September 2009 Archive

Last week’s video revelation that Acorn employees in more than one office were caught giving advice to what they believed were a prostitute and a pimp on how to open a brothel that would “employ” under-aged girls and how to evade taxes.

ACORN’s CEO Bertha Lewis said in reaction to the incidents: “As a result of the indefensible action of a handful of our employees, I am, in consultation with ACORN’s Executive Committee, immediately ordering a halt to any new intakes into ACORN’s service programs until completion of an independent review.  I have also communicated with ACORN’s independent Advisory Council, and they will assist ACORN in naming an independent auditor and investigator to conduct a thorough review of all of the organization’s relevant systems and processes.”

Will that be enough to save the organization? The Congress voted for a suspension of public funding by an overwhelming majority of 345-75 in the House and 83 -7 in the Senate. Senator Gillibrand was one of the 7 senators who voted in favor of ACORN funding. Her office made the following statement: “Senator Gillibrand finds the actions of certain employees of these organizations to be reprehensible, and believes these individuals should absolutely be punished for their actions. However, thousands of New York families who are facing foreclosure depend on charitable organizations for assistance. Senator Gillibrand believes that eliminating funding would be harmful to the thousands of families who need assistance during this very difficult economic time. We should not punish hardworking families in need because of the abhorrent actions of a few.”

There are many ethical aspects as to what happened with ACORN last week.

The method of entrapment is one of them. It is usually done by the authorities such as the police or the FBI.  Female police officers pose as prostitutes to entrap “customers” and FBI agents pose as terrorists to apprehend a real terrorist. The moral justification for such deceptive method is that it prevents a crime from occurring and exposes the intent of the individuals about or in the process of committing a crime.

However it is rare that such method is used by private citizens. There is a moral difference between recording a conversation or an action that we consider illegal, immoral, or just inappropriate in order to expose the action and the individuals in question and actually provoking that action by assuming a false identity.  Although exposing evil has a positive outcome for society, does the end justify the means? In some case they do, in others maybe not. Each situation should be considered separately.

The aspect of the ACORN scandal also raises questions about the ethical culture of an organization.

An organization that is an advocate for the down trodden and poor will tend to find itself in adversarial positions against the establishment that it believes is the cause of poverty and injustice. There is however a difference between “beating the system” and breaking the law.  This recent scandal unfortunately is not an isolated incident and seems to indicate an endemic unethical culture. The incident was repeated in a number of offices in different cities. Furthermore ACORN has been in the past charged and fined for voter’s registration fraud and investigated by the FBI for mortgage fraud.

Employees of an organization that has an ethical culture will instinctively react to a blatant immoral proposition. Once the words “under-aged” (child?) prostitutes were uttered, the right thing to do would have been for the ACORN employees to terminate the conversation and walk the two individuals out the door. They did not.  

This is very unfortunate because ACORN is fighting for a good cause and has done a much good to many people.

One lesson we can all learn from this deplorable story is that the end rarely justifies the means.

As George Bernanos, the French author once said:

“The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.”

It was reported in The New York Times recently that Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican from the State of Iowa, was putting pressure on the National Institute of Health to crack down on the practice of Ghostwriting. Senator Grassley has been investigating conflict of interest in medicine. In his letter to the NIH, the Senator described medical ghostwriting as: “a practice in which drug and device companies hire medical communications and education companies to draft journal articles and then have “independent” academics sign onto them as the lead author.” He says that he is troubled by it.

Writing is very time consuming and many executive simply do not have the time. David Finn, in his article published by Fortune magazine back in 1986 titled: Exorcise the Executive Ghostwriters-Businessmen cheat their audiences, and themselves when they rely on others to pen their words wrote that:  ”Writing takes time because thinking carefully is time-consuming. The more time executives spend writing, the more time they will spend thinking.”

Ghostwriting is a common practice, in other fields beside the medical industry although it is not always called as such. We all know that presidents do not write their speeches but once the speech is given, he becomes the author. No one would imagine a president blaming the “ghostwriter” for something that was said and later regretted. In public relations we are often asked to write the draft of a statement, a press release or a speech for a client. We would not expect the client to reveal the fact that we authored the document that is made public. I have been asked in the past to write letters of recommendations from people who work for or with me. I sometimes ask them to write a draft that I edit (or not.) Once I signed the letter, I am the author.

Likewise, in my view, it is acceptable for a physician to sign an article if he or she fully endorses the content. As David Finn wrote in his article: “Executives should ask themselves whether the words on paper regardless of who wrote them, truly reflect their point of view and contain a message they believe is worth delivering.”  

There is no doubt that ghostwriting can be beneficial to the many of parties involved. Universities get funding from the pharmaceutical industry; physicians and consumers are provided with information about a particular drug; and yes, the pharmaceutical companies get a marketing platform for their products.

However, ghostwriting can present an ethical problem if it creates a conflict of interest situation.

If a physician or an academician is paid either to endorse a particular drug or write about it, (with or without the help of a ghostwriter,) the question will rise in peoples’ minds whether he really believes what he said or wrote. The independence and credibility of the author will be questioned even if the fact that the author was paid for an article had no influence whatsoever on its content. Unfortunately truth is not always believable.

As Professor and Psychologist David G. Myers once said:

“There is an objective reality out there, but we view it through the spectacles of our beliefs, attitudes, and values.”