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

by Rushworth M. Kidder

“It’s been six years, doing this job,” said Christopher Christie, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, “and I thought I could no longer be surprised by a combination of brazenness, arrogance, and stupidity. But the people elected in this state continue to defy description.”

It’s a telling comment on the 44 people arrested by the FBI in New Jersey last week. The two-year investigation, which netted (among others) three mayors, two state assemblymen, and five rabbis on money-laundering and corruption charges, had been launched under Mr. Christie.

What’s more telling, however, is that Christie wasn’t commenting on last week’s arrests. His words are nearly two years old and refer to the state’s last big corruption sweep, which hauled in 11 current and former elected officials in September 2007.

All of which raises interesting questions about, as he said, the “arrogance and stupidity” of the corrupt, who can’t seem to learn from an example only 22 months old. As a result, they’ve now given us a fresh example, an object lesson with more facets than a brilliant cut diamond. It’s a story that:

• Reawakens the nation’s disgust over a recession linked to the corruption of such notables as Wall Street guru Bernard Madoff, Texas billionaire Allen Stanford, and the leaders of giant insurer AIG
• Makes it easier to credit the accusations against former Louisiana congressman William Jefferson, currently on trial on charges that include bribery and racketeering
• Hits us just as news of mortgage fraud emerges, adding to our sense of vulnerability
• Alerts us to a grisly new scam, based on soliciting an organ donor to part with a kidney for $10,000, which the con man then sells for $160,000
• Speaks well of the FBI, which was able to keep the work of some 300 agents secret for two years
• Invites comments on New Jersey’s culture of political corruption, described by the state’s acting U.S. attorney, Ralph Marra, Jr., as “an ethics-free zone”
• Suggests that, despite the scale of this operation, scores of corrupt officials may remain untouched on the fringes of its tangled web of relationships

Given all of this, the 44 schemers arrested last week may seem a bit daft. With the crime-doesn’t-pay lesson of 2007 still ringing in their ears, why risk it? For the size of the bribes involved — typically less than half the cost of a new midsize car — why bother? And with today’s movies and TV programs chock full of details about hidden cameras, informants wearing wires, and dumpster-diving investigators, why not be more cautious?

Sadly enough, in any long-standing culture of corruption, it may not be arrogance but experience, not stupidity but common sense that drives such behaviors. If corruption is so endemic and accepted, and if these 44 are but a small fraction of those merrily on the take, perhaps only a fool would choose to get elected and not partake of the spoils of victory.

Grim as that sounds, it’s an important warning. It reminds us that you don’t fight corruption merely by removing corrupt officials. You do it by reforming corrupt cultures. Yes, culture change starts by getting good people into office — by voting as much for character as for experience, and by electing people capable of doing good things in the right way. But culture change continues by helping elected officials maintain high standards. That requires vigilance at the top of the political pyramid, from those who can either support vigorous efforts to extirpate corruption or turn a blind eye to it. That vigilance once drew on the watchdog efforts of investigative journalists — a breed that’s rapidly vanishing as newspapers dwindle. It now relies largely on the work of law-enforcement organizations as they more slowly (though more spectacularly) ratchet up the risks of getting caught, as happened last week.

But mostly the reforming of culture involves the action of citizens who, like readers of this publication, care about ethics. And therein lies a challenge. Not surprisingly, those attracted to the subject of ethics are themselves ethical. They tend to live among ethical people and expect ethical behavior from others. They’re quick to spot and appreciate acts of integrity. Having faith in the goodness of humanity, they often are more trusting of others and less skeptical than their peers.

Unless they’re alert, however, that heightened sense of probity puts them at risk in two ways. First, it can so sharpen their sensibilities that they take moral offense where others might be more forgiving — and makes them sometimes more given to holding their noses in repugnance than to rolling up their sleeves for a fight. More dangerous, their faith in others can set them up for scams, cons, and deceptions that the more cynical would suspect and resist. Even if they don’t become the targets of fraud, they can be driven toward despair when stories like the New Jersey scandal come along.

But despair doesn’t change cultures. Neither does cynicism. Reform falls to those who retain their faith that goodness can and should triumph — not as Pollyannas hoping that everyone will be nice, but as street-smart sentinels, alert to trickery and fraud, who nevertheless believe that most people are inherently ethical. When such people withdraw, they leave the culture to the scoundrels. But when they’re willing to take action, there’s no limit to what they can do to change the world, including New Jersey.

©2009 Institute for Global Ethics

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

In last week’s commentary, Rushworth Kidder recounted the story of a camp trustee and volunteer named Terri, who allowed a child to use live bait in defiance of a lake’s ban and in the face of apathy from camp counselors who looked the other way.

The ban was instituted to protect the waters against introduction of alien species.

Dr. Kidder related the story to financial-sector employees who, “minding their business by their own metaphorical lakesides,” observed corruption and rule breaking but let it pass.

We received many emails in reaction.

Almost all respondents saw the issue as a straightforward case of obeying rules. “Terri should have told the kid no and given the reason, and I’d bet the kid would have stopped,” writes one reader. “It’s when bystanders remain bystanders only and do not speak that evil prospers, and it does not matter what the question is.”

Another concurs, noting that Terri now knows she should have stopped the boy, and may now be thinking of the words of Robert Burns: “Of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.”

“She should have spoken up,” agrees another reader, “as it was a great teaching moment that she could have used, not only for the kid(s) but for the counselors as well. In fact, I believe that providing the counselors that behavior example would have had at least as much value as providing the ethical lesson to the campers.”

Two readers stress that Terri should have spoken to the instructor who looked the other way. “I believe that Terri should have taken it up with the instructor and asked him/her to enforce the rules,” contends one. “If he/she did not do so, she should have gone the whistle-blowing route. The real problem, in my view, is the instructor.”

“Terri could have spoken to the instructor — adult to adult,” another reader concludes. “If the instructor just shrugged and let this boy’s rule violation pass, what else was she allowing to happen?”

But a dissenting view comes from this reader: “The boy was correct to use his worms, because worms are not live fish that can be an introduction of foreign species. Children need to learn that, in general, a rule is made for a good reason, but a rule can be broken for a good reason, especially when there is no harm done to the intent of the rule. Children should learn to understand the reason for following a rule, and be allowed to break the rule when it is discovered there is no reason to obey the rule (as in the case that a worm is not a foreign fish species).”

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

“We are so exhausted. Our nerves are about to snap from this torture. The officials who were responsible not only have not been punished, they have been promoted.”

– Chinese mother Song Heping, talking to the New York Times about her family’s efforts to recover the missing education records of her child. The Times reports on the plight of top-level Chinese students whose records are stolen and sold by local officials to friends or underperforming students’ families.

The con effectively sentences the rightful students to a lifetime of back-breaking and low-paying jobs as well as massive debt since employers refuse to hire students with missing records. The Chinese government meanwhile often rejects any inquiries into stolen records, placing the students’ parents under police surveillance and repeatedly detaining them until they drop their efforts, parents told the Times.

Source: New York Times, July 27.

New Jersey stung by corruption scandal termed massive even by New Jersey standards; Palm Beach County seeks to blunt reputation for corruption by convening ethics commission; incoming Alaska governor wants end to leaks of information related to ethics probes

VARIOUS DATELINES
Across the United States, ethics at the state level dominated headlines last week. Among the top stories:

• A massive corruption sting in New Jersey shocked residents of a state who thought they had seen it all as mayors, councilmen, and religious leaders were rounded up as part of a two-year probe into corruption and money laundering. Acting U.S. attorney Ralph Marra, Jr., said the arrests demonstrated the continuing, widespread scope of corruption in New Jersey, where more than 130 public officials have been prosecuted in the past several years. “For these defendants, corruption was a way of life,” Marra said, according to the Newark Star-Ledger. “They existed in an ethics-free zone.” An FBI agent quoted by the Economist observed that “the list of names and titles of those arrested today sounds like a roster for a community leaders meeting” that was held not in a town hall but in an “FBI booking room.”
• Commissioners in Florida’s Palm Beach County, which has been rocked by a succession of ethics scandals, agreed to create an ethics commission to probe government wrongdoing, reports the Palm Beach Post. Writes the Post’s George Bennett: “With three former commissioners in federal prison, a grand jury recommending sweeping reforms and Time magazine branding the county ‘the new capital of Florida corruption,’ commissioners had little choice.”
• Sean Parnell, the incoming governor of Alaska, wants the state’s attorney general to provide recommendations on how to prevent leaks of confidential information from ethics probes. Fairbanks television station KTVA reports that Parnell says leaking ethics information is an abuse of the executive branch’s ethics act and “a violation of due process.” The state’s resigning governor, Sarah Palin, claimed that arbitrary and politically motivated ethics complaints were one reason for her resignation.

Sources: Economist, July 24 — Newark Star-Ledger, July 24 — Palm Beach Post, July 23 — KTVA, July 23.

For more information, see:  Related Newsline story, July 13 — Related Newsline story, July 6 — Related Newsline story, June 15 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 29, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 10, 2007.

Issue vaults to front pages when president says police acted “stupidly”

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.
An incident involving race, ethics, and sensibilities echoed from a Cambridge doorstep to the White House last week, as President Obama weighed in on the arrest of black scholar Henry Louis Gates.

Gates charged that his arrest, after he and another black man were seen attempting to force open the door of Gates’s house, which Gates said was jammed, was racially motivated. The officer who arrested Gates said that the professor became unruly.

The arrest stirred vigorous, sometimes vituperative debate in various forums, including unsurprisingly talk radio. Critics claimed the arrest was symptomatic of residual racism. Supporters of the police and police officials, including the Cambridge police commissioner, insisted that the officer acted appropriately and without any racial motivation, the Boston Globe reports.

On Monday, the Cambridge police department released the audio recording of the 911 call that brought police to Gates’s house. The caller does not allude to race, says she sees suitcases on the porch, and notes, “I don’t know if they live there and they just had a hard time with their key, but I did notice they had to use their shoulders to try to barge in,” reports the Boston Globe.

The incident vaulted to the front pages of major newspapers and to the top of the lineup on the network news after President Obama, asked about the case during a press conference, conceded he did not know all the particulars but declared that Cambridge police had “acted stupidly.”

Obama’s remarks, reports the Hill, drew the ire of police unions and the officer himself, a sergeant who had taught classes on how to avoid racial profiling.

By week’s end, Gates and the officer who arrested him both said they would accept the president’s defusing offer to meet at the White House for a beer, reports UPI.

Sources: Boston Globe, July 27 — UPI, July 25 — Boston Globe, July 23 — Hill, July 23.

For more information, see:  Related Newsline story, June 29 — Related Newsline story, June 15 –  Related Newsline story, June 1 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 23 — Related Newsline story, July 14, 2008.

Some say he’s served his time and that’s that; others argue nature of offense should keep him off the gridiron for good

NEW YORK
One of the most prominent animal-ethics stories in recent years is back in the news following the National Football League’s (NFL) reinstatement of convicted felon Michael Vick, who was just released from prison.

Vick was released from federal custody last week after serving a 23-month sentence for arranging and bankrolling dog fights. According to the Washington Post, he met with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell late last week.

On Monday, Goodell gave Vick an opening to return to the gridiron, making him “eligible to sign with a team, join it during training camp and play in the final two preseason games,” notes the New York Times. Goodell said he would decide whether Vick can return to regular-season games in mid-October.

The news immediately prompted controversy. The Cincinnati Enquirer’s Paul Daugherty defended Vick’s return, arguing that the NFL is not known as a bastion of good character, adding that Vick has served his term, and insisting that the NFL has no business setting conduct standards. Sports Illustrated’s George Dorhmann took the opposite view, saying that in addition to Vick’s animal cruelty, the facts that he gambled and deceived the league merit a lifetime ban.

Another player in the drama is Wayne Pacelle, the president of the Humane Society, who has enlisted Vick in a televised campaign against dog fighting.

Commenting on the possibility of Vick’s return, Pacelle told USA Today that it raises “basic questions about redemption. Michael Vick has suffered serious consequences, but he’s got to get out of the gate in a major way with our anti-dogfighting campaign…. He apologized to the fans and the kids, but he didn’t really take ownership of the cruelty.”

Sources: New York Times, July 27 — USA Today, July 24 — Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 24 — Washington Post, July 24 — Kansas City Star, July 23.

For more information, see:  Related Newsline story, May 4 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 27, 2007 –  Related Newsline story, Aug 20, 2007 — Related Newsline story, July 30, 2007 — Related Newsline story, July 23, 2007.

Effort is part of Kremlin initiative to teach morality after period of corruption and turbulence

MOSCOW
Russian president Dmitry Medvedev last week announced a pilot project to require the schoolchildren to take classes in religion or ethics.

The Associated Press reports that the proposal is part of a Kremlin effort to teach morality in a turbulent period of corruption and violence that followed the collapse of the totalitarian Soviet Union.

Preteens at about 12,000 schools are expected to participate in the project, which will offer a course in secular ethics or studies of various religions, including Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and the Russian Orthodox Church.

Medvedev also said he will establish a permanent chaplain service in the armed forces, reports Moscow-based newspaper Kommersant.

English-language Russian daily Moscow Times reports that proponents say religious and ethics education would boost the morals and morale of the younger generations, while critics warn that the project could degenerate into a vehicle for religious propaganda.

If successful, the plan could be extended to all students in Russia, according to the BBC.

Sources: AP, July 22 — BBC, July 22 — Kommersant, July 22 — Moscow Times, July 22.

For more information, see:  Related Newsline story, Mar. 2 –  Related Newsline story, Feb. 23 –  Related Newsline story, Feb. 9 –  Related Newsline story, Feb. 9.

U.K. medical journal says ethics were violated at Guantánamo; discovery by Chinese scientists raises new moral questions about embryos and cloning; White House releases details of visits by heath care executives

VARIOUS DATELINES
Ethics issues surrounding Guantánamo, stem cell research, and health policy continued to dominate the news last week. Among the stories:

• In the Lancet, the influential U.K. medical journal, an article concludes that the use of medical personnel at the U.S. prison camp at Guantánamo Bay forced them to violate their ethics codes. The Agence France-Presse reports that the study’s authors concluded that the roles that medical professionals assumed “damaged the integrity of the physicians working for the military and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)…. These physicians had a conflict of loyalty because of their ethical obligations to their imprisoned patients and the Bush administration’s demands to further the goals and interests of military commanders and intelligence officials.” Among the alleged violations were involvement of doctors in force-feeding and the use of behavioral scientists during interrogations.
• Press reports from around the world noted that a new type of stem cell production that does not involve the controversial use of destroyed embryos could sidestep many of the ethics problems involved in stem cell research. The debate heated up again, reports the Los Angeles Times, after scientists in China reported growing healthy mice from mouse skin cells.
• Following a lawsuit from a government watchdog group, the Obama administration released a list of health care industry executives who have visited the White House to consult on the president’s new health care initiative. ABC News reports that the administration previously had refused a request by Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington because it believed presidential records are exempt from public disclosure laws. But the White House reversed its stance, reports ABC, with White House counsel Gregory Craig saying the discretionary release was merited by “the compelling public interest in the health care debate and the president’s goal of increasing transparency in government.”

Sources: AFP, July 26 — Times of London, July 26 — Los Angeles Times, July 24 — ABC News, July 23.

For more information, see:  Related Newsline story, May 25 –  Related Newsline story, Apr. 13 –  Related Newsline story, Jan. 19 –  Related Newsline story, June 16, 2008 –  Related Newsline story, June 1, 2004.

Nude video of reporter, name of complainant in sexual-assault suit, and plans to put books online emerge as contentious issues

VARIOUS DATELINES
Privacy in the age of digital media is an spawning practical and ethical challenges, according to several press reports. Among them:

• An apparent nude video of ESPN sports reporter Erin Andrews was not only one of the most sought-after items in Google searches last week, but also was the focus of a media-ethics debate. The video of Andrews in a hotel purportedly was taken through a peephole leading to an adjoining room. While Connecticut-based ESPN has not reported on the incident, reports the Hartford Courant, many mainstream media gave the story heavy play. The New York Post stirred controversy when it published edited and partially obscured stills from the video to accompany a story about the incident. ESPN says it will prosecute whomever is responsible for taking the video, but the Courant notes that while the privacy issues involved appear straightforward from a moral standpoint, legally there is a great deal of unexplored territory involving new technologies that are capable of secretly taking and disseminating video.
• Journalists faced an ethical quandary when deciding whether to use the name of a woman who filed a civil sexual assault suit against Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, reports Poynter OnLine, a publication of a Florida media think-tank. Poynter’s Al Thompson writes that newsrooms generally withhold the names of alleged sexual assault victims so they don’t cause further harm. But in this case, Thompson writes that he leans toward using the name: “Seeking compensation in a civil suit affords one less protection than pressing to jail an attacker in order to protect society…. And it becomes even more difficult to defend concealing her identity when Roethlisberger named her in the news conference in which he denied the allegations.”
• Watchdog group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is asking supporters to pressure Google into building significant privacy protections into its Book Search service, PC World reports. Book Search, which allows users to search for and sometimes access the text of books online, would give Google access to personal information, argues the EFF’s Hugh D’Andrade. “If you suspect you may have a serious disease, you can go into a bookstore and browse for books about your illness, find one that’s useful, and buy it with cash. And you can rest assured that your insurance premiums won’t increase as a result, because there is no way your insurance company can find out about your choice of reading material,” D’Andrade wrote in an EFF blog post. “But this privacy could be eroded as books enter the digital world, where every click leaves a record.” In a web post, Google said it would protect users’ privacy, though it was unable to provide specifics because a court settlement to allow digitization of books has not yet been finalized.

Sources: Hartford Courant, July 24 — Poynter OnLine, July 24 — PC World, July 25.

For more information, see: EFF post, July 23.

But is high-frequency trading unfair to investors without the electronic edge?

NEW YORK
There’s a new ethics wrinkle to stock trading, reports the New York Times: the use of extremely high-powered computers to scan the market, analyze trends, and place orders with lighting speed — a power the individual investor cannot hope to match.

The Times’s Charles Duhigg notes that regulations were altered to allow computer-generated trades, but that the ordinary user of a PC cannot hope to compete with Wall Street’s computers: “Powerful algorithms — ‘algos,’ in industry parlance — execute millions of orders a second and scan dozens of public and private marketplaces simultaneously. They can spot trends before other investors can blink, changing orders and strategies within milliseconds.”

“High-frequency traders often confound other investors by issuing and then canceling orders almost simultaneously,” Duhigg continues. “Loopholes in market rules give high-speed investors an early glance at how others are trading. And their computers can essentially bully slower investors into giving up profits — and then disappear before anyone even knows they were there.”

The ethical issue: While some big companies are making billions of dollars through high-frequency trading, defenders say that if we want to encourage innovation, we have to reward the innovators. Critics, though, say that if we move toward a two-tiered market of high-powered investors and everybody else, the average investor may not feel he or she has a shot at getting a fair deal.

Source: New York Times, July 23.

For more information, see:  Related Newsline story, July 6 –  Related Newsline Commentary, June 15 –  Related Newsline story, June 15 –  Related Newsline story, May 25 –  Related Newsline story, May 25.

Conservative Republicans see rosy picture; low-income Americans see bleaker view

From the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press:

“Most Americans rate the nation’s health care as no better than average when compared with health care in other industrialized countries. Just 15% say health care in this country is the ‘best in the world,’ while 23% rate it as ‘above average’; about six-in-ten (59%) view U.S. health care as either ‘average’ (32%) or ‘below average’ (27%).

“The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press’ May 2009 study found that health care receives relatively poor ratings compared with other major U.S. institutions and systems. About eight in-ten (82%) say either that the U.S. military is the best in the world (42%) or that it is above average (39%). Majorities also rate the nation’s scientific achievements (65%) and standard of living (63%) as either the best in the world or above average, while half (50%) say this about the U.S. political system.

“The economy is the only item on the survey that receives a rating lower than health care….

“The stark political divisions evident in the current debate over health care are mirrored in opinions about how the health care system compares with those in other industrialized countries….

“Conservative Republicans stand out in their positive assessments of U.S. health care. Two-thirds (66%) say America’s health care is either the best in the world or above average. Just 39% of moderate and liberal Republicans agree. There is a smaller ideological divide within the Democratic Party — with 75% of liberals rating U.S. health care as average or below average compared with 67% of moderates and conservatives.

“Americans with lower family incomes rate health care in the U.S. less positively than those with higher incomes. Roughly two-thirds (65%) of people with annual household incomes of less than $30,000 describe U.S health care as average or below average compared with other industrialized countries, while only about a third (32%) see it as the best in the world or above average. By comparison, half of Americans earning $100,000 or more say America’s health care is the best in the world or above average….”

For the full release, July 24, click here.

“They can because they think they can.”

– Virgil (Classical Roman poet, 70 BCE – 19 BCE)

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

by Rushworth M. Kidder

It was early June when Terri arrived back at the camp. As a longtime trustee, she again had volunteered to help the counselors open up the cabins for the children who, by month’s end, would pour into this northern New England lakeside facility.

That week an environmental education program had rented the facility. The program supplied its own instructors to work with a group of 6th-graders from a local middle school. She’d always felt comfortable with kids that age, she told me. But neither Terri nor the camp counselors had any official role with their program, so she hardly could have suspected that one of these kids would open for her a moral can of worms that, months later, still troubles her — and that, taken to its logical extension, helps explain today’s economic recession.

Like so many moral issues, this one unfolded at lightning speed. Terri was sitting by the water’s edge after dinner, enjoying the long summer evening with several counselors, when a group of kids from the environmental program came down to fish. Their instructors led them to various rocks along the shore where they could cast their bobbers into the still water. One child, Terri noted, had brought an elaborate tackle box, out of which he took a paper cup of worms.

“You can’t use those,” an instructor told him.

“Why not?” he asked.

Because, the instructor explained, this lake has stringent environmental standards: Motor boats aren’t permitted, and no live bait is allowed.

Unfazed, the child went right on baiting his hook. “Nobody will know,” he said, noting that there weren’t any wardens around to catch him. The instructor simply shrugged, said nothing, and walked away, and the boy cast his worm into the lake.

At which point Terri did…. Well, let me break into the narrative here. What should she have done?

On one hand, she recalls, “it bothered me, sitting there, that here was a teachable moment that was lost.” What a great opportunity, she felt, to make a point about law, obedience, responsibility, respect, fairness — any one of a host of virtues. Would the boy have been responsive? He was, she felt, “just a normal kid in jeans and a tee-shirt, not a hoodlum.” Besides, there were three adult instructors with the environmental program who, she said, “had been doing this for 15 or 20 years.” Surely, she felt, it was their responsibility to train these children to obey environmental regulations.

Yet she wasn’t part of this program. Would it have been right for her to intervene, countermand the instructor’s indifference, and help the boy grasp these things? Or would she have been seen simply as a meddling adult inserting herself where she didn’t belong? Besides, though she’d been visiting that lake for years, she’d never known about the no-worms rule. Only later did she learn that the local lake association, concerned about introducing alien species into the waters, had banned any use of live bait.

In the end, the moment passed, and Terri did nothing. And the more she thought about it, the more disappointed she grew with her own lack of moral courage. Yes, she could see arguments for restraint. But had she been sucked into a phenomenon known as bystander apathy, a term often used in connection with the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese, whose cries for help went unheeded by at least 38 neighbors in Queens, New York? That concept, as researchers explain, also describes inhibitions in situations far less serious than capital crimes — where, in the presence of an audience of others who also fail to act, it becomes easier to justify your own inactivity and dilute your sense of responsibility.

Had Terri known the no-worms rule and been alone with the boy when he baited his hook, would she have spoken up? No doubt. Did she fail to act out of uncertainty, or because of the presence of others, or a combination of both? Who knows? What she’s sure of is “the lack of respect of kids for their teachers — and of teachers for the kids” that she witnessed. She also knows that when adults set the bar low, kids aim low, but that “when you hold the standard up to kids, they’ll hit it.” Next time, she says, “I’m going to step up.”

Terri’s experience, small though it is, has big-picture implications. In the past year, how many financial-sector employees, minding their business by their own metaphorical lakesides, suddenly observed corporate corruption, deception, and deliberate rule breaking? How many of the rule-breakers were, in effect, moral adolescents — fully mature adults, of course, but with no more conscience than that kid with the tackle box? How many of these bystanders said and did nothing? And how many now are sensing, in the ethical collapses that swept the economy into a grinding recession, the fruits of their silent inaction?

One thing is sure: People can be taught moral courage. But it’s best not to wait until they reach the banks and trading floors of adulthood. Better catch them early, some summer evening by the shore, when they think nobody’s watching.

What do you think Terri should have done? Let us know, and we’ll share the results next week.

©2009 Institute for Global Ethics

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

“The court does not give the government a high degree of deference because of its prior misrepresentations regarding the state secrets privilege in this case.”

– U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, ruling on Monday that the CIA committed fraud in distorting and obscuring the facts in a case accusing the agency of wiretapping one of its own covert agents in the early 1990s. Lamberth, who originally dismissed the case due to CIA assurances that the proceedings would expose state secrets, slammed the CIA for its behavior and “is considering sanctioning as many as six who have worked at the agency, including former CIA Director George Tenet,” reports the Associated Press. According to the AP, “Lamberth also denied the CIA’s renewed efforts under the Obama administration to keep the case secret because of what he calls the agency’s ‘diminished credibility.’”

Source: AP, July 20.

Reflections on Walter Cronkite; dust-ups over reproduction of allegedly hacked information; controversy over whether licensing Jackson video was checkbook journalism; an electronic twist to publication of 1984 that’s positively Orwellian

VARIOUS DATELINES
Among the week’s top stories involving ethics and communication industries:

• The death of Walter Cronkite last week prompted many observations about the changing nature of journalism, objectivity, and ethics. Among the commentators was CBS’s Andy Rooney, who lauded Cronkite for resisting the push for softer, ratings-building stories. “Walter didn’t care,” Rooney told National Public Radio. “He was absolutely in favor of giving the American people what they needed to know, not what they wanted to hear.” And the New York Times’s Alessandra Stanley offered this thought on why Cronkite’s voice of authority and objectivity left such an indelible mark on society: “When Mr. Cronkite was No. 1, the nightly news mattered. College students nowadays get their information from blogs and Comedy Central, not CBS. Families don’t gather in the den to eat dinner in front of ‘World News Tonight With Charles Gibson.’ Brian Williams and Katie Couric wouldn’t dare sign off with the words ‘and that’s the way it is.’ The television news business long ago lost that kind of prestige and importance; the audience for evening newscasts has so dwindled that this year there were more viewers on an average night for ‘American Idol’ than for the programs on CBS, NBC and ABC combined.”
• U.K. prosecutors say they will not reopen an investigation into claims that reporters from two tabloids illegally hacked into celebrities’ cell phones. Bloomberg reports that the probe will apparently end with charges against only a News of the World reporter and a private investigator hired by the newspaper who were jailed in 2007. Last week, it was revealed that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. paid $1.6 million to settle several lawsuits related to the hacks. After that disclosure, police were pressured to reopen the probe, but Bloomberg reports that prosecutors say there is no new information and no reason to revisit the case.
• Ethics controversy erupted over the hacking of the email account of Twitter CEO Evan Williams after a publication called TechCrunch said it would publish some of the confidential documents leaked by the anonymous hacker. TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington last week defended his decision to publish the hacked documents, telling CNET that other news organizations have published purloined emails and that revealing the information will encourage people to take data security more seriously.
• ABC News was accused of checkbook journalism after it was disclosed that an exclusive interview with Joe Jackson, Michael Jackson’s father, was conducted after ABC News paid $200,000 for video owned by the Jacksons. According to the Los Angeles Times, ABC licensed 10 minutes of the footage, but insists that the exchange of money had nothing to do with landing the exclusive interview and that the news division does not pay for interviews. Critics say it is an example of a common practice of indirectly compensating interview subjects by paying licensing fees or providing other perks, such as first-class airline tickets. (Editor’s note: This week we revisit one of Rushworth Kidder’s columns that dealt with Michael Jackson. See link.)
• An Orwellian ethics dilemma last week directly involved George Orwell: After discovering a problem with the licensing of 1984 and Animal Farm, Amazon remotely deleted the books from customers’ Kindles, the company’s popular electronic book display devices. Atlantic correspondent Edward Tanner wrote that the Orwell incident may not be the last time we consider the implications of digital erasure: “Several years ago, a libel suit persuaded one of the world’s most respected publishers, Cambridge University Press, to withdraw a book published after rigorous academic review. By then, many copies had been sold, and the work is available on the antiquarian market, though often at rare-book prices. But what if all copies of an exclusively electronic book could be instantly and virtually pulped?… Maybe bulky paper isn’t a bug any more; it’s a feature.”

Sources: Slate, July 20 — NPR, July 18 — New York Times, July 18 — Wall Street Journal, July 17 — Atlantic, July 16 — Bloomberg, July 16 — Los Angeles Times, July 14.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, July 6 — Related Newsline Commentary, June 29 — Related Newsline story, June 8 — Related Newsline story, May 25 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 22, 2008.

In Britain, doctors ponder their moral duties; in developing worlds, there’s concern that rich nations will gobble up scarce vaccine; fear of pandemic spurs Internet scams; Thai newspaper questions decision to pare back frequency of flu updates

VARIOUS DATELINES
Health experts say that swine flu is poised to make a comeback — along with a parade of ethical dilemmas.

The BBC notes that with outbreaks soaring in Britain, anxious patients are flocking to the offices of general practitioners, who comprise the medical front lines in the battle against the disease. In response, the government has asked GP offices to designate a “pandemic flu lead,” a member of the practice who will be responsible for dealing with flu patients.

Not surprisingly, notes medical ethicist Daniel Sokol, writing on the BBC website, few have jumped at the offer. In addition to the added responsibility, many dread the prospect of rationing potentially scarce vaccines and worry about increased exposure to the virus.

Sokol points out that the request for a “flu lead” itself poses ethical issues. Is it ethical to ask one doctor to bear an additional risk and burden? What about physicians who have young children at home or frail elderly parents? Should duty of care to patients trump duty of care to loved ones?

“If the strength of our competing duties is morally important,” Sokol writes, “a single doctor with no children may have a greater obligation to be the flu lead than a married doctor with three young children.

“Yet, how would this work in practice? Is a six-year-old daughter ‘worth more’ than a five-year-old daughter? Is a 90-year-old parent worth more than a toddler? Is a girlfriend of 10 years worth less than a wife of five years?” Sokol asks.

With flu cases erupting across Europe, the U.K. Guardian reports, a race among nations to secure vaccines has begun. World Health Organization director general Margaret Chan warns that poor nations will suffer as wealthy nations stockpile vaccines.

In Canada and the United States, there’s a new wrinkle to swine flu dilemmas: Internet scams involving websites that sell phony cures, reports the CanWest News Service.

And in Thailand, there’s an ethics debate over how much information to release on the spread of the flu, according to the Bangkok Post. Like health authorities in many nations, officials in Thailand have cut back on the frequency of public updates and projections because the volatile nature of outbreaks often produces inaccurate, conflicting, and alarming reports.

In an editorial, the Post argues that “with the same life-threatening health crisis hanging over us all, the Thai people certainly deserve to be fully informed in a straightforward and unhindered manner”

Sources: CanWest News Service, July 17 — Bangkok Post, July 17 — Guardian, July 17 — BBC, July 6.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, July 6 — Related Newsline story, May 4 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 27 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 9 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 5, 2007.

Canadian ethicist says government should restrict access to IVF, treating it akin to adoption

VARIOUS DATELINES
An ethics issue resurfaced in world headlines last week when it was revealed that a Spanish woman who received in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and gave birth at 66 died at age 69.

According to U.S. News & World Report, Maria del Carmen Bousada, who lied when seeking fertility treatment by understating her age by a decade, leaves behind toddler twins.

Her death revived the debate over the legal and ethical frameworks underpinning laboratory-assisted births.

In Britain, the Scotsman reports that many fertility experts have condemned the decision by a U.S. clinic to offer the woman IVF treatment.

“The age of 66 is too old for a woman to have children, Dr. Gedis Grudzinskas, a fertility expert, told the Scotsman. “This situation is awful…. Frankly, I do not think the situation regarding the unborn children was addressed. Is there a supporting and nurturing family network here? Are the children going to be cared for?”

In Canada, the incident resonated because it comes in the wake of a Calgary woman who recently gave birth to twins conceived with donor eggs implanted in India, the Vancouver Sun reports.

There are few legal mechanisms governing age and in-vitro fertilization — a situation that Margaret Somerville, founding director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University, argues must be rectified.

Somerville tells the Vancouver Sun that she believes the state has no right to interfere when people want to have children through natural means, but adds that reproductive technology should not be given the same freedom. It should be more like adoption, she argues, where the state is involved because it feels an obligation to protect children.

Age guidelines for IVF treatment in Canada are set by individual clinics. In general, reports the Edmonton Sun, most fertility specialists will not attempt the procedure with a woman past her mid-40s.

Sources: Edmonton Sun, July 17 — Vancouver Sun, July 16 — Scotsman, July 16 — U.S. News & World Report, July 16.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Apr. 27 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 20 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 2 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 9 — Related Newsline story, May 19, 2008.

Retail titan says it will survey its suppliers and compile an easy-to-read indicator of just how green each product is; image-changing venture poses challenges, though

WASHINGTON and CHICAGO
Wal-Mart last week said it will revolutionize the ethics angle on shopping by creating an index of the environmental friendliness of suppliers, manufacturers, and products.

InformationWeek reports that the information will be compiled in a massive database of its more than 100,000 suppliers, who will be given a 15-question survey about their greenhouse gas emissions, water and solid waste reduction efforts, and other details about business practices.

The indexing system was devised by environmental groups and academics, reports the London Telegraph, and will be condensed into an easily understood universal rating system — akin to a version of a nutrition label, but one that will provide details about environmental and social sustainability.

“It is not our goal to create or own this index,” Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke said, reports Agence France-Presse. “We want to spur the development of a common database that will allow the consortium to collect and analyze the knowledge of the global supply chain.”

According to the Chicago Tribune, Wal-Mart’s announcement was the latest and most ambitious step in the chain’s multiyear effort to transform itself into a company that is seen as environmentally friendly — a move the company thinks will expand its appeal to younger customers.

But the Tribune report contends that the goal won’t be easy to accomplish, citing an expert on eco-friendly retailing who notes that experts disagree on what makes a product “green,” and that standards can be difficult to apply. Clothes may be made with organic cotton, for example, but produced at an energy-hogging plant.

The Tribune notes that Wal-Mart’s efforts to change public perception got their start in 2005: “When Wal-Mart launched its green initiative, it was reeling from a barrage of negative headlines portraying the company as a behemoth that mistreats its workers, squeezes its suppliers and puts mom-and-pop merchants out of business.”

“To remake its image, the company latched onto the then-fledgling green movement as a way to attract a new generation of shoppers that are more likely to hold big companies accountable for their behavior,” reports the Tribune.

The initiative is expected to unfold over a three-year period, according to reports.

Sources: AFP, July 17 — Telegraph, July 16 — InformationWeek, July 16 — Chicago Tribune, July 16.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, May 11 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 19 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 8, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 27, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 21, 2008.