Today reports that the probe has expanded to include a federal Department of Education official who owned about $100,000 worth of stock in a student loan company at the same time he was overseeing lenders. Matteo Fontana, who supervises lenders that participate in the Federal Family Education Loan Program, was placed on leave after the disclosure, according to USA Today.

New York’s probe parallels an investigation conducted by U.S. Senate Education Committee chairman Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). Kennedy, who has asked more than a dozen student lenders for documents detailing their relationships with universities, tells Bloomberg, “We need to ensure that those charged with administering federal student loan programs put the interests of students first. It is inexcusable for students to be paying the price for backroom deals in the student loan industry.”

From CareerBuilder.com:

“Counting down the minutes to payday? You’re not alone. Four-in-ten workers (41 percent) say they often or always live paycheck to paycheck, according to CareerBuilder.com’s latest survey. More than half (55 percent) say they would need to earn more than $500 per paycheck to live comfortably and one-in-five (21 percent) state they don’t set aside any money for savings each month….

“Thirty-seven percent of workers report they have one income for their households while 16 percent say they work more than one job just to make ends meet. Although 58 percent of workers have a set budget each pay period, 21 percent say they typically spend over their allotted amount. When asked what puts them over budget most often, the most popular response was eating out.

“In addition to immediate needs, workers are facing challenges in planning for their futures. Although 14 percent of workers save $500 or more per month, 28 percent save $100 or less per month and 16 percent save less than $50. Twenty-five percent don’t participate in a 401K, IRA or other retirement plan.

“Struggling with budgets is experienced across all pay levels. Nearly one-in-five workers (19 percent) who earn $100,000 or more report they often or always live paycheck to paycheck….

“…Forty-seven percent of women say they often or always live paycheck to paycheck compared to 36 percent of men. Forty-one percent of women say they don’t have enough income to live comfortably compared to 29 percent of men. Twenty-six percent of women don’t set aside any savings each month compared to 17 percent of men….”

“Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important…. They do not mean to do harm … they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

– T. S. Eliot (British (U.S.-born) poet and critic, 1888-1965)