The Pentagon Blogs

1. In her fifth blog, The Cyberbullying Dilemma, on February 3, 2012, Anne Johnston said, “Ethically, Pokin followed standards and codes of conduct drafted for his profession.” If I pull this statement out of context it would appear that Anne was giving Pokin a pass because he ‘followed the book’ which in my mind is akin to the Nuremberg defense: I was doing what I was told, I was following orders. Of course the ‘orders’ that Pokin followed were the ethical guidelines of his profession, right?

Johnston is correct in pointing out that Pokin was not simply following the ethical guidelines, he was interpreting them. This brought to mind an interesting thought. Guidelines are not answer lines. They are not resources that one can flip open, run the finger down the page to a particular issue and, voila!, there’s the answer. Rather guidelines are there to do what they suggest - guide. It is up to the journalist to interpret the guidelines to meet the particular situation.

This often provokes a dilemma as Anne points out, “Pokin was in a lose-lose position.  He was going to be “damned” either way.” She is stating a painfully obvious situation for any person who daring enough to put him or herself out on a limb to write about any topic that is fraught with ethical overtones. You cannot please everybody because there is not one correct answer to any controversy. This doesn’t mean you necessarily have to be alone to ‘face the wolves’ as Anne noted he has “his editor’s support.” May we all be so fortunate.

2. What’s so bad about PR firms representing bad people? Their money spends just like everyone else’s so why all the fuss? Cecilia Lopez–Abitang, takes the focus of the issue from the abstract (it’s only money) to real world experience (it’s the people under the control of the despot being represented). In her fourth blog, P.R.’s Identity Crisis, posted on January 28, 2012 she says, “Born in the Philippines, I was a martial law baby during then-President Ferdinand Marcos' second term...Martial law was already in effect starting 1972 until 1981. During that period, he gagged the press - media people were jailed, tortured and killed, while media establishments were closed down, among others. Given this context, did the P.R. people even consider the ethical issue of working with his government?”

Cecilia brought to my mind how easy it is for PR firms to be seduced by money and power. Of course there is still the unethical behavior of the despot that has to be dealt with on an emotional level. Does money assuage that stain on the soul? Not really but it is salved by the human ability to depersonalize the victim through stereotype and generalization. As long as I don’t actually see the results of my work, i.e. supporting a murderer, then only encountering abstract statistical information I can blithely go on my way. After all it wasn’t humans that were harmed or damaged or killed it was numbers on a spreadsheet.

The definition that Lopez-Abitang offers for PR goes a long ways towards keeping PR firms from shaking hands with the devil. She posits, “Public relations is an organization's concerted and targeted effort in keeping the communication lines open within the organization and with its various stakeholders to inform and generate public discussion, while upholding the highest ethical standards, that will result in relationship-building and shared understanding.”

As long as PR firms work in ivory towers of numbers and statistics they will be prey to unethical ventures. However, if PR firms are focused on ‘relationship-building and shared understanding’ then engaging both the client and the stakeholders they can  represent their interests through wise ethical decisions.

3. On January 14, 2012, in her second blog post, Crystal Maruszak set me to wondering about an ethical dialectical dilemma. She uses Bok’s three questions to explore the case of James Fray’s passing off a fictional story as an autobiography and how he was exposed by Smoking Gun. In her response to the first question (How do you feel about the actions?) she says, “It’s not just for an author to claim fictional work to be biographical, convicting readers that your life turned out one way because of your actions could leave them to take from your experience certain outcomes that wouldn’t be true. But it’s also not fair to blindside someone (in this case Smoking Gun releasing info on James Fray without giving him a chance to refute it).”

That raised this dilemma for me which had never occurred to me before: Is it the responsibility of the journalist to check the story with the perpetrator? So I call up James Fray and ask, “Did you falsify information in your biography?” What do I expect he is going to do, tell the truth when I am accusing him of being dishonest? What is my ethical responsibility? Then again it is the journalist’s responsibility to check the sources of the story and James Fray would be the ultimate source.

Maruszak answered Bok’s second question (Is there another professionally acceptable way to achieve the same goal that will not raise an ethical issue?) this way, “Yes, Smoking Gun could have given notice to Fray and his publishers before releases this secret news to the world. I ran this example by a few co-workers in the communication field at my company, and the consensus was that sites like the Smoking Gun are valuable, but very "low brow" because of the manor in which they share news.”

I’m not sure I would arrive at the same resolution as Crystal. Smoking Gun had information that they felt was correct. They had caught someone in an unethical act and they exposed that behavior. Again, should perpetrators be given the benefit of the doubt? Also, what good would have resulted from contacting Fray and his publisher beforehand? This blog raised quite a few questions for me.

4. What is the right answer? What is correct? In his first blog posting on January 10, 2012 James Kearns answers these questions from a postmodern perspective. He writes, “Just because something is bad in my view, does not mean it is universally bad…What this boils down to is there are two sides to everything, and virtually every negative has a counter.” So where does this leave the ethicist? If there is no metanarrative to guide us then who has the authority or what is the authority upon which answers to ethical dilemmas can be based?

Kearns recognizes this issue and puts forth his own methodology for arriving at an ethical solution to perplexing problems. He states, “When making an ethical decision, I look at the dilemma from several perspectives.  First, foremost, and most cliché, does anyone get hurt?” While it may be a cliché it is a basic ethical barometer that has been around for centuries all the way back to Hippocrates. 

However, I question whether this is the first and foremost. After all, does this mean that Kearns still believes that cigarettes should be available as he notes, “Even cigarettes have supporters who say, in spite of the health risks, if they want to smoke, let them smoke, people know the risks and can make their own choice.” From this perspective it would appear that Kearns is advocating freedom of choice as the prima materia of ethics since it is common knowledge that cigarettes cause harm.

Then again Kearns acknowledges that, “From what I have learned so far about ethics, the subject seems to be very, “what do you think” with a very weak structure.” Perhaps the weak structure he recognizes doesn’t so much flow out of ethics but is the postmodern milieu in which we now reside.

 5. What guide shall I invest with ultimate authority when it comes to making an ethical decision? The answer to that question is rather apparent for Justine Luzzi. In her second blog post on January 14, 2012 she says, “Knowing information that is a secret, and whether or not to disclose that information is a very hard to decision to make…ultimately I would follow my gut…All you have to do is listen. If you listen to your conscience you’ll never do the wrong thing.”

I admire the optimism Luzzi expresses especially in a day and age when intuition is, for the most part, programmed out of human beings through religion and education. So it is refreshing to hear someone express faith in the role of conscience in making decisions. However, in my experience getting to the conscience usually takes a concerted effort to resolve dysfunctional family patterns as well as psychological and emotional issues (like denial, shame, overweening expectation, reliance upon validation, etc...). These are things that can have undue impact upon my decision making and if I am unaware of that influence then, especially if I’m in a position of authority or have control over the flow of information, I can do great harm.

Luzzi recognizes the power of holding information. She states, “Knowledge is power, the more we know the better we’re informed. In any profession in the world, people are going to be face with ethical dilemmas. It’s just about doing the right thing, and listening to that gut feeling. Like we spoke about in our groups in class, if you can sleep at night, you did the right thing.” Yet I don’t believe she recognizes the hardship that making even a good decision can bring.

Did Ellsberg sleep like a baby after he released The Pentagon Papers? Did Bradley Manning sleep good after he released the cables to Julian Assange? My guess is they did not even though they came to what I believe is a good ethical decision. 


Even when guided by my conscience, there will still be consequences and people, more than likely, will be hurt or adversely affected by my decision. Can I sleep well with that knowledge? If I can then…

To Know or Not to Know...

A 13 year old child is dead, someone’s daughter. The victim of a vicious prank: cyber-bullying over the Internets. In such a case what is the role of the journalist? Is it the journalist’s job to shed light on all? Is it the journalist’s job to withhold information? Well let’s see, I’m sitting here in my office at Suburban Journals of St. Charles County, let me reach under my desk here and pull out my Potter Box and we’ll run this issue through it.

First of all the facts of the case are self-evident. After being psychologically abused and bullied Megan Meier, 13 years old, hung herself in her closet. The ‘person’ doing the bullying turned out to be neighbors down the street and not Josh Evans who was created by those neighbors to torment her. Obviously Megan’s identity is known as is that of her parents. What about those evil neighbors? As a journalist doing my job I know who they are but should I release their names in my story?

I have some competing values going on here. One chief concern is that my story be as accurate as possible. By leaving out information that could be construed as less than accurate. Then again what purpose does publishing the names of the perpetrators serve? There has to be dignity here and I reserve that dignity for Megan’s memory and for her grieving parents. Therefore I believe it is sufficient to release the story without the names of perpetrators.

I’m taking a stand on principle here! After all, and I quote from our textbook (Media Ethics:Issues & Cases, by Patterson and Wilkins) on page 10, “Kant’s ethical theory is based on the notion that it is in the act itself, rather than the person who acts, where moral force resides.” OK, so maybe I’m tweaking Kant a bit but still I want the point of my story to be the horrible outcome of the act of bullying itself. Besides, I did hold off on releasing this story waiting for the authorities to act and now they’re telling me that there are no grounds on which to charge those perps, and besides, one of them is a minor as well. 

I really believe that if I release the names now it will suck all the oxygen out of this article and the perpetrators will become the focus of the story, not the act that produced the story to begin with and Megan and her family will be lost in all the vitriol.

That brings me to my loyalties. My ultimate loyalty lies with the truth. It is paramount that the real story be told with as little editing as possible. Does releasing the perps names or not releasing them have any bearing at all upon the truth of the story? As I mentioned above, I believe, it would only serve to distract from the story. My loyalty is to the story and to it being told as truthful as possible. Therefore I will release this story without mentioning the neighbors by name.

I can’t believe that guy down at Suburban Journals of St. Charles County. He puts out this fantastic story that has reached around the world but he doesn’t put out the whole story! He leaves out what I think is the most important part of the story - the perps names. Here, let me grab my Potter Box out of my file cabinet here and I’ll show you why I fixed that problem.

The first thing is the facts. They are out there. This young girl, Megan, had a falling out with a neighbor. That kid, with her mother and another person, decided to strike back with a powerful weapon: self-perception. They create a young male and called him Josh Evans who took a liking to Megan on MySpace. Once they had her hooked they took ‘Josh’ to a dark place and started turning the psychological screws. They turned them so hard that Megan, who was on prescribed anti-depressants to begin with, hung herself in a closet. Those are the facts so let’s move on to values.

For me as a journalist the most important value of a story is its honesty and authenticity. If I know the facts then it is my duty to report those facts, all of them. If I knowingly hold back any important information from the story then I have injured it by not being forthcoming and fully representing the truth. I know the names of the perps and I believe those names are integral to the authenticity of the story. So, I’m determined to set things right and make sure the whole story is put out in front of the public.

Before you think I’m too hasty let share with you the principle that is guiding me here. I’ll I quote from our textbook (Media Ethics:Issues & Cases, by Patterson and Wilkins) on page 10, “Kant’s ethical theory is based on the notion that it is in the act itself, rather than the person who acts, where moral force resides.” 

The perps had committed a heinous act against this young child which drove her to suicide and the authorities, the DA and police, claimed they were helpless in bringing them to justice. So I’m the one who is going to have to act if there is to be any justice in this case and I’m going to act out of my loyalties.

My loyalty is to the veracity of the story and to the public good. The community has been harmed and could be subject to further harm if these perps are allowed to go anonymously unscathed. I know who you are, Lori Drew (and your minor daughter) and Ashley Grills. Now wait, it’s not like I’m the first one to release your names. After all CNN blew the whistle when they released the police reports and the blogosphere lit up because your names were on it. I’m just setting the newspaper world right by finally publishing your names in the context of a news story. My loyalty is to the truth and truth demands that the whole story be told for the public good.

 Both of these approaches treats with reverence the issues of transparency, harm, justice, autonomy, privacy, and community. They just approach these issues from decidedly different directions. The Suburban leans more towards accommodating the needs of the family of the victim. After all it was the aunt, Vicki Dunn, that contacted Pokin when she learned he was doing an article on cyber-bullying. This was about a year after Megan had committed suicide. Foremost in Pokin’s mind was also protecting the privacy of the minor daughter of Drew. The other approach felt that public knowledge trumped privacy. in a sense community was chosen over the individual as this point of view believes that justice is best served by full disclosure (releasing the names) to the public.

In thinking about this case (again) I believe that I would have to come down on the side of the Post and release the names. By not releasing the names I become an accomplice in an immoral act. Since the authorities could not identify any laws by which the perpetrators could be charged it falls to media to provide an avenue for justice. The only way that can be accomplished is through publishing the names of the persons (adults) who perpetrated this ‘crime.’ 

The good of the many outweighs the good of the few. The good that came out of this story was enactment of laws at the local and federal levels concerning cyber-bullying. However, I recognize that even if the perpetrators names were not released this would have been the most likely outcome of this story.

The last question has shades of PIPA and SOPA. I can hear the reps of FaceBook and MySpace now, “Badges! We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!” The ultimate question concerning the Internets that is all inclusive of media rights to cyber-bullying is: who is/are the police? What entity will carry the authority to regulate the various services? Given the natural anarchic quality of the Internets there will be the inevitable push back against any semblance of setting boundaries on the web.

Obviously the MPAA and RIAA and others like them feel it is the responsibility of the IPs to police their servers. If that model had been verified by the passage of SOPA/PIPA then it is a short step to say that MySpace and FaceBook have a moral obligation through established law to police their networks and intervene in cases of cyber-bullying.

Of course this raises other issues as well regarding privacy. Does FaceBook and MySpace have the right to go poking their noses into my postings? Oh wait, did I sign that over when I clicked “accept” on that privacy agreement thingy? Who ever reads those damn things anyway? 

Still, this goes to the question of corporate responsibility for a product that is used by the general public. If FaceBook and MySpace are going to be making money from those products then they have a responsibility to see that those products cause no harm. Clearly, in the case of Megan Meier and her family, great harm was caused. If that death could have been averted by some mechanism that flagged cyber-bulling then, yes, FaceBook and MySpace have a moral obligation to intervene in such cases.