By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics

The real scandal of the Newsweek incident isn’t that the magazine issued a retraction. It’s the incredible pressure brought to bear by the White House and the Pentagon to stifle dissent and cover up problems. Big problems. And it’s the cowardice of American mainstream journalism in he face of that pressure.

Earlier this week, a query from a journalist crossed my desk:

“I’m looking for experts to comment on the issues surrounding this story, including, but not limited to: 1) The White House says the apology is not enough and Newsweek needs to do more to repair the damage. What is the magazine’s obligation? 2) Is it any surprise, given recent reporting errors, that Americans don’t trust journalists? 3) Newsweek is a highly respected news magazine. How could this happen? 4) What is happening in the journalism profession? Why are journalists and the field in general losing regard among the public?”

Here’s what I wrote back:

” I think there’s a deeper story, and a different set of questions. Newsweek’s retraction was made under enormous pressure form the federal government. Is there actually truth to the allegations? Why does this government take such a consistent role as squelcher-of-the-press? (Two examples: the refusal to let TV cover returning coffins; the 1999 pressure brought to bear on St Martin’s Press to recall and destroy a critical biography of Bush, later re-published by the courageous independent house Soft Skull) And why is the media so complicit in its own strangulation? Why was the Dan Rather scandal allowed to divert attention from the far greater scandal–well known long before the forged memos came to light–of Bush’s AWOL problem?”… That the government was able to force the retraction of an apparently true story is cause for deep concern–and as someone who focuses on ethics, something I’m particularly alarmed about.

Since writing my response (which actually has resulted in two interviews so far), I did a little digging on the story. And I found some very interesting information.

1. Koran abuse is an old story. It was broken nine months ago by Britain’s The Independent, and unlike Newsweek, that paper attributed its sources. Why did it take American journalists nine months to dig it out? The Independent’s site only has the very beginning of the article:
https://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=548033

but the whole thing is posted in several places, including
https://www.sfimc.net/news/2004/08/1700888.php

2. According to a story in Democracy Now today, not only was abuse of the Koran rampant at Guantanamo, as part of a general culture of trashing and profaning all things Muslim (forced shaving, defiling male prisoners with what they thought was menstrual blood, and other psychological abuse), but several Kuwaiti prisoners filed a lawsuit about this.

The whole sordid tale can be found at https://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/18/1434259&mode=thread&tid=25

It does not make me proud of the American government. Desecration of religion has been considered bad karma at least as far back as the Maccabees of ancient Palestine, 165 years before the birth of Christ, whose defeat of the defilers–who ordered pigs, considered unclean by religious Jews, slaughtered n the holy temple–created the Jewish holiday of Chanukah.

Is it any wonder Americans are hated when they do everything in their power to desecrate the entire culture of the lands they occupy?

And isn’t it deeply ironic that White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said, “The report has had serious consequences. People have lost their lives. The image of the United States abroad has been damaged.”

I decry the loss of life. It is a human tragedy on the mound of vast human tragedies this war has sprung on us. But Scott–didn’t it ever occur to you that far more lives were lost, and our country’s reputation was far more damaged, by the “you’re with us or against us” rhetoric, the refusal to wait for the United Nations, the blatantly false justifications for the war (anyone remember that this was supposedly about WMDs? Or remember President Bush joking about looking for them behind the White House furniture?) Engage in unethical and illegal behavior for years, and then blame the messenger?

Something is very wrong with this picture.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics

https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7750293/

Here’s yet another case of a company pushing product it knew wasn’t safe. Now we learn that Merck actually stepped up its marketing of Vioxx once it was known that the product was linked with increased risk of heart attack and stroke. The company sent out a detailed sales training menu, even covering proper etiquette when dining with doctors. Vioxx became a best-seller, before the feds yanked it off the market.

Sometimes I wonder if the business world is populated by slow learners. They may create terrific sales projection PowerPoints and elegant profit spreadsheets, but they seem to lack any ability at all to find True North in their moral compasses.

And even if these talented and highly compensated MBAs don’t have a moral compass, you’d think they’d have figured out by now that deceptive practices, and particularly the selling of something as safe when you know it’s not, are bad for business.

We’ve already seen, after all (to name just three among dozens of examples)…

  • The plunge of revenue at Ford following revelations that they knew all along, even before they brought the car to market, that Explorers have an unfortunate tendency to flip over in hot weather
  • Enormous payouts from the tobacco companies, who also knew all along that they were pushing death
  • And a positive example: the rapid return of consumer confidence and profits when Johnson & Johnson stepped up to the plate and made it clear, following the Tylenol poisoning incident, that here was one company that actually did put its customers first. J&J took full responsibility for something that was not even its own fault, launched a massive recall campaign with huge publicity, and became one of the most trusted brands in America

I know they teach ethics in business school; maybe the message will only get through when people realize the ethical path is actually better for the bottom line (something which I discuss in some detail in my book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First https://www.principledprofits.com ).

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By Posted on Posted in General Commentary, Other

https://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21878/

This author gives the credit for the Dems’ sudden discovery of backbone (over Social Security, Terry Shiavo, and even some of Bush’s particularly over-the-edge nominations) to independent media, and particularly liberal AM talk radio, e.g., Al Franken.

Well, I listened to Air America, and read Alternet and Truthout and Greg Palast and a lot of others, all the way through GWB’s first term (well, OK, Air America was a late arrival–but well before the election, during which the Dems continued to show a complete lack of spine). The stuff was out there all along.

My feeling is that it may actually have more to do with a lot of the mainstream news bigwigs, including the New York Times and Washington Post, admitting that they were hornswaggled in the run-up to the war, and finally beginning to *function again as a proper press does*: questioning everything and investigating until the truth can be discovered.

But I’d like to know your thoughts: Readers–why have the Democrats finally begun to turn into an actual opposition party? And why did they give GWB a free ride in his first term, despite his radical-right actions that are far out of the social mainstream? And why did the media so seldom question any of it until recently?

And why, for heaven’s sake, is there not a mass movement in the streets to protest both the stolen elections and the imposition of this very undemocratic government?

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By Posted on Posted in Media Ethics

https://www.investors.com/breakingnews.asp?journalid=27296372&brk=1

A fascinating and wide-ranging article from Investors Business Daily that looks at…

* Journalism’s own ethics skeletons: made-up stories, fabricated quotes, bad judgment, inflated circulation figures, and a general credibility gap
* The lack of training for business journalists as most small local papers slash their business coverage
* Journalism’s failure to pay attention to the signals before Enron and others collapsed–accepting company claims in the same spirit of “press release journalism” that mars–this is my opinion now, not article writer Jon Friedman’s–its failure to ask hard questions of the government

Friedman doesn’t comment on the scandal of VNRs: video news releases presented as actual TV news, without attribution to the government agency or corporation that prepared it with a particular agenda. and while he hints at it, I think he gives short shrift to some of the reasons behind these trends:

1] News decisions made by bottom line-focused executives with no understanding of the role news plays in a free society, and therefore no recognition of the value honest and thorough news brings to the table, beyond dollars

2] The tragic tendency to replace discourse with “infotainment.” If you watch many newscasts, or read many prominent publications, you’d come away with the impression that celebrities’ love lives are more important than a solid discussion of, say, the reasons for foreign policy decisions or the impact of corporate outsourcing on a local economy.

This second factor has left an ill-informed populace with poor thinking skills. Sure, it’s easy to find much more thorough treatment in the alternative voices; the problem is that these wonderful resources make very little impact on the mainstream, whereas the infotainment specialists have taken over the TV sets and daily newspapers that reach a majority of people. And this is dumbing down our whole culture.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government

I’ve long held that politicians, like business owners, do better when they remember their backbone. On March 12, I blogged about the Democrats’ refusal to go along with new House Ethics rules that seemed to be designed specifically to protect House Speaker Tom Delay from having to face up to his many ethically questionable actions.

For once in their too-often-spineless lives, the Democrats held firm. And they won! Yesterday, all but 20 members of the House voted to reinstate the previous committee rules, and that’s likely to mean an investigation of the ultra-rightist Delay and his hanky-panky around lobbyist-paid travel, intimidation, and other “might makes right” shenanigans.

Bravo!

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Trends/News, Shel's Personal Life

I was off on a road trip last week, and one of my stops was the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in downtown Cleveland.

I’m used to marketing products, services, and ideas. The Hall of Fame markets an entire culture. Can I learn a few things from them and apply it to marketing the books, widgets, services, and opportunities that make up my livelihood? You bet!

A few for starters:

* If you want to market a culture, define it broadly. Rock, as the Hall of Fame sees it, goes back to the 1940s and continues through the day after tomorrow. So anyone under about 80 will feel that the museum has something for them.

* Honor the contributions of others. One of the things that really makes the museum stand out is its emphasis on the trailblazers of folk, jazz, blues, R&B, gospel, and world music. Without them, rock would never have come to be. By honoring these pioneers, the museum has made itself accessible to several older generations, and let casual fans trace the music through its roots, so they gain a greater understanding of what makes this a music to take seriously.

* Employ all the senses. Sound, vision, and touch are all part of the experience. I imagine they’ll figure out ways of incorporating taste and smell at some point.

* Make it fun! And make it unique. You’d expect to see Eric Clapton’s guitar, Jimi Hendrix’s wardrobe. But how about John Lennon’s grammar school report card? (His teachers saw him as creative, but undisciplined.) Or a video clip of Bruce Springsteen saying most rock stars wee misfits in school.

I’ll stop there. It was not only a wonderful good time, but it was professionally useful, too.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics

In this age of business scandals, it’s crucial to remember that businesses based on ethics and quality actually work better. With that in mind, here are ten easy and ethical resolutions to inspire your business to achieve a very profitable year.

So why am I posting this in April? Shouldn’t I have posted in January? Well, first of all, I actually wrote this in Januarty 2004. It would have been a natural to post when I started my blog right around the new year, but I didn’t think of it. So I’m doing it now. Besides, Passover, which is only a week away, is one of several New Year’s on the Jewish calendar. So there. Let’s move on to the resolutions:

1) I will base every aspect of my business on honesty, integrity, and quality.

2) I will make sure every employee, from janitor to CEO, is trained to view every interaction with a customer as a key step in the marketing process, and to always give the customer respect and attention.

3) I will train and empower every employee to let the customer go away feeling good about the entire interaction.

4) I will stand behind my products and services. It is better to refund the money and create a positive buzz.

5) Understanding that it costs an average of five times more to bring in a new customer as to keep an existing one, I will see that the entire organization exceeds customer expectations.

6) Recognizing that my competitors can be my strongest allies, I will initiate at least one joint venture (after all, if FedEx and the Postal Service, Apple and IBM, and General Motors and Toyota can cooperate–as they do–surely I can too).

7) If my company is not the best answer to prospect’s needs, I will refer that prospect to the company that can best serve.

8) I will devote business resources to make the world a better place.

9) I will volunteer on a community project, and set up incentives for my employees to volunteer on the projects of their choice.

10) I will base decisions on the Abundance Principle that there is enough to go around, and not on market share.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics

As a copywriter, I’m always looking to better my skill set—so I read a whole lot of copywriting newsletters and books. One of them is Ivan Levison’s “Levison Letter.”

Ivan’s latest issue expressed surprise at the results of an A/B split—a test that changes one variable in a copywriting piece. He had advised the client to format the letter in an old-fashioned typewriter-style font, like Courier–because, in the old days, letters that looked hand-typed usually pulled better. (Direct marketers measure absolutely everything–the number, kind, and quality of the results; it’s as much science as art.) But the client was adamant about doing it in Times Roman. So they did an A/B test: 25,000 letters in each font, no other variables changed.

It was a dead heat, and this shocked Ivan. But it doesn’t shock me. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the typeset-looking version had outpulled the classic Courier.

Why? Because to the current generation, Times New Roman represents hand-typed. It’s the default font in Microsoft Word, the word processor that completely dominates the market. Many people never even touch their font settings. There are probably a lot of people under 30 who’ve never seen a letter typed on a real typewriter. What Ivan forgot to adjust for is that the principle behind his original conclusions is sound: people respond better to a letter that looks like it was created just for them–but the parameters of what makes that true have changed.

I’m betting that in the last ten years, the only letters you’ve seen that were typed in Courier were marketing documents, done by direct marketers who didn’t realize the territory has shifted. Unless, maybe, you have an elderly aunt who never got a computer and doesn’t hand-write her letters.

Now, this got me thinking about a famous situation where several careers were dramatically altered because of the difference between Courier and Times Roman: Rathergate.

You’ll remember that in the run-up to the election, a memo was leaked that seemed to prove the longstanding allegations that President Bush had not only used his family privilege to get a precious–and safe–spot in the Texas National Guard, but then skipped out on his responsibilities, didn’t show up for a required physical, and lost his pilot status.

Some alert bloggers in the Republican camp noticed that the memo had been done in Times Roman, and appeared to be produced on a modern word processor, and not a 70s-era typewriter. Yes, proportional-font technology existed back then–I even used a funky IBM compositor in 1975–but no sane person would use it to produce a casual memo. It was hard to wrestle with and expensive to purchase and operate, and it was designed to create finished typeset documents for publication. I saw a PDF of the memo at the time, and recognized instantly that it was a forgery. This caused the firing of several people at CBS, and advanced Dan Rather’s retirement to several months earlier than planned.

The interesting side result was to deflect all the piled-up criticism about Bush’s highly questionable service record. Mary Mapes got fired; Bush held on to the presidency.

The question I asked then, and continue to ask, is who really benefited from Rathergate, and who was really behind it? No one has ever really tied this scandal to either the Democrats or the Republicans–but actually, the Republicans had far more to gain. In fact, this story completed deflated the various investigations into the actual military service record–a record which, in a time of war, and a war whose purpose and justification were tangled in a web of deceit (does anyone remember that we were supposed to be preventing Saddam from using his non-existent weapons of mass destruction?), was a valid and crucial election issue. The various trails running through this sordid story are starkly relevant to the election and its outcome. For starters, it would be worth looking at how quickly people were able to trace these memos back to the same source. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if we found out Karl Rove had a hand in this.

If that turns out to be true, will the mass media, cowed into submission by this and other instances, raise its collective head, remove the tail from between it legs, and call strongly for impeachment?

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Events, Marketing Trends/News, Shel's Personal Life

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/opinion/l30ethics.html? (you may need to register)

Not that big a secret, actually: the letters column. Though the Times is notoriously fussy. With other newspapers, I have, typically, about a 90 percent success rate. With the Times, I’ve probably sent well over 100 letters in 33 years (most of them during the 1970s and 80s); this is the third success. The first was in 1972, when I was 15, and I got in a letter criticizing Dean Koontz’s support of Nixon’s Vietnam policy.

This one’s on ethics. The one between was a comment on a travel article.

Two tips:

1. Well-argued controversy seems to be something they like

2. Speed counts. I was responding to an article on page 1 of the Tuesday, March 29 edition. I submitted my letter around noon that day; it ran in the next day’s paper.

The link above is what they actually ran, somewhat abridged, but with the wonderful slug, “The writer is founder of the Business Ethics Pledge Campaign.” and yes, this little letter has drawn quite a number of responses.

–>Here’s what I originally wrote:

“On Wall Street, A Rise in Dismissals Over Ethics” chronicles, somewhat dismissively, the spate of firings over ethics violations within the financial community. The article makes a case that innocents are being shown the door in a hurry for behavior that’s perfectly legal.

The problem, though, is that big business has pretty much destroyed the culture of trust. Consumers are more suspicious of these large corporations than they’ve been in decades. Without passing judgment on the specific individuals cited in the article, I’d say that keeping a commitment to ethics means acting rapidly to prevent or deal with ethics violations as soon as they’re discovered. Whether termination was the correct response for these particular people, I couldn’t say–but the bank acted immediately, and that is better than the all-too-typical non-response we’ve seen in the last few years.

Eventually, the public will simply demand higher standards of accountability. I’m hoping to foster that with an international pledge campaign around business ethics; I hope to make future Enrons and Tycos impossible. The campaign is hosted at www.principledprofits.com/25000influencers.html

–Shel Horowitz, author, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, columnist for Business Ethics magazine, and founder, Business Ethics Pledge Campaign

–>And this is what they actually printed:

To the Editor:

In chronicling, somewhat dismissively, the spate of firings over ethics violations within the financial community, you make a case that innocents are being shown the door for perfectly legal behavior.

The problem, though, is that big business has pretty much destroyed the culture of trust. Consumers are more suspicious of large corporations than they’ve been in decades.

Keeping a commitment to ethics means acting rapidly to prevent or deal with ethics violations as soon as they’re discovered.

Whether termination was the correct response I couldn’t say, but acting immediately is better than not responding.

The public will simply demand higher standards of accountability. I’m hoping to foster it with an international pledge campaign around business ethics.

Shel Horowitz
Hadley, Mass., March 29, 2005
The writer is founder of the Business Ethics Pledge Campaign

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4562664

Going a bit off the topic of ethical marketing here, but this is important.

In the schoolyard, if a bully didn’t get his way (usually it was a boy, back then), he would “take his toys and go home,” ending the game.

Rep. Steve King apparently wants to do the same, only his “toys” are the pillars of American democracy. Threatening to defund the entire court system because you don’t like their decisions is schoolboy bullying taken to extreme, and with dire consequences for the careful and elegant system of checks and balances created over 200 years ago. They already have the Executive and Legislative branches, and a big part of the Judiciary, and have had the luxury of a consolidated media empire that has largely forgotten that its role is to question. But apparently, that is not enough for these unpatriotic extremists who would dismantle democracy.

I believe that ethics and integrity and fair play still mean something; in fact, I’m organizing a grassroots international movement to take a stand for ethics in business (at www.principledprofits.com ). And I believe this attempt to undermine one of the three pillars of the federal government utterly fails the sniff test.

I am old enough to remember when Barry Goldwater, who would be decried as a weak and moderate liberal in today’s climate, was called an extremist. Rep. King’s plan is an attack on the fundamentals of our government, and must not be allowed to proceed.

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