Ethics Newsline®

Many thanks to our readers for your patience during the transition to a new and improved format for Ethics Newsline®. We hope the updated site will provide better access and usability — and we’ll continue to tweak the presentation to that end. Along the way, we’ll highlight features that may get overlooked or feel lost — like the one-page, scrollable version preferred by some readers. It’s still here and waiting for you each week. Just use the easy drop-down list under “Weekly Archives” in the site’s rightmost column. Select the issue you’d like, and the one-page version will load. (The one-page version also can be found at the top of each week’s email update via the “Highlights and Quick Links to the Current Issue” link.) Enjoy — and again, thanks!

The 2008 Environmental Performance Index from the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and Columbia University was released last week. The index ranks nations based on “broadly-accepted targets for environmental performance and measures how close each country comes to these goals.” The top five and bottom five nations in this year’s rankings, which were released at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, appear below:

Top Five:

1. Switzerland
2. Norway
3. Sweden
4. Finland
5. Costa Rica

Bottom Five:

145. Mali
146. Mauritania
147. Sierra Leone
148. Angola
149. Niger

Source: 2008 Environmental Performance Index from Yale University and Columbia University

For more information, see this week’s Research Report.

by Rushworth M. Kidder

Okay, naptime’s over. That persistent crashing noise we heard all last fall — the sound of mortgage-lender portfolios caving into rubble — should have roused us. But only last week, when a hurricane-force fraud blew the roof off French bank Société Générale, did we finally wake up.

What we’re now seeing, as we rub our eyes, is a truth as vast as it is unfamiliar: that capitalism can’t survive in the absence of integrity.

If that seems an overstatement, let me explain. For decades, ethics has been viewed in much of the business community as a soft topic. Some business schools, to be sure, have instituted small but lively ethics programs. And many strategists would agree that if you can manage to fit ethics into your corporate framework, you’ll reap pleasant honors and appreciative comments. But competitive capitalism is still largely understood to require something other than the core values of honesty, fairness, responsibility, and respect.

As a result, the fallacy has grown up in some circles that moral values are irrelevant. Why? Because we have all these regulations. Get the rules right (the argument goes), enforce them vigorously, set up risk-control offices to assess the dangers and enforce obedience, and you won’t need ethics. All you’ll need is compliance.

The result of that fallacy is now painfully clear: a $7.2 billion loss last week for Société Générale, based on trades initiated by a 31-year-old employee named Jérôme Kerviel. Because Kerviel had worked for several years in the bank’s risk-control area, he easily evaded the regulations. Even as late as November, when Eurex, the derivatives exchange unit of Deutsche Börse, raised questions with Société Générale about some of Kerviel’s trading positions, he produced fake paperwork to cover his tracks.

According to the bank’s initial assessments, Kerviel was a rogue trader working alone — hacking into computers, borrowing other employees’ computer passwords, and falsifying documents. By the time he was discovered, he had placed bets in the marketplace worth $73.5 billion — more than the bank’s market worth. He appears not to have profited personally from his trades, nor to have wanted to harm Société Générale. His goal, according to the Paris prosecutor in the case, was to enhance his reputation and become a star trader.

There’s a lot we don’t yet know about the Kerviel case — whether the bank turned a blind eye to his deceptions because of his prior successes, whether others at his level were doing similar things, whether he was a scapegoat to turn attention away from the bank’s mounting losses in the subprime market. But even in its early stages, his case raises serious questions about the limits of risk control:

• The derivatives market in which Kerviel worked is a specialized arena depending on complex mathematical formulas and sophisticated computer technologies. It became part of the bank’s business in 1987 — and is unlike anything that earlier generations of traders had experienced. As Kerviel proved, the scale and technological refinement of this business allowed the unethical activities of a single individual to be amplified rapidly into a world-class calamity. Given the ability of technology to leverage ethics in this way, how complex will risk-control operations need to become — and will they end up costing more to maintain than the trades are worth?
• While such ethical leveraging is not new, Kerviel has set a record. Société Générale’s $7.2 billion loss far outweighs the damage done by Joseph Jett at Kidder Peabody in 1994 ($350 million), Nick Leeson at Barings Bank in 1995 ($1.4 billion), and Yasuo Hamanaka at Sumitumo in 1996 ($1.3 billion). This trend suggests that many lessons remain unlearned by risk managers — and that a lot of illicit skills can readily be acquired by today’s young traders. Is risk control largely a palliative, building a false sense of confidence while cloaking the deeper issues underlying such rogue events?
• If Kerviel’s motive was partly to prove he could outsmart the system, he may be a bellwether for a new generation of computer-genius rogues whose reward is less financial than psychic. And if, as many suspect, the termination of billions of dollars of his trades by Société Générale last week caused an already unstable market to slide toward wholesale meltdown, did he ultimately get the largest psychic buzz of all — seeing his own work steer the U. S. Federal Reserve Bank toward a historic rate cut? If this is what a single trader, motivated neither by greed nor revenge, can do in 2008, what might a malicious group of traders do in the next decade to sabotage an organization, a market, or even a nation?

Don’t misunderstand: Risk-control mechanisms are crucial and must be strengthened. But to imagine that today’s challenges can be addressed simply by better controls and tighter compliance is sheer fantasy. Which brings us back to the relationship of capitalism and ethics. The best protection any corporation can put in place is not a regime of compliance but a culture of integrity.

What if, at Société Générale, there had been a determined insistence on honesty, responsibility, fairness, and respect — not just as theories and mottos, but as practiced and admired values? What if ethics had been continuously taught, discussed, and promoted across the firm? What if an expectation of integrity had permeated the organization from the top down, reaching into every client relationship, every promotion decision, every new hire? Would rogue traders make it very far up the chain before being found out? Would even the aroma of sleaze at the desk next door have been tolerated — or would someone have had the courage early on to take Kerviel aside and point out that “we don’t do things like that around here”? Would Kerviel himself, feeling the support of a values-driven culture, either have steered himself into honest behaviors or decided to leave?

Trust, after all, is what sound capitalism always has relied on. Last week’s wake-up call reminds us that trust arises not just from a smart system of rules but from a genuine culture of integrity. If half of the effort Société Générale spent building internal controls had gone into creating a world-class culture of ethical values, does anyone really think it would be where it is today?

©2008 Institute for Global Ethics

Questions or comments? Write to newsline@globalethics.org.

Rushworth Kidder will return to this space next week.

Carl Hausman’s commentary last week about the effects of the “Daily Me” — the figurative name given to customized media that reflects the user’s preferences, tastes, and worldview — drew several comments from readers.

A retired news executive writes: “Great column. But, alas, it may be too late. That is, unless we can start communicating with those still inside the womb. I have this notion that the little ones hit the ground already hard-wired to Google for Lindsay, Britney, and Paris. Yet, I remain hopeful somehow a culture of change will emerge putting your bottom line goals within reach.”

An attorney comments: “Someone said that the media used to promote knowledge, but now it promotes ignorance. An overstatement, to be sure, but our powerful news and

entertainment industry is sure squandering an opportunity to help edify its

audience and improve our common welfare.”

And a businessman shares this view: “Seems our kids are so entrenched in their own virtual worlds they haven’t a clue, nor do they care, what’s really going on around them.”

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

“Sufficient evidence has emerged of stratigraphically significant change (both elapsed and imminent) for recognition of the Anthropocene — currently a vivid yet informal metaphor of global environmental change — as a new geological epoch to be considered for formalization by international discussion.”

– A scientific team led by Jan Zalasiewicz, writing in the February issue of GSA Today, the magazine of the Geological Society of America. Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams of the University of Leicester and colleagues at the Geological Society of London argue that human activity has sufficiently altered the environment that the Holocene era has ended and a new era, the Anthropocene has begun — an idea “first suggested in 2000 by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen” that has gained added momentum lately, according to LiveScience.

Source: LiveScience, Jan. 27.

For more information, see: GSA Today article, “Are we now living in the Anthropocene?” abstract and full text.

From the “you thought it couldn’t get worse” department, unprecedented bank-fraud scandal may cost $7 billion; also, ethics is on the agenda at the World Economic Forum, a Wal-Mart event, and the Siemens shareholders meeting

VARIOUS DATELINES
The world press focused on a variety of business ethics stories last week:

• As the ethics scandal over subprime loans continued to resonate worldwide, another financial blockbuster rocked the markets last week. The giant French bank Société Générale revealed that a rogue trader had defrauded the company of $7.2 billion, according to Bloomberg. The loss is unparalleled in world banking history and apparently developed when a young trader set up dummy securities accounts and made some very bad bets. An officer of the New York Stock Exchange who handles European markets told Bloomberg that the fraud was apparently made possible by bafflingly complex financial systems with insufficient oversight.
• Ethics was on the agenda at the World Economic Forum last week. About 2,500 political and business leaders gathered in Davos, Switzerland, with one of the main events described as a discussion of the “Unified Earth Theory.” ABC News reports that during the event, advocates Al Gore and rock star Bono spoke about their claim that Western nations bear a moral responsibility to eliminate extreme poverty and head off global warming. Bill Gates was on hand and made a pitch for “creative capitalism,” saying corporations are duty bound to “find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well,” according to a report from BusinessWeek.
• Retail titan Wal-Mart last week pledged to reduce its carbon footprint and require its suppliers to meet stricter ethical standards. In a speech to employees last week, CEO Lee Scott said he would pressure suppliers to produce goods that reduce power consumption by about 25 percent on average over the next three years, reports the technology news service CNET. “If we achieved our 25 percent goal just in the U.S. we would save enough electricity to power 3 million homes per year or the equivalent of 10 million barrels of oil,” Scott said. “We do not know exactly how we will get there. We do not even know if our suppliers can make items like hair dryers that user 25 percent less energy. But we do know that our approach works — to partner with suppliers, to help customers make better decisions, and to use our business model to drive out waste.” Wal-Mart has gone on the ethics offensive in recent years after being the target of critics who take issue with the firm’s business practices, working conditions, and supply sources.
• Shareholders of German engineering giant Siemens last week told corporate leaders that the company’s strong profits are being offset by weak ethics. The Agence France-Presse reports that investors at a shareholder meeting called for a renewed focus on ethics after the firm was rocked by a yearlong wave of corruption scandals. Daniela Bergdolt, who represents a group of small investors, declared that “the reputation built by Siemens for 160 years has been reduced to ashes.” But others praised the firm’s new chief, Peter Loescher, for shaking up complacent management, starting a probe of internal corruption, and simplifying Byzantine reporting structures that apparently allowed billions in fraudulent transactions to be hidden.

Sources: Bloomberg, Jan. 25 — ABC News, Jan. 26 — CNET, Jan. 27 — AFP, Jan. 26.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Dec. 10, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 5, 2007 — Related Newsline story, July 2, 2007 — Related Newsline story, May 29, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 18, 2002.

Are social networking sites driving suicides in Wales? Do Google searches about prospective employees violate their privacy? Can battlefield ethics be taught via holographic projection?

VARIOUS DATELINES
A number of stories from the frontier of technological ethics garnered headlines last week. Among them:

• U.K. officials are scrambling to address one of most troubling aspects of the information age: websites devoted to suicide. The Times of London reports that law enforcement officials are beginning a sweeping review of sites that discuss taking one’s own life and are looking at new laws designed to curb the dissemination of information about suicide. Suicide sites most recently appeared on the public’s radar screen after a series of deaths in South Wales that some suspect are linked to a social networking site, reports trade journal InformationWeek.
• The Toronto Globe & Mail last week profiled one of the troubling ethical frontiers confronting job seekers and human-resource professionals: the fact that information lives forever online and is instantly accessible to potential employers. Reporter Chad Saphieha writes: “Employers are increasingly turning to online searches or social networking sites to discover information about potential employees. According to research carried out by Connecticut-based human resources agency ExecuNet, 77 percent of executive recruiters use search engines to help screen candidates. Meanwhile, employment website CareerBuilder reports that in a survey of more than a thousand hiring managers, one in four said they use search engines to help filter applicants. The big problem, Saphieha notes, is that hirers can discover information online that legally they cannot ask about in interviews, such as religion, marital status, and race. In a complex and expensive counteroffensive, some firms will create pages of positive information about job candidates designed to be discovered by search engine formulas and appear higher in the list of results than the negative information.
• The U.S. Marine Corps is using cutting-edge holographic technology to teach battlefield ethics at a state-of-the-art training center at Camp Pendleton in southern California. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that the facility, which resembles a giant movie set recreating a city block in Iraq, will use laser technology to project images of troops and civilians in lifelike battlefield scenarios, putting Marines through the process of making split-second battle decisions involving morals and laws. According to the Union-Tribune, the establishment of the training facility comes after a survey on battlefield ethics, conducted about a year ago, found that only 40 percent of Marines would report a member of their unit for killing or wounding an innocent civilian.

Sources: Times of London, Jan. 26 — InformationWeek, Jan. 26 — Globe & Mail, Jan. 26 — San Diego Union-Tribune, Jan. 16.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Dec. 17, 2007 — Related Newsline Commentary, Dec. 3, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 3, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 26, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 5, 2007.

Turmoil comes after probe of justice minister and discontent nationwide

ROME
Italy’s coalition government, led by Roman Prodi, fell last week after losing a vote of confidence. The turmoil, many believe, is rooted in systemic corruption that makes Italy virtually ungovernable.

Reporting from Rome, BBC analyst Christian Fraser contends that current events are “symptomatic of the country’s failure to deal with the cronyism and the rampant corruption in its midst.” Prodi’s government “promised liberal reform, bringing together an unlikely coalition of nine squabbling parties. It was a marriage of convenience between Catholics to the centre and communists on the far left. But this week — amid allegations of more corruption — it all ended in messy divorce.”

The latest scandals included the resignation of Prodi’s justice minister after it was revealed that he was the target of a corruption probe, according to a dispatch from the Rome bureau of the Los Angeles Times, which also notes that Italian lawmakers are increasingly “despised by the public, according to several surveys in which they are seen as corrupt, hugely overpaid, and eager to put personal benefit before the good of the country.”

Italy’s grim ungovernability has been highlighted in recent weeks by a garbage disposal crisis in the county’s south, where hundreds of tons of uncollected trash is rotting in the streets after trash collectors claimed the landfills are full and left it in piles that are often six feet high, according to reports from the Financial Times and Forbes.

It is widely assumed that the garbage crisis is rooted in the effects of corruption and organized crime — in particular, condemned landfills polluted beyond redemption by illegal dumping.

Sources: BBC, Jan. 27 — Los Angeles Times, Jan. 26 — Forbes, Jan. 26 — Financial Times, Jan. 26.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Jan. 22 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 14 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 17, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 17, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 10, 2007.

Bioethics breakthroughs and their attendant controversies continue to roil around the world

VARIOUS DATELINES
High-profile issues in bioethics were featured in last week’s news. Among the top stories:

• In what has become something of a blockbuster-of-the-week series of breakthroughs, scientists announced on January 24 that they have successfully created an entire synthetic genome in the lab, according to a report from National Geographic. The breakthrough is characterized as the second step in a three-step process of creating artificial life. Step one, according to the report, was transplanting a genome from one species of bacteria to another, and the third step will be using chemically synthesized DNA to produce a synthetic cell. But the process, of course, is not without controversy. Aside from moral issues related to the creation of artificial life, some critics worry that lab-created cells could run amok and produce viruses or other harmful life-forms.
• In the wake of last week’s announcement that scientists had created a synthetic genome, the British House of Lords scheduled a debate about the establishment of a National Bioethics Commission. The Times of London reports that the proposal calls for a statutory body of six to eight experts in law, philosophy, science, and theology. Such a commission is strongly supported by many religious leaders, reports the Times.
• State officials in Alaska are working on revisions to ethics legislation that would allow a sick legislator to receive a kidney transplant. UPI reports that Democratic state Rep. Richard Foster needs a kidney transplant, and one of his former legislative aides is willing to donate one to save his life. But as the Anchorage Daily News reports, it appears to be against state ethics laws for someone to give Foster a kidney. Alaska lawmakers tightened laws about gifts last year after a series of scandals involving former legislators. While there is a provision for “compassionate gifts,” it only allows gifts up to $250, and a kidney apparently is worth more than that. As this issue of Newsline went to press, an Alaska legislator had introduced a bill that would eliminate the dollar limit on compassionate gifts.

Sources: National Geographic, Jan. 26 — UPI, Jan. 26 — Anchorage Daily News, Jan. 26 — Times of London, Jan. 26.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Jan. 22 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 14 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 3, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 26, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 19.

New York Times profiles how prestigious medical school confronts ethical and legal dilemma

STOCKHOLM
One of the world’s most prestigious medical schools, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, is grappling with an ethical dilemma: Should a convicted murderer be allowed to become a doctor?

New York Times reporter Lawrence Altman writes: “Last summer, Karl Helge Hampus Svensson, 31, was among the 180 students admitted to the freshman class after receiving top grades in high school and courses he took online over the previous six years. But last fall, institute officials received two anonymous letters claiming that Mr. Svensson had been a Nazi sympathizer who was paroled from a maximum-security prison after being convicted in 2000 of murder, a killing the police called a hate crime. After confirming the information, the institute had to decide: Should Mr. Svensson be allowed to become a doctor?”

Altman reports that while many argued that Svensson could not become a doctor because his background would not allow him to garner trust for the sanctity of life, others contended that because he had served his time he should be allowed to stay.

The issue was resolved when it was discovered that Svensson had changed his name on transcripts, which the school deemed as falsification.

He was expelled on that basis.

But the Times notes that the expulsion does not resolve the basic issues or set a precedent on how to handle future cases.

Source: New York Times, Jan. 25.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Dec. 10, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 13, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 5, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 1, 2007.

Catholic leader says media need same level of ethical attention as biosciences

ROME
Pope Benedict XVI last week called for a renewed emphasis on media ethics.

The pope suggested that while mass media have been instrumental in spreading knowledge and democracy, media outlets have also hyped violence, vulgarity, and rampant consumerism, the Associated Press reports.

He said there was a need for what he called “info-ethics” — a field parallel to bioethics — according to the BBC.

Speaking on Saint Francis de Sales day, which commemorates the saint considered by the Catholic church to be the patron saint of journalists, the pope said the role of the media in modern society forms “a crucial challenge for the third millennium,” the Melbourne, Australia, Herald-Sun reports.

Sources: BBC, Jan. 26 — AP, Jan. 26 — Melbourne Herald-Sun, Jan. 26 — Reuters, Jan. 26.

United States ranks 39th, “significantly behind other industrialized nations”

From Yale University and Columbia University:

“Switzerland tops the global list of countries ranked by environmental performance according to the 2008 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) produced by a team of environmental experts at Yale University and Columbia University.

“The 2008 EPI, released at the World Economic Forum in Davos ranks 149 countries on 25 indicators tracked across six established policy categories: Environmental Health, Air Pollution, Water Resources, Biodiversity and Habitat, Productive Natural Resources, and Climate Change. The EPI identifies broadly-accepted targets for environmental performance and measures how close each country comes to these goals. As a quantitative gauge of pollution control and natural resource management results, the Index provides a powerful tool for improving policymaking and shifting environmental decisionmaking onto firmer analytic foundations.

“The 2008 EPI ranks Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Costa Rica two to five, respectively. Mali, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Angola, and Niger occupy the bottom five positions.

“The Index also provides ‘peer group’ rankings for each country showing how its performance stacks up against others facing similar environmental challenges. These benchmarks allow easy tracking of leaders and laggards on an issue-by-issue and aggregate basis. The data also support efforts to identify ‘best practices’ in the environmental realm.

“Analysis of the drivers underlying the 2008 rankings suggests that wealth is a major determinant of environmental success. At every level of development, however, some countries achieve results that far exceed their peers, demonstrating that policy choices also affect performance. For example, Costa Rica (5th), known for its substantial environmental efforts, significantly outperforms its neighbor Nicaragua (77^th)….

“Top-ranked countries have all invested in water and air pollution control and other elements of environmental infrastructure and have adopted policy measures to mitigate the pollution harms caused by economic activities. Low-ranked countries typically have not made investments in environmental public health and have weak policy regimes….

“The United States placed 39th in the rankings, significantly behind other industrialized nations like the United Kingdom (14^th) and Japan (21^st)….”

For more information, see: Environmental Performance Index home — New York Times, Jan. 23 — Reuters, Jan. 23 — Newsweek, Jan. 23.

“A well-governed appetite is a great part of liberty.

– Seneca (Roman statesman and philosopher, circa 4 B.C.E. - 65 C.E.)

For more information, see this week’s Research Report.

by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

I met myself online two years ago and have gotten to know myself pretty well since then.

When I was ordering a book from Amazon.com, I discovered that the site “recommended” books and music based on my previous buying and browsing records. I got hooked. The more customized suggestions Amazon.com offered, the more I snapped them up.

Looking back at my purchase history, I’ve learned a few things about myself. In some ways, I seem like a fairly normal if eclectic person: My musical tastes run toward an odd mixture of Mozart and 1970s nostalgia, and to books about politics, the Internet, and media history.

But lurking in the Amazon.com list is what seems to be evidence of a sinister obsession with true crime. On further reflection, I noted that in a typical week I also gravitate to a dozen cable-TV crime shows that involve increasingly inventive examples of antisocial behavior.

I’m not sure I like the picture that’s emerging — a media system that not only knows my tastes but feeds and solidifies them. Given the current pattern, will I, in 2019, have anything on my media menu other than disco, Mozart, and murder?

Luckily, one of the books I ordered recently might head off this fate. Republic.com 2.0, by University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein, examines the practical and ethical effects of media echo chambers on public discourse.

What I’ve done, according to Sunstein, is create my prototype “Daily Me” — an electronic diet of media consumerism tailored to my tastes. But mine is in its infancy and limited primarily to my interests in entertainment. A true Daily Me allows the user to completely retreat into a world where all of the day’s news corresponds to a particular interest or point of view, making the user become at once connected (with others who share a view or a lifestyle) and isolated (from unexpected encounters with different cultures or dissenting opinions).

The outcome of the Daily Me is polarization: Studies show that groups adopt more extreme views when they communicate only with like-minded people.

Such polarization is by no means a distant threat. Blogs, which in many cases have evolved into magnetic forums for like-minded people talking exclusively to each other, have become the new frontier in U.S. presidential politics. Social networking sites, where users can wall themselves up in identity-based communities, are becoming as “real” to some users as real life. Websites for those with extreme and insular views have become media forces that cohere public opinion, sometimes along extreme tangents. Extremists and a variety of conspiracy theorists regularly reinforce their views with “facts” that have become reality only because they are echoed so often and “reporting” that looks like journalism but isn’t, in the sense that a journalist seeks balance or contrary opinions, or presents alternative explanations.

What’s the ethical issue with the Daily Me? I have no problem with customized news. After all, you are reading this on a custom-news site where we view news items of mutual interest. But in the news summaries we gather, we make a good-faith effort to include publications and venues from differing ends of the political spectrum — reliable sources that you might not necessarily agree with, and which you might not encounter unless you went looking for them.

But I do take ethical issue with industrywide trends that lean toward a product designed to polarize, to repackage the output of the echo chamber as “journalism” or “news.”

“News” that isolates us from the unexpected or unpleasant or unfamiliar isn’t really news at all, and it’s a poor diet for people who need a comprehensive worldview in order to feed a deliberative democracy.

I’m 54 years old and formed my news consumption habits by watching Walter Cronkite, who occasionally force-fed me a story about a remote area of the world that I should care about even if I’d never heard of it before. A generation ago, my family, like most in our working-class neighborhood, subscribed to not one but two daily newspapers, vehicles that presented an array of stories at a single glance and cultivated the habit of getting hooked on stories we didn’t go looking for.

As a result, I’ve probably been inoculated to some extent. I’m able to tell when I’m overdosing on forensic shows and documentaries about bank robberies, grab myself by the lapels, and shake myself back to reality. But I’m not sure if younger people, raised on customizable and increasingly narrow media menus, have built up similar resistance.

The bottom line:

• Media organizations, especially those that present themselves as news suppliers, have an ethical responsibility to be something above and beyond that of profit-centered echo chambers.
• Media consumers — and that’s all of us — have an affirmative duty to monitor our own habits and stay engaged with a broad variety of opinions and perspectives, even if they don’t always make us comfortable.
• Parents, teachers, and other responsible adults have a moral responsibility to let younger people know that there are alternative universes outside of their customizable media-saturated universes.

Issues like this tend to creep up on us like quiet jungle cats, and we tend not to notice them until they’re upon us. Think back to 1992, when Bruce Springsteen poked fun at the infinite but vacuous media universe with his song “57 Channels and Nothing On.”

I don’t know about you, but I get about 350 channels, and that’s with the basic package.

57 channels? How quaint.

©2008 Institute for Global Ethics

“I’m not sure what was said on that. I could tell you today, though, that we have no evidence and we have no way of showing that any email at all are missing.”

– White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, responding to questions last week about a newly released report that found “473 separate days in which no electronic messages were stored for one or more White House offices,” reports the Washington Post. The 2005 internal study of White House electronic communications renewed attention to the controversy surrounding White House recordkeeping. The dispute centers on questions about “whether the Bush administration has complied with long-standing statutory requirements to preserve official White House records — including those reflecting potentially sensitive policy discussions — for history and in case of any future legal demands,” notes the Post.

Source: Washington Post, Jan. 18.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, June 25, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 19, 2007.

In California, scientists report a breakthrough in producing embryo; cloned animal products are deemed safe to eat in U.S. and Europe, but an ethics panel says the process is being rushed; and after much debate, British scientists get the go-ahead to study human-animal clones

VARIOUS DATELINES
Cloning — human, animal, and human-animal — ignited ethics debate last week. Among the stories:

• Scientists in California report say they have created cloned embryos from single skin cells taken from adults, a scientific advance that could open the door for various medical treatments, but which also reignited the on-again, off-again debate about the ethics of cloning. TIME magazine reports that the technique, which has not been shown conclusively to be practical, would have the advantage of not requiring the destruction of embryos, which has been a legal and moral barrier for stem cell research. But as a report from the San Diego Union-Tribune points out, the reported initial success of the technique does demonstrate that human cloning remains a clear feasibility — a development that is likely to rekindle that particular area of debate. The California team says that while the embryos it produced could be transplanted into a uterus, they have no intent to try to create babies from the embryos.
• An ethics panel in Europe has voiced strong misgivings over cloned animal products, turning up the temperature in a debate over what critics have dubbed “Frankenfood.” The Agence France-Presse reports that the European Group on Ethics, in an opinion delivered to the European Commission, said “it does not see convincing arguments to justify the production of food from clones and their offspring.” The report followed endorsements of the safety of cloned food by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and a similar opinion from the European Food Safety Authority. At issue, according to reports from Newsweek and the Economist, are claims that the science is too new and complex to make judgments about food safety, complaints that the process may produce sick and disabled animals, and allegations that the genetic alterations of food supplies are being pushed because of their profit potential.
• Debates over human and animal cloning intersected last week when it was announced that U.K. authorities gave scientists permission to create human-animal embryos for stem cell research, according to US News & World Report. Only two research panels are licensed to conduct the investigations, and the hybrid embryos must be destroyed within 14 days. The measure has faced stiff opposition from many quarters, including religious groups, which claim that the process tinkers with the fundamental definition of life.

Sources: San Diego Union-Tribune, Jan. 18 — TIME, Jan. 17 — AFP, Jan. 17 — Newsweek, Jan. 18 — Economist, Jan. 18 — US News & World Report, Jan. 18.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Nov. 19, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 2, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 6, 2006 — Related Newsline story, June 12, 2006 — Related Newsline story, May 15, 2006.

Lawyer believed that prosecution suppressed evidence and kept quiet for 10 years; he had to stay mum because he represented the other man charged in the case

YORKTOWN, Va.
A Virginia lawyer — told by ethics authorities that he had to keep a secret even though what he had to say could save the life of a man on death row — was eventually allowed to tell his story, and on Thursday, the death sentence was commuted.

The New York Times reports that Leslie Smith had kept his misgivings about the case secret for more than 10 years because authorities on legal ethics told him he had no choice. But the Virginia Bar Association reversed course last year, and Smith received permission to air his allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.

Smith maintained that prosecutors withheld evidence in the trial that eventually convicted Daryl Atkins, reports the Washington Post.

The ethics issue: As an attorney, Smith represented another man charged in the same murder, according to UPI. Atkins and Smith’s client each claimed that the other pulled the trigger, and under Virginia law only the actual triggerman is eligible for the death penalty.

Smith was told that he could not endanger his client by revealing his belief that evidence was manipulated in order to put the blame on Atkins. That prohibition was finally lifted when Smith’s client finally was sentenced to life in prison and all action on his case was officially concluded.

According to the Hampton Roads, Va., Daily Press, the case also had been the focus of a parallel ethics issue: whether Atkins, who is of low intelligence, is retarded, and whether retarded criminals should be eligible for the death penalty. The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that execution of the retarded is unconstitutional, but the case had lingered in the courts because Virginia countered that Atkins did not fit the definition of retardation.

Sources: New York Times, Jan. 19 — UPI, Jan. 19 — Washington Post, Jan. 19 — Daily Press, Jan. 19.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Apr. 23, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 16, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 26, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 20, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 29, 2007.

China, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Thailand all coping with various issues; also, new study says corruption artificially expands workforce, draining efficiency in industry

VARIOUS DATELINES
Corruption continued to be the focus of news stories from around the globe last week. Among the stories:

• China’s latest anticorruption push centers on a distinctly capitalist problem: insider stock trading. According to the official news agency Xinhua, the Communist Party has warned that officials who abuse their positions to transact insider trades will face fines and prison. Party heads also warned local officials not to accept gifts at weddings and funerals, cautioning also against using their position to unfairly buy affordable housing intended for low-income families.
• In Bangladesh, former prime minister Sheikh Hasina is on trial for extortion. The BBC reports that Hasina and her family are denying charges that they took money from a prominent businessman. Another former prime minister, Khaleda Zia, also is facing corruption charges. The two women, members of different parties, alternated as leaders of Bangladesh for 15 years until October 2006.
• Nigerian president Umaru Musa Yar’Adua is attempting to reassure the international community, which is skittish about investing in his nation, that anticorruption measures are in place and working. The Lagos Day reports that Yar’Adua said that anticorruption monitors, who will be trained abroad, will scrutinize how public officials obtain their assets.
• Backers of former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was overthrown amid a corruption scandal, have formed a coalition government with five other parties in the Thai parliament, reports the Voice of America. The move paves the way for Thaksin’s return from exile. His supporters also want to exonerate him of the corruption charges.
• Corruption breeds inefficiency, which means lower profits, say researchers at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. In a recent study, researchers found that corruption leads to inflation of the employee ranks and drags down efficiency. This, in turn, slows the growth of a nation’s wealth. According to a summary of the report posted on the university’s website, while it is widely known that corruption is associated with lower per-capita gross national products and lower rates of investments, the study is the first to demonstrate how corruption damages national economies by making business inefficient.

Sources: Xinhua, Jan. 19 — BBC, Jan. 19 — Day, Jan. 19 — Voice of America, Jan. 19 — Stanford Graduate School of Business News, December 2007.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Jan.14 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 17, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 10, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 26, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 26, 2007 — Stanford press release, Jan. 16.

They say it violates provisions of anti-landmine treaty

OTTAWA
Critics in Canada are protesting the proposed sale of the nation’s preeminent space engineering firm to a U.S. arms maker.

The Canadian Press reports that Alliant Techsystems of Minneapolis, Minnesota, wants to buy a division of the British Columbia-based MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates for about $1.25 billion.

According to the Vancouver Sun, Alliant manufactures landmines, which are prohibited under a treaty to which Canada was one of the first signatories. The United States did not sign the treaty.

Late last week, the Canadian Auto Workers union called on the Harper government to block the sale, saying the treaty bans the transfer of public money to a company that manufactures landmines.

The union maintains that the firm’s prize product, the Canadarm, a robotic arm used, in different versions, on the space shuttle and the International Space Station, was developed with tax money, the Toronto Star reports.

ATK says that it only provides weapons to NATO countries and other allies and that its products are compliant with the provisions of the treaty, CTV reports. In the case of landmines, that means that the systems can be deactivated and self-destructed.

Sources: CTV, Jan. 18 –Canadian Press, Jan. 18 –Toronto Sun, Jan. 18 –Vancouver Sun, Jan. 18.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Dec. 10, 2007 — Related Newsline story, May 14, 2007 — Related Newsline Commentary, Nov. 21, 2005 — Related Newsline story, July 18, 2005.