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

by Rushworth M. Kidder

By all accounts, the world’s financial institutions are surging toward reregulation. But unless the new rules are set in a context of corporate integrity, they could make things worse. Here’s why.

The smartest guys in the room — the moniker for corporate hotshots like those who wrecked Enron and shattered their own careers — used to be the smartest kids on the playground. Back in third grade, ordinary kids followed the rules. These other kids found the loopholes. When the rules said, “Don’t run in the halls” and “Don’t chew gum,” these kids found ways to walk really fast and use tongues (rather than teeth) to avoid the definition of chew. Where ordinary kids saw rules as necessary annoyances, these kids took them as delicious challenges.

Back then, adults could have helped these kids understand the relationship between ethics and regulation. They could have explained ethics as “obedience to the unenforceable,” a term coined in 1924 by a British jurist, Lord Moulton, to distinguish the idea of morality from the principle of law. Adults also could have shared analogies about the usefulness of rules: As a former London banker put it to me recently, “Cars have brakes so they can go fast.” In addition, they could have developed in kids a sense of community beyond self, a moral commitment to doing right even when nobody’s looking. Finally, they could have explained that while any dolt can bend the rules, only the wise can maintain integrity and prosperity at the same time.

Would those lessons have crushed out the entrepreneurial wizardry of youth? On the contrary, it would have nested it safely within a moral conscience. In many cases, of course, adults did say these things. As a result, today’s financial community has a strong cadre of creative talent moderated by a sound moral compass.

But it also has its devil-may-care cohort. Dressed up as adults, but carting around a third-grade moral neutrality, that cohort is exceptionally bright. Their lust for challenges is almost Pavlovian: When a new rule comes along, they salivate at the idea of taking it apart, seeing what makes it tick, finding its flaws, and inventing a workaround. As in third grade, well-crafted rules serve only to inspire a more aggressive loopholism. Like computer hackers, for whom every new firewall is a chance to prove their mettle, they relish the gotcha game of one-upping the regulators. And like hackers, they find technology showering them with new products that regulation hasn’t caught up with yet.

What’s to be done? Start by recognizing that twentieth-century rule-making procedures won’t stand up to twenty-first-century pressures. As we learned from Sarbanes-Oxley, layering on rules without addressing ethics simply causes corporations to build extensive compliance operations. It does nothing to change thought. It doesn’t shift the balance away from those playing Masters of the Universe and toward those living by their values. Instead, it stimulates more rule bending.

So should we stop regulating? No. Deregulation has proved calamitous. Instead, we need to parallel every regulatory advance with concerted efforts to promote ethics in the marketplace. Research on this point, beginning with a string of surveys from the Ethics Resource Center in Washington, overwhelmingly points to the need to shift the emphasis from enforcing compliance to building cultures of integrity.

How can regulators foster such cultures? For starters, don’t make them mandatory. If Lord Moulton is right, that would reduce the unenforceable to the punishable — more rules and more loopholism. Instead, regulators should use their enormous moral suasion. From their bully pulpits, regulatory agencies can encourage financial institutions to recognize (among other things) four characteristics of such cultures. They are:

• Identifiable. They have attributes that any reasonable observer can spot. These include a commitment to the core values of honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness, and compassion, along with a decision-making methodology for applying them and the moral courage to put them into practice.
• Measurable. These attributes allow a culture to be compared to others in its field. These measures should not be imposed by external demand but arrived at through internal self-regulation.
• Replicable. These measures can be imported into other corporations and bring noticeable improvement. Business schools can play a role here in encouraging such replication as an effective management tool.
• Sustainable. Successful cultures of integrity make ethics a core part of the corporate mindset rather than a passing fancy.

What will the result be? No more Bernard Madoffs? Probably not. But Madoff and his ilk have given regulators a powerful ally: public moral outrage. If regulators work equally hard on each side of this two-pronged approach — creating rules while promoting ethics — they’ll tap into an enormous public yearning for integrity. Corporations that don’t get it will find themselves increasingly isolated, at the pointy end of piercing public opprobrium. Meanwhile, corporations who do get it will relearn an ancient truth: Rules alone won’t create an ethical culture, but an ethical culture makes it easy and natural to obey the rules.

©2009 Institute for Global Ethics

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

“I’m amazed and astonished that the Global Climate Coalition had in their possession scientific information that substantiated our cautious findings and then chose to suppress that information.”

– Dr. Benjamin Santer, a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, commenting in a piece last week from the New York Times that examines efforts by the coal, gas, and oil industries to create doubt about the science of global climate change.

Santer’s work as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was challenged by the industry-created Global Climate Coalition, which lobbied the government — and the public — by trying to cast doubt on scientific findings, even by their own scientists, that human energy use was a key cause of global warming.

The industries’ efforts have been likened by some to obfuscation efforts by the tobacco industry. “They didn’t have to win the argument to succeed, only to cause as much confusion as possible,” a British environmental activist and writer noted to the Times.

Industry representatives have denied trying to suppress the truth.

Source: New York Times, Apr. 23.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 9 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 29, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 8, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 30, 2006 — Related Newsline story, June 13, 2005.

In rebuttal, Cheney takes consequentialist view, saying Obama should release information on the success of such measures; Slate notes that such views show debate’s shift from morality to mere legality

WASHINGTON
In the latest round of debate over the ethical implications of U.S. treatment of terrorism suspects, Congressional Democrats and activist groups last week turned up the heat on the Obama administration to prosecute Bush administration officials who authorized “enhanced” interrogation techniques used on terror suspects.

President Obama said he does not support the establishment of an independent panel, such as the one that investigated the 9/11 terrorist attacks, to probe the issue, reports the Boston Globe.

But he did leave the door open to some type of probe of those who drafted memos permitting practices such as waterboarding, MSNBC reports. The president said he was turning the issue over the Attorney General Eric Holder.

Holder has said he would not criminalize policy-making, but also left the door ajar for prosecution by saying he would enforce the law if he saw evidence of wrongdoing, according to ABC News.

Continuing to weigh in on the debate was former vice president Dick Cheney, who has denied wrongdoing in his administration’s authorization of techniques that many, including the Red Cross, have deemed torture. Cheney last week called on Obama to release CIA memos that Cheney says document the success of the use of enhanced interrogations, according to CBS News.

CNN reports that Cheney claimed it was unfair for Obama to release memos detailing the tactics themselves but not those that addressed the result of the tactics.

Slate legal analyst Dahlia Lithwick noted over the weekend that arguments like Cheney’s denote a fundamental shift in how U.S. officials and the public have come to view torture five years after the overwhelming outrage at prisoner abuses by U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib.

“We have become so casual about torture that we now openly debate its efficacy — something nobody would have dared do in the first days after Abu Ghraib. The fight playing out between the left and the right now isn’t ‘Did we water-board?’ We already knew we did. It is barely even ‘Was it legal?’ Virtually nobody seriously argues that it was. The fight we are having in America now is ‘Did it work?’”

Sources: Slate, Apr. 25 — Boston Globe, Apr. 24 — CNN, Apr. 24 — ABC News, Apr. 23 — CBS News, Apr. 22 — MSNBC, Apr. 22.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Apr. 20 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 13 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 9 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 9 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 26.

Wrenching ethical decisions would inevitably accompany severe outbreak of new mutation of virus

VARIOUS DATELINES
World health officials are worried that recent mutations in the swine flu virus could trigger a pandemic and consequently revive a simmering ethics debate over who gets scarce vaccines and access to treatment if health facilities are overwhelmed.

The most recent strain of the virus, a unique mix of pig and flu viruses that appears to be directly communicable among humans, has spread alarm in some parts of Mexico with ripples extending through Asia, Europe, and the United States, reports the U.K. Guardian.

In Japan, the government recently released a draft on how pandemic vaccines would be prescribed, according to the Tokyo-based Daily Yomiuri. The draft classifies millions of people in 97 occupations that would get priority for vaccine access. The top-priority category includes medical professionals and police officers. Category II includes the prime minister and other government officials, while Category III lists those in the power, gas, and transportation industries.

The dilemma has been the focus also of U.S. states, some of which have convened ethics panels to plan for the wrenching decisions that would be inevitable in a severe outbreak.

A Minnesota panel, for example, in February recommended that supplies of vaccine be reserved for key workers, including medical personnel, and that ventilators be given to people most likely to survive and those most likely to need them for only a short time.

In South Carolina, an ethics task force is investigating what are expected to be unconventional approaches to medicine should a pandemic materialize.

“The medicine will change in a pandemic,” task force chairman Phil Schneider told Columbia TV station WIS. “There will not be enough resources to treat everyone that’s sick. That means you have to treat the people that have the best chance to survive, not necessarily the people who are sickest.”

Schneider told WIS that transparency and fairness are the key principles driving the task force’s plans. “We want people in the communities to understand the ethical principles which will guide these decisions,” he said.

Sources: Guardian, Apr. 25 — Daily Yomiuri, Apr. 25 — WIS, Columbia, S.C., Apr. 24 — Duluth News-Tribune, Apr. 23.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Feb. 9 — Related Newsline story, May 27, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 5, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 30, 2006 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 2, 2006.

Britain’s Nuffield Council on Bioethics says the tests, which are supposed to divulge risks of contracting serious diseases, often provide inconclusive results and may do more harm that good

LONDON
Ethicists in Britain are worried about the implications of tests available to the general public that can scan for DNA-related problems and other health issues.

The BBC reports that the Nuffield Council on Bioethics says such tests may cause unnecessary alarm among users, effecting more harm than good.

The Nuffield Council, which gathers leading experts to examine ethics issues, says that home tests often show conflicting results or give incomplete information about a person’s risk of developing diseases such as cancer or diabetes, the London Daily Telegraph reports.

Many of the home tests, which are very popular in Britain, require no medical supervision or follow-up genetic counseling, reports the Times of London.

According to the British Press Association, the Nuffield Council plans to seek input from the public and address the social, legal, and economic problems that are related to home testing in a report scheduled for release next year.

In addition, the Council also will examine other technology-related medical dilemmas, including the availability of prescriptions over the Internet.

Sources: Times of London, Apr. 23 — Telegraph, Apr. 21 — BBC, Apr. 20 — U.K. Press Association, Apr. 20.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Jan. 19 — Related Newsline story, May 19, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 24, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 17, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 22, 2007.

Chain claims rival launched “lifestyle” hotel brand with pilfered information

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.
A corporate espionage scandal is brewing over allegations that one hotel chain stole information from another.

Hilton Hotels has been served with a subpoena concerning espionage allegations made by competitor Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, reports UPI.

Starwood claims that two former Hilton employees took trade secrets and helped Hilton develop a new line of hotels called Denizen, trendy hotels appealing to a young demographic, Bloomberg reports.

In a statement, Hilton said it was suspending development of the Denizen brand and had put the Denizen development team on paid administrative leave, according to a report from Condé Nast Portfolio.

The Financial Times reports that the suit centers on allegations that Hilton used confidential information about a comparable Starwood hotel chain called “W.” According to court papers, the information allegedly misappropriated includes strategic plans, financial reports, information about target markets and demographics, and details of negotiation strategies with brand owners.

Sources: Bloomberg, Apr. 24 — UPI, Apr. 22 — Financial Times, Apr. 22 — Condé Nast Portfolio, Apr. 21 — Wall Street Journal, Apr. 21 — USA Today, Apr. 16.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Nov. 24, 2008 — Related Newsline story, July 10, 2006 — Related Newsline story, July 25, 2005 — Related Newsline story, June 6, 2005 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 19, 1998.

Public interest groups claim release of information violated state ethics laws

ALBANY
New York State’s highest ethics council is reviewing a request from watchdog groups to probe allegations that the governor’s office leaked confidential information provided by Caroline Kennedy when she was seeking appointment to the U.S. Senate.

The New York Times reports that the state Commission on Public Integrity is reviewing the request but had not, as of last week, decided whether to pursue an investigation.

Various rumors about Kennedy surfaced after she withdrew from the running for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton when she became secretary of State.

The leaks included allegations that Kennedy had encountered tax problems over a domestic worker — claims that turned out to be exaggerated and of little consequence — notes the Times.

New York Gov. David Paterson was in charge of the selection.

The public interest groups filing the complaint argue that the leaks were orchestrated to discredit Kennedy after Paterson made the decision against her and to deflect blame from Paterson for his clumsy handling of the Kennedy’s Senate bid.

Anger over the purported leaks are part of the cause of Paterson’s plummeting popularity in the polls, according to an analysis from NBC New York.

A Paterson spokesman said he is confident no ethics regulations were broken, New York television station WCBS reports.

State laws prohibit the leak of confidential information, such as the answers to questionnaires completed by Kennedy when she sought the seat, according to Newsday.

Sources: Newsday, Apr. 24 — NBC New York, Apr. 24 — New York Times, Apr. 23 — WCBS-TV, Apr. 23.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Feb. 16 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 22, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 17, 2008.

Congress says it will keep an eye on cable companies as they roll out target ads; Web founder warns of privacy intrusion; privacy advocates question propriety of banking software

VARIOUS DATELINES
Ethics and law were attempting to keep pace with technology last week. Among the stories:

• Congress is putting cable-TV companies on notice about the privacy implications of targeted advertising. The Associated Press reports that cable operators are preparing to roll out target ads delivered to individual viewers based on data gathered by the user’s set-top cable box. Lawmakers say they’re worried about the intrusiveness related to advertising to customers based on what they are watching. Industry executives told a House panel that they will be conscious of privacy issues, notes the AP.
• The man credited with founding the World Wide Web last week warned that targeted advertising based on Web searches, a major component of the financial engine that currently propels the Web, threatens privacy and should be opposed. Tim Berners-Lee told a conference in Madrid that he wants assurances that “when I click on a link it is between me and the Web, and the Internet service provider is not going to immediately characterize me in different categories for advertising or insurance of for government use,” reports the Agence France-Presse. Berners-Lee maintained that targeted advertising should be based on cumulative browsing habits rather than the results of one search or one trip to a particular page.
• A common technology used to authenticate computers used in online banking is a threat to consumer privacy, according to a civil liberties advocate speaking at a computer-security forum, reports tech network CNET. Jennifer Granick, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, warns that a type of banking software — one that puts a unique identifier on the customer’s computer or monitors the individual characteristics of the device’s installed software and physical location — could be used to track consumer behavior and produces data that could be combined with other information to develop intrusive profiles. Granick says there is “very little privacy protection in the United States for this type of information.” A spokesman for one of the companies providing the software said it is very “privacy friendly” and is useful in preventing fraud, notes CNET.

Sources: AP, Apr. 24 — CNET, Apr. 24 — AFP, Apr. 24.

For more information, see: Related Newsline Commentary, Apr. 20 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 13 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 13 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 6 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 16.

In op-ed, John Bogle says unchecked market forces wiped out ethics standards

NEW YORK
Self-interest got wildly out of hand during the run-up to the economic meltdown, maintains Vanguard Group of Mutual Funds founder John Bogle.

In an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal, Bogle writes that self-interest “created a bottom-line society in which success is measured in monetary terms. Dollars became the coin of the new realm. Unchecked market forces overwhelmed traditional standards of professional conduct, developed over centuries.”

The result, Bogle argues, is a shift from moral absolutism to moral relativism. “We’ve moved from a society in which ‘there are some things that one simply does not do’ to one in which ‘if everyone else is doing it, I can too.’ Business ethics and professional standards were lost in the shuffle.”

Bogle is calling for the establishment of a “fiduciary society” in which professionals entrusted with managing other people’s money are legally bound to put the interests of their investors first. Money managers and agents also need to act “in a way that reflects their ethical responsibilities to society.”

Source: Wall Street Journal, Apr. 20.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Apr. 6 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 6 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 30 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 23 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 23.

In addition, more favor criminal probes than independent panels, Gallup poll finds

From Gallup:

“Earlier this [year], Sen. Patrick Leahy called for a special commission to investigate possible government wrongdoing by the Bush administration in its anti-terror policies, as well as possible attempts to politicize the Justice Department through the firing of U.S. attorneys who were viewed as potentially disloyal to the administration. While Americans appear to support some kind of investigation into these matters, no more than 41% favor criminal probes….

“For each of three controversial actions or policies of the Bush administration, survey respondents were asked whether there should be a criminal investigation by the Justice Department or an investigation by an independent panel that would issue a report of findings but not seek any criminal charges, or whether neither should be done.

“…[A]t least 6 in 10 say there should be either a criminal investigation or an independent probe into all three. This includes 62% who favor some type of investigation into the possible use of torture when interrogating terrorism suspects, 63% who do so with respect to the possible use of telephone wiretaps without obtaining a warrant, and 71% who support investigating possible attempts to use the Justice Department for political purposes.

“So far, President Obama has been reluctant to pursue such investigations, but Leahy and Conyers in particular are calling for an accounting of what happened on Bush’s watch.

“Perhaps not unexpectedly, a majority of Democratic identifiers favor a criminal probe into all three matters — including 54% who do so with respect to warrantless wiretaps, 51% for the possible use of torture, and 52% for the firing of U.S. attorneys.

“In contrast, Republicans are most likely to oppose any type of investigation, including a majority who say so in regard to the possible use of torture (54%) and warrantless wiretaps (56%). Republicans are more receptive to an investigation into possible efforts to politicize the Justice Department, with 24% favoring a criminal probe and 28% in favor of an independent panel report. Still, the greatest number (43%) of Republicans think there should be no investigation into the Justice Department matter.

“Independents’ views on all three matters fall in between those of Republicans and Democrats, with a majority favoring some type of investigation but (unlike Democrats) not a criminal probe….”

For more information, see: Full press release from Gallup, Feb. 12 — Related Newsline Research Report, Mar. 9.

“The secret of prolonging life consists in not shortening it.”

– Ernst Von Feuchtersleben (Austrian physician, poet, and philosopher, 1806-1849)

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

by Rushworth M. Kidder

You’d think we would have foreseen it. Give a kid a cell-phone camera, and we know they’ll take pictures. Give them messaging capability, and we know they’ll start texting messages and sending photos of themselves to each other — alone or with friends, goofy or serious.

Then why didn’t it occur to us that some of those shots would be in the nude?

Once again we’ve been caught flat-footed by the latest teen fad: sexting. According to a survey last fall by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 20 percent of teens say they have sent or posted nude or seminude pictures or videos of themselves.

This isn’t the first time our lack of moral futurism has tripped us up. Several years ago it was DWT — driving while texting. Only when DWT created headlines with the death of five teenage girls in upstate New York in June 2007 — and then, spectacularly, in the Los Angeles commuter train wreck that killed 25 people last September — did we begin to understand that it could be fatal.

Shame on texting drivers and teenage sexters? Sure. But shame on us as well. We regularly let our technologies leverage our ethics, so that single unethical acts can create enormous, unforeseen ethical problems. Then we act surprised when fads or calamities strike. “Wow!” we say. “Technology has created a whole new ethical problem! Who knew?”

We knew — or at least we should have. Here we’ve got these cell-phone cameras. Here we live in a video culture drenched with explicit eroticism. Here we access an Internet system where pornography is the single most common target of Web searches. How hard would it have been to imagine what would happen if you put these three threads into the hands of teenagers with little instruction and no warnings?

What’s wrong with sexting? For starters, here are seven arguments:

• It constitutes the kind of “lewd and lascivious behavior” that society seeks to avoid and the law generally prohibits.
• When you transmit such images, you may be guilty of circulating pornography — a tough charge, especially when it involves minors and could lead to permanent labeling as a criminal sex offender.
• Sexting surrenders a key aspect of your individuality — the way you invite others to see you — to a medium beyond your control. What keeps recipients from forwarding your picture to dozens of others — or posting it for everyone everywhere to see?
• Sexting may encourage aggressive sexual activity that, absent responsibility or affection, is especially harmful to young minds and bodies.
• Sexting promotes a desensitized peer culture where sexual activity becomes more difficult to resist — even among teens who avoid instant gratification and value abstinence.
• If such a culture leads to teen pregnancy and abortion — or early marriages at high risk of divorce, generating more single-parent families — the psychic and financial burdens to society can be severe.
• If such a culture leads to rape, domestic abuse, and sexual predation, the consequences are enormous.

What should we do? The Vermont Senate recently passed and its House is now considering legislation that, oddly enough, reduces the penalties for sexting. Supporters on both sides of the aisle explain that they aren’t legalizing sexting so much as partially decriminalizing it. Why? Because after 12-year-old Brooke Bennett was sexually assaulted and murdered in Vermont last summer, the legislature crafted one of the nation’s toughest sexual predator laws. The proposed sexting law, its supporters argue, would merely ensure that juveniles caught sending these pictures won’t be subject to punishment under that toughened law. They could still be prosecuted under pornography or lewd-behavior statutes, but they wouldn’t be placed on sex-offender registries for the rest of their lives.

Fair enough. Young people making stupid mistakes deserve reformation, not retribution. But how?

Here’s an idea: What if cell phones came equipped with a feature that, whenever any picture was sent or received, would automatically send a copy to a designated third party? Some parents wouldn’t use it, trusting their teens. Others would have the pictures sent to an archive to access later if they suspected something. Still others would have the pictures sent directly to their own cell phone in real time. Whatever they did, parents would have to make a choice about whether to have that feature permanently turned on or not. And that choice would compel a conversation about sexting with their teens. “Tell me why you want the feature turned off,” parents could say. “If you’re only sending or getting innocent pictures, having it on won’t bother you. But if you plan on sexting — sorry, I’m not paying for your phone.”

Not every parent would opt in, and some teens might buy their own phones. But every would-be sexter would have to suspect that some parents would have access. Would he or she (and most sexters are female) be so quick to send pictures?

Whatever the result, the very availability of such a feature would raise a tough moral dilemma, pitting the rights of teenage privacy against the responsibilities of adult supervision. We don’t want censorship, but we also don’t want pornography. If every parent’s purchase of a phone for a teen would provide the occasion for a serious ethical conversation on that point, we’d be well on our way to addressing sexting. Then, instead of technology leveraging our ethics, we might find that our ethical foresight was beginning to drive our use of technology.

©2009 Institute for Global Ethics

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Apr. 6.

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

“In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution…. This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. Our national greatness is embedded in America’s ability to right its course in concert with our core values….”

– U.S. president Barack Obama, explaining his decision last week to release a series of classified memos detailing controversial interrogation techniques — some, like waterboarding, widely deemed torture — approved by the Bush administration. Obama again stated his opposition to pursuing legal action against C.I.A. operatives and other U.S. officials who took the memos’ legal advice in conducting their operations.

Source: Statement by President Obama, Apr. 16, provided by the New York Times.

For more information, see: New York Times, Apr. 18 — New York Times, Apr. 16 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 20 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 13 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 2 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 11, 2008.

In related story, saying decision came after weighing competing principles, White House defends release of memos detailing interrogation methods

WASHINGTON
Answering one open-ended question in an ethics issue that has been hanging for several years, President Obama last week said that CIA officials would not be prosecuted for using waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques.

Reuters reports that Obama, who ended the use of the controversial techniques after he took office, said in a statement: “It is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.”

The pronouncement was made shortly after the Obama Justice Department released previously classified memos detailing the interrogation methods, reports the Washington Post. Those methods included waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and keeping detainees in a cramped box, sometimes putting insects into the box.

The related incidents drew ethical fire immediately, with human rights groups and former detainees expressing disappointment with the decision not to prosecute, the AP reports.

But critics from the other side of the political spectrum were equally vocal about the release of the memos, saying that Obama endangered national security. CNN quoted Michael Hayden, CIA director under Bush from 2006 to 2009, as saying: “What we have described for our enemies in the midst of a war are the outer limits that any American would ever go to in terms of interrogating an al Qaeda terrorist. That’s very valuable information…. By taking [certain] techniques off the table, we have made it more difficult — in a whole host of circumstances I can imagine — for CIA officers to defend the nation.”

White House senior adviser David Axelrod countered that the decision was made after considering two principles, according to the Agence France-Presse: “One is the sanctity of covert operations and keeping faith with the people who do them, and the impact on national security, on the one hand. And the other was the law and his belief in transparency.”

Obama also rejected such complaints and the reasoning behind them. In a statement, Obama explained: “First, the interrogation techniques described in these memos have already been widely reported. Second, the previous Administration publicly acknowledged portions of the program — and some of the practices — associated with these memos. Third, I have already ended the techniques described in the memos through an Executive Order. Therefore, withholding these memos would only serve to deny facts that have been in the public domain for some time. This could contribute to an inaccurate accounting of the past, and fuel erroneous and inflammatory assumptions about actions taken by the United States.”

Sources: Reuters, Apr. 17 — AP, Apr. 17 — Washington Post, Apr. 17 — AFP, Apr. 17.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Apr. 13 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 13 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 2 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 22, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 25, 2008.

There’s more trouble relating to the Illinois Senate seat, and Eliot Spitzer is back — crusading about market reforms

WASHINGTON and NEW YORK
Politics and ethics were paired in several major stories last week. Among them:

• The new Office of Congressional Ethics has launched 10 probes into lawmakers or their aides, according to a report from USA Today. While the panel is prohibited from identifying its subjects, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., (D-Ill.) has confirmed that the ethics office has begun a preliminary inquiry into his efforts to secure appointment to the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama, reports the paper.
• Roland Burris, who controversially was appointed by former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich to fill the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama, has racked up more than $111,000 in debts while defending the legitimacy of his seat, Politico.com reports. Though Burris has begun a fundraising campaign, to date he’s raised only $845, notes Congressional Quarterly.
• Former New York governor Eliot Spitzer is back in crusade mode, despite being forced from office in a prostitution scandal. The American Bar Association Journal reports that Spitzer is attacking high executive compensation and calling for reform of the financial markets.

Sources: USA Today, Apr. 17 — Politico.com, Apr. 17 — ABA Journal, Apr. 15.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Apr. 6 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 23 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 16 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 6 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 31, 2008.

An ethics dispute roils soccer’s governing body; baseball improves record of minority hiring, according to report; coach’s get-tough attitude with 6- and 7-year-old girls prompts some outrage as well as some admiration; champion cyclist admits doping

VARIOUS DATELINES
Sports and sporting behavior figured in last week’s news. Among the top stories:

• The ethics committee of FIFA, soccer’s governing body, is investigating claims of vote buying in the election of the body’s executive committee, according to a report from the London Independent. Two leaders fighting for the same seat have traded a variety of allegations that have been turned over to the ethics committee. The executive committee determines host countries for the coming World Cup tournaments.
• African-Americans accounted for 10.2 percent of Major League Baseball players last year, the most since the 1995 season and significantly higher than the all-time low of 8.2 percent in 2007, according to a survey from the University of Central Florida Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the Institute, which grades teams and sports programs for their diversity efforts, gave baseball an overall B-plus, and an A for its specific hiring practices.
• Tough talk by a girls’ soccer coach led to his resignation and a debate about sports ethics. The Patriot-Ledger of Quincy, Massachusetts, reports that Michael Kinahan said he was joking when he sent an email to the parents of the 6- and 7-year-old girls on his team, saying he had named the team “The Green Death” and noting that the girls will “fall, get bumps, bruises and even bleed a little. Big deal, it’s good for them (but I do hope the other team is the one bleeding)….The political correctness police are not welcome on my sidelines.” The Boston Globe reports that even though he was forced to resign, there was some support for Kinahan’s approach, with Globe columnist Joanna Weiss noting that some observers welcomed his tough words, saying there could be a benefit to children in playing for a realist with a sense of humor.
• Champion U.S. cyclist Tyler Hamilton, who won acclaim during the 2003 Tour de France and a gold medal at the 2004 Olympics, last week admitted using a banned drug and said he would retire from the sport. Hamilton has been fighting doping charges for years, weathering a two-year suspension from 2005 to 2007 after failing a drug test. Now returned to racing, Hamilton last week admitted that he knowingly used an over-the-counter medication for depression that contained a banned steroid, reports the Los Angeles Times. Hamilton said using the drug was “stupid” and “wrong,” but denied trying to cheat. “I took a substance that was on the banned list for my mental health,” he said. “Did I take it for performance enhancement? Absolutely not.” Rather than face a likely eight-year suspension, Hamilton said he would retire, reports the Times.

Sources: Los Angeles Times, Apr. 18 — Independent, Apr. 17 — Philadelphia Inquirer, Apr. 17 — Boston Globe, Apr. 11 — Quincy Patriot-Ledger, Mar. 31.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 2 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 16 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 9 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 2 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 26.

Advocacy group for obese says seats are too small to begin with, and if airlines are worried about personal space, why not penalize people who lean their seats back or have big, puffy coats?

CHICAGO
In a continuing controversy over the ethical implications of obesity — and who should bear the costs and inconveniences of the condition — United Airlines last week said it will bump severely overweight passengers from sold-out flights.

Also, reports the Chicago Tribune, passengers too big to fit into a single coach seat will have to buy two tickets or upgrade to first class. If no extra seats are available, the passenger gets bumped, adds the Chicago Sun-Times.

Starting on April 15, 2009, United put in place the policy affecting passengers who “are unable to fit into a single seat in the ticketed cabin; are unable to properly buckle the seatbelt using a single seatbelt extender; and/or are unable to put the seat’s armrests down when seated.”

United spokespeople say the decision, which mirrors policies at several other major carriers, was made after hundreds of complaints from passengers who felt their personal space was encroached upon by extra-large row-mates.

But as Bloomberg reports, not everyone is happy about the policy.

“It’s going to perpetuate that negative stigma that’s already associated with obesity,” James Zervios, a spokesman for the Obesity Action Coalition, told Bloomberg.

Zervios says part of the problem relates to seats that are too small to begin with, and he claims that if obese people are penalized, the same reasoning should apply to people who push back their seats or have big, puffy coats.

Sources: Chicago Tribune, Apr. 17 — Chicago Sun-Times, Apr. 16 — MSNBC, Apr. 16 — Bloomberg, Apr. 15.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Nov. 24, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 3, 2008 — Related Newsline story, July 28, 2008 — Related Newsline story, July 10, 2006.

In other stories about media and morals, a mug-shot site causes controversy, and a media scholar says the digital era points out the need for enhanced ethics

VARIOUS DATELINES
Several stories relating to media ethics were featured in last week’s news. Among them:

• The woman at the center of a bioethics controversy involving her eight children produced by in vitro fertilization started another row last week when she filed an application to trademark her nickname, Octomom. According to the Los Angeles Times, the purpose of the trademark, as stated in the application form, is for “ongoing television programs” and a marketing deal for disposable diapers.
• A website featuring mug shots of people arrested in Florida has sparked an intense ethics debate, according to journalism analysis publication Poynteronline.com. While the site, run by the St. Petersburg Times, has become popular, critics are questioning whether it’s fair to build a site around mug shots, not the crimes themselves. Among the questions being asked, according to Poynter columnist Steve Myers, is whether the site is journalism or voyeurism, and whether it is fair to highlight people who are arrested but not convicted, especially in an age when digital information lives forever.
• A noted media-ethics scholar says ethical judgment is more important than ever as news media migrate to digital platforms. Writing in the Indianapolis Star, Bob Steele, a visiting professor of journalism at DePauw University and an ethics specialist at the Poynter Institute, maintains “the ethical decision-making processes we’ve taught are just as applicable for bloggers and Tweeters and multimedia all-platform journalists as they have been for the editors, reporters and other newsroom journalists of generations past. In fact, it may be even more important digital era to use a sound moral compass and to embrace clear ethical principles” [sic].

Sources: Poynteronline.com, Apr. 17 — Indianapolis Star, Apr. 17 — Los Angeles Times, Apr. 15.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 2 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 9 — Related Newsline story, May 19, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 28, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 14, 2008.