By Posted on Posted in General Commentary, Media Ethics

https://www.sptimes.com/2005/08/18/Floridian/Media_s_quest_for_div.shtml

Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg Times (who happens to be black) wrote this thought-provoking article about the dearth of people of color in positions of high visibility within the news industry, and how that plays out.

Among other effects, he finds the massive coverage of various white women’s disappearances hard to justify in light of the acute lack of coverage when a black woman goes missing.

And one can speculate (he doesn’t, in this article) about the often-negative portrayal of communities of color, especially inner-city ones–where the news coverage often focuses on crime and rarely talks about all the good community building going on.

Theses issues were expressed somewhat during the recent National Conference on Media Reform, which I covered extensively.

But Deggans also rightly points out that the major networks have had a massive defection of their most visible talent: “And despite an astonishing changing of the guard in network news that has seen Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel all leaving their high-profile jobs this year, no black person has surfaced as a realistic candidate to replace any of them.”

Sometimes, 1960 doesn’t seem so long ago. surely, as a society, we can do better.

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By Posted on Posted in Events, Media Ethics

At Book Expo America, I interviewed Alice Blackmer, Publicity Director, Chelsea Green, which enjoyed runaway success with George Lakoff’s book, Don’t Think of an Elephant.

How the book came about: “Jennifer Nix was in California and got the word that George Lakoff was thinking of pulling together some sort of manual to try to help Democrats ahead of the election, in the beginning of July. Margo Baldwin [Chelsea’s publisher] and Jen approached George about doing a book, so we could get it out to a broader audience. We lined up help via Alternet and a lot of progressive political websites. We rushed it through and were able to get it out about two months before the election.

“A lot of the information had been written, from the courses he taught, but he did have to do a lot of pulling together and extra writing, and then we got the foreword by Howard Dean; he understood the value of what Lakoff had to say. [Vermont Democratic Senator] Pat Leahy, Bernie Sanders [Vermont’s lone member of the House of Representatives, and the only Independent in Congress], Howard Dean have always been very supportive.”

The book title is taken from the name of one of Lakoff’s lectures

Five weeks from manuscript until the presses rolled almost (unheard of in the book industry). Everybody pitched in. Initial print run of 20,000 (up from the 15,000 originally planned, after Amazon.com ordered 10,000 in advance). As of June, 2005, they’d sold over 200,000, about 40,000 of them before the election.

Chelsea’s previous biggest seller, The Straw Bale House, has sold 125,000 over ten years, so Elephant was a quantum leap for the company. “This was so gratifying, to have been working away, publishing such timely and useful information, all the while knowing we were way ahead of the curve. Attached to the thrill of having a best seller move that way, starting to see the culture catch up to so many of the topics we publish on the backlist. We have backlist titles that are selling more than twice as much per month now as they did when they were first published. And of course the Lakoff book has helped to bring a lot of attention to the company in general, and really energized the entire staff.”

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By Posted on Posted in General Commentary

World Business Council for Sustainable Development just released the highlights of its 2005 global sustainability study. And what jumped out to me is the sharp decline in ratings for Scandinavia, the European Union, the US, and Canada for successful management of the transition to sustainability (broadly defined along the “triple bottom line” criteria of environmental, social responsibility, and economic performance). Scandinavia still leads the pack, at 59 percent, but in 2002, the rating was 83 percent. EU: 23 percent this year, 37 percent in 2002; Canada from 25 percent down to 12 percent; and the US, from an already measly 4 percent down to just 1 percent. Japan, on the other hand, boosted its performance form 20 percent up to 25 percent. Brazil, China, and India were rated for the first time this year, all of them in the single digits.

In the government-supported US climate of Money Uber Alles, it’s not surprising that the US has fallen off. And the EU has just absorbed a lot of former East Bloc countries that are still recovering from the traditional neglect of human factors under their old authoritarian regimes. But what, I wonder, happened to socially progressive Scandinavia, with its strong safety net and seeming immunity from major business scandals? Have these counties backslid, or are their populations simply judging them by tougher standards?

Of course, in my book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, I show how a concern for the triple bottom line builds the economic success of a company in the long run. And isn’t that what sustainability is really about?

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-06/ksu-kpi060905.php

Some good news for a change: National Association of State Boards of Accountancy is calling strong ethics coursework requirements as a requirement before taking the CPA exam.

In all the talk about business ethics, it’s important to remember: the crooks need crooked accountants to carry out their crimes. As the most obvious example, Enron’s shenanigans would never have reached such proportions without the active assistance of auditors at Arthur Andersen–once the most prestigious accounting firm in the world.

This is an excellent idea, and let’s hope it’s not only adopted nationally, but that some pressure is put on the profession to require the training in order to maintain an existing CPA certification. After all, there are thousands of CPAs already practicing–most of them honorable, to be sure, but not all.

Personally, I’d also love to see a flood of CPAs signing the Business Ethics Pledge.

Note: I am leaving for vacation (no e-mail) for two weeks. If you leve a comment, I’ll respond later.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics

Buying Journalists: A 70-Year Tradition of Dishonor and Corruption

With all the news about Armstrong Williams and other paid lobbyists masquerading as pundits, it’s important to note that this disgusting practice has been going on for years, both in industry and in government.

All the way back to 1936 and 1937, Hill & Knowlton was paying journalists to write favorable stories for its steel-industry clients, as chronicled in the new book, The Voice of Business: Hill & Knowlton and Postwar Public Relations, by Karen S. Miller (The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, 1999), and reported by Eveline Lubbers of Spinwatch.

She writes:

Hill and Knowlton sponsored antiunion messages appearing in the news media. George Sokolsky, a columnist for the New York Herald Tribune and periodicals such as the Atlantic Monthly received $28,599 from H&K from June 1936 to February 1938, chiefly for consultation to the American Iron and Steel Institute. When writing against the steelworkers union, his articles failed to mention his connection to H&K or the Institute.

A decade later, the New York Times on a Pulitzer for its post-Hiroshima reportage–a series of articles lauding the nuclear program, written by William Laurence.

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, along with her brother David, are calling for the Times to be stripped of its Pulitzer, because…

It turns out that William L. Laurence was not only receiving a salary from The New York Times. He was also on the payroll of the War Department. In March 1945, General Leslie Groves had held a secret meeting at The New York Times with Laurence to offer him a job writing press releases for the Manhattan Project, the U.S. program to develop atomic weapons. The intent, according to the Times, was “to explain the intricacies of the atomic bomb’s operating principles in laymen’s language.” Laurence also helped write statements on the bomb for President Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson.

(And for those who might accuse me of an anti-GOP bias, please note that this was during the Democratic administration of Harry Truman.)

Censors as Well as Spinners

Meanwhile, another disturbing trend: government policy wonks are inviting large corporate interests–or bureaucrats who came through the revolving door and used to work for the industries they’re supposed to regulate–to edit repots before they’re made public. We saw this in the widely-reported story about White House staffer Philip Cooney editing out “negative” references (i.e., those that gave credence to the idea that global warming is a serious problem).

Turns out similar things are going on at the international level, in a climate change report prepared for the G8 summit that not only removed unfavorable references but presented nuclear power (the worst energy generation system ever invented, IMHO) as the shining knight of sustainability. Eeeeew!

But wait–there’s more! Can you believe that Andrew Gallagher, the spokesperson for West Virginia’s Environmental Protection department, had to run a press release on DuPont’s toxic emissions by the company first? And that he first softened the statement and then withdrew it entirely as a result? And that it was official state policy to give DuPont a shot at all such materials before their release?

And let’s not forget the US Department of Labor’s blatant attempt to help push through the CAFTA agreement by censoring its own contractor’s report on working conditions in Central America.

Do we have a problem with foxes in the henhouse, or what?

Note: I discovered all these stories reading one of my favorite blogs, “The Weekly Spin.”
I especially like it because it’s available in e-mail form. Sign up or read on line at

https://www.prwatch.org/

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By Posted on Posted in Events, General Commentary

Happy Independence Day to all readers in the US. Happy Interdependence Day to all citizens of the world, including those in the US

Yesterday, just in time for the 4th of July, I was amazed and astounded to see this comment on a discussion list where I participate actively:

“Too bad the Libs of this list will always turn a blind eye to truth and historical perspective, glaze over facts, and continue on with their anti-Bush, anti-military and anti-American agenda.”

As one of those so-called Libs, I responded thusly:

I’m not going to let that little bit of foolish namecalling go by. I will let the other lefties on this list speak for themselves–and speaking for myself, I am very definitely motivated by patriotism. I want to make this great country the best it can be–even as every government of my conscious lifetime has been a deep disappointment. You have no business assailing the patriotism of those who disagree with you; that’s a trick out of the fascist and totalitarian-Marxist playbooks. In fact, the compulsive need to attack dissent as unpatriotic is one of the deep concerns I have about the Bush administration. This country developed the best system of government that had been tried at that time, 229 years ago.

I have made choices to spent a significant portion of my time–of my life–trying to keep this country on a mission of social justice, environmental stewardship, and peace. I act out of love for my country. I could have used that time instead to pursue endless material wealth and the hell with anyone in my way, or to tear down our entire social structure and replace it with something nastier. But I am a patriot. I am motivated by my love of this country and my sincere desire to see it live up to its potential.

I do not see the following actions as patriotic, but as destroying the very fabric of our system, and also destroying our positive perception by the rest of the world. It is Bush and his henchmen/puppeteers who have created a “rogue state,” and as a Patriotic American, I consider it my duty to do what I can to reverse the damage:

  • Violating international law in order to fight the oil-and-testosterone war in Iraq (and in the process create the terror network they claimed was there to begin with, but wasn’t
  • Lying to the American people, and the world, repeatedly
  • Blowing a CIA agent’s cover because her husband, a US Ambassador, turned in an honest report debunking the whole thing when he was asked to investigate whether Saddam was buying uranium from Niger
  • Attacking the First Amendment with a ferocity not even seen in the dark days of the Nixon administration
  • Tearing up the environmental and financial checks on big business that were carefully negotiated over a period of many years, and damn the consequences
  • Letting crooked and greedy people with vested interests like Enron’s Ken Lay create policy (he was on Cheney’s energy task force, you’ll recall)–and in turn, creating policy that directly and corruptly benefits their cronies in the private sector (one need only look at Dick Cheney’s own company, Halliburton, and its amazing ability to win no-bid and highly lucrative contracts, even after it was shown that the company was mismanaging the contracts it already had, at substantial cost to the American taxpayer
  • Refusing to accept intelligence reports if they ran counter to the hoped-for findings–not letting truth get in the way
  • Condoning torture at the highest levels

I submit that true patriots are opposing the hostile takeover and destruction of our system of government by the radical-right fringe now in power. And BTW, I still do not grant that either the 2000 or the 2004 election was actually conducted honestly. Bush’s presidency will always be under a cloud. Compare what happened in Florida in 00 and in Ohio in 04–both situations in which the senior official in charge of the election, the Secretary of State, happened to be a senior leader in that state’s Bush campaign (something that shocks my European friends) with what happened in the Ukraine this past winter, when extremely similar voting irregularities brought hundreds of thousands of people out into the streets and forced the government to do the election over. It is a sad commentary on the American people that we allowed our presidential election to be stolen not once but twice.

[I quoted the original poster, who claimed that the torturers of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo were acting alone and were already being disciplined, and that the Newsweek article “fuel the fire for anti-Americanism around the world,” and that we should not blame Bush or Rumsfeld for the bad behavior of a handful of soldiers.”]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but there’s substantial evidence that the highest levels of this administration deliberately developed policies based on torture. I am talking about Rumsfeld, Gonzales, and by implication, Bush. Under the Nuremberg and Serbia precedents, among others, these men are war criminals.

As for the Newsweek article; they were merely reporting what had been widely known–in fact, the story of Koran abuse surfaced at least as far back as March, 2004. I don’t condone the riots in Afghanistan, but it was not Newsweek that caused it–it was the desecration of another religion’s holy books. I’ve blogged on this at some length at and

And on that note, I again wish you all a very happy 4th–one that is informed by the same principles of struggle for justice that imbued the Founding Fathers with such spirit, and left us a vital legacy of democracy. Let’s reclaim that proud heritage.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics

Lawrence O’Donnell claims in the Huffington Post https://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/lawrence-odonnell/rove-blew-cia-agents-cov_3556.html (Ariana Huffington’s open blog) that Bush’s senior strategist and Chief of Staff Karl Rove was the leaker who blew CIA agent Valerie Plame’s cover–an apparent act of revenge after her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was asked, in the run-up to the Iraq war, to investigate claims that Iraq was buying weapons-grade uranium from Niger. Wilson found no truth in the allegations, said so publicly, and then conservative columnist Robert Novak put Plame’s name and true occupation in his column. And that he, O’Donnell, has known this for some time.

His documentation is a bit thin, but he says it will be in the next Newsweek, now that Time magazine has turned over reporter Matthew Cooper’s sources, after the Supreme Court declined to give reporters protection.

A lot of permutations here:

1. Let’s start with the most obvious: revealing the name of a CIA agent is a federal crime, and rightly so–it puts the operative’s life in danger, and endangers others who may have had dealings with the operative. Coming from a White House Chief of Staff, it could conceivably be considered an act of treason, a very high crime indeed.

2. The Administration attitude of “don’t tell us anything unless you can tell us good news, on the party line” is suicidal and homicidal. This is part of how we got into the Iraq mess in the first place–because when the top strategists received reports that weren’t what they wanted to hear–that Saddam had nothing to know with 911, that he wasn’t buying uranium, that he no longer had WMDs, and that the war would not be winnable–they either ignored them, doctored them, or excerpted the small parts that lent themselves to “positive” spin.

3. The Supreme Court ruling was on Matthew Cooper from time and Judith Miller from the New York times–neither of whom actually used the news leak in their reportage. If you’re going to investigate anyone, why not Novak, who actually wrote the column? And it’s particularly odd that the goon squad went after Judith Miller, who was perhaps the most influential cheerleader for the war, and whose failure to verify was so embarrassing that the Times eventually–two years late–issued an apology to its readers about misleading them on the validity of the pro-war arguments.

4. Meanwhile, the war drums are beating again. Having made a complete mess of Iraq, they’re now looking at Iran. I have to wonder whether the stories about Iran’s new president and his possible membership in the terrorist group that kidnapped 20 Americans in 1979 is another disinformation campaign. I believe it was the Times that ran the allegation, but also ran interviews with two of the known hostage takers who said the guy hadn’t been involved, though he’d asked to join them.

5. And let’s not forget the departure of Sandra Day O’Connor opens a fight for the lifeblood of this country. If that seat goes to a radical-right head-in-the-sand friend of GWB such as torture apologist (and now Attorney General) Antonio Gonzales, it’ll be time to make sure your passport is in order. And time to reread Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Don’t think it can’t happen here.

If the Rove allegation is true, this is yet another reason to stop cooperating with this government. It means the President either knew or should have known. International law, and the Watergate precedent in our own country, both show clearly that the chief executive can be held responsible for the actions of subordinates. Of course, the same principle should apply with the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture, among other abuses.

It was only a few months ago that the people of the Ukraine brought down their government and demanded a new election, with far less cause than we have here.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary, Other

Nuclear power is a dirty and dangerous way to generate electricity, and no amount of PR-industry hype is going to change that. But they’re sure trying!

https://www.prwatch.org/node/3679

Back in 1974–31 years ago–as a student at Antioch College, I had a class assignment to do an independent research project on the plusses and minuses of nuclear power generation. I came into this with a relatively open mind–and I came away scared. Keep in mind, this was before Seabrook, before Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and before there was any kind of world-wide anti-nuclear movement.

But there was plenty of research out there. The more I read, the more I became convinced that nuclear power is dangerous, unhealthful, and even uneconomical, out of all proportion to the supposed “benefits.” In 1979, I even wrote my first book on the subject (a long-out-of-print volume called Nuclear Lessons, co-authored with Richard Curtis and Elizabeth Hogan, who had written Perils of the Peaceful Atom back in 1969).

A few among many issues:

  • Accidents. We didn’t hear about them, probably because the national movement for safe energy had not yet coalesced–but there were serious accidents at the Enrico Fermi reactor in Michigan in 1966, and Browns Ferry, Alabama, in 1975–and a deeply disturbing record of thousands of minor incidents at plants all over the country, many of which could have become severe had one or two factors gone differently.
  • Insurance. The only reason there is a nuclear power industry in the US is because of a heavily subsidized limited-liability insurance program called the Price-Anderson Act. When the utilities would have been held responsible for full damage in the event of an accident, they simply refused to build, even when the government threatened to get into the power business and do it without industry cooperation.
  • Health and Environment. The radioactivity associated with nuclear power generation is known to cause cancer. Workers in the industry have had much higher incidences of problems. And it’s not even true that there are no global warming issues associated with nukes. The plants use bodies of water for cooling, and that water is re-released into the environment at a much hotter temperature, disrupting fish lifecycles and warming the water.
  • Waste Disposal. Highly toxic, carcinogenic nuclear wastes have to be kept safe and isolated from the environment–and from terrorists–for up to 250,000 years. To put that in perspective, there was essentially zero human civilization until about 30,000 years ago, and no urban culture until about 10,000 years ago.
  • Economics. Believe it or not, looking at the entire mining-milling-transportation-consumption-disposal cycle, nuclear energy consumes more power than it produces! So all this risk is for no benefit. And because it’s extremely capital-intensive, nuclear power produces relatively few jobs. How stupid can we be?

This societal stupidity is even more bizarre in light of the easy, environmentally benign alternatives: solar, small-scale wind and hydro, etc. We’ve had these technologies for years. We could be entirely energy self-sufficient without using any nuclear or fossil fuels, had we made a society-wide commitment to that goal back in 1974 when I was doing my research. And oh yes, I don’t think we’d be at war in Iraq now if oil were a non-issue.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics

Weekly Spin reports that ExxonMobil has hired Philip A. Cooney, who resigned as White House Council on Environmental Quality chief of staff after we found he was editing government scientists’ reports to deflate warnings about global warming. Meanwhile, White House spokesperson Dana Perino told the New York Times “Phil Cooney did a great job and we appreciate his public service and the work that he did, and we wish him well in the private sector.”

This was widely reported; CNN’s version is at
https://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/06/15/cooney.exxon.ap/

Earth to ExxonMobil: this is not the way to get good PR. Coverup is not fixing the problem–as you might remember form Exxon Valdez. I predict this appointment will come back to bite you. IF anyone’s paying attention out there, anyhow.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, General Commentary

On the surface, a flamboyant pop star has little to do with an accounting firm: the epitome of corporate conservatism.

But the accounting firm we’re talking about is Arthur Andersen, and the way its auditors let Enron’s top execs bring down both companies hardly fits my standard of fiscal conservatism.

Anyway, the comparison isn’t about lifestyle or philosophy. It’s about the notion that being cleared in a court of law doesn’t necessarily mean you’re actually innocent.

Michael Jackson was not found guilty. He may or may not have molested children–I don’t have the knowledge to say, one way or the other. He certainly used bad judgment to share his bed with them–but the jury’s decision rested not on whether or not he committed the act, but whether the government had proven its case beyond reasonable doubt. Given the lack of credibility of one of the prosecution’s chief witnesses, the jury found that the government had not put forth an ironclad case.

And the Supreme Court, late last month, found not that Arthur Andersen wasn’t culpable for its destruction of documents, but that the judge had given faulty instructions to the jury, and thus the guilty verdict was thrown out.

Lawyers for both Michael Jackson and Arthur Andersen were quick to hail the court decisions as clearing their clients’ names, and Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling’s lawyer quickly made the claim that his client’s case was strengthened. But the Andersen jury foreman, Oscar Criner, called the Supreme Court’s ruling “a grave error” (as reported in Enron’s hometown paper, the Houston Chronicle:
https://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/topstory/3204884 )

But in fact, neither decision addressed the defendant’s guilt or innocence. All that has happened is that a jury in one case and a panel of judges in the other found that the government did not make a strong enough case for wrongful intent.

Arthur Andersen first allowed Enron’s highly questionable accounting practices and then, as the SEC was preparing to investigate, destroyed the documents about the case. Michael Jackson shared his bed with teenage boys. While they were not guilty in the eyes of the law, the ethical questions remain in both cases. Failing to find that an action is criminal is not the same thing as finding that a defendant acted with ethics, with honor, and with good intent. It merely shows that the standard of proof was not met.

Legality and ethics are not always the same. Let’s keep that in mind as the Enron trials proceed.

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