July 2011 Archive

One interesting aspect of the Rupert Murdoch-Tabloid scandal, (there are many) is people’s interest in trivia, gossip and sensationalism. Carl Jensen, founder of Project Censored, speaks about “junk food news that he defines as “sensationalized, personalized, and homogenized inconsequential trivia.” He is the author of Junk Food News 1877-2000.

In the US, the “Supermarket tabloids” are very popular. The National Enquirer has a weekly circulation 4,100,000 and STAR has a weekly circulation 3,600,000.

This is not just a US phenomenon. News of the World, before its shut down, has a circulation of 2,600,000. The German tabloid Das Bild has a circulation close to 4 million. The Swiss publication Blick has a readership of 750,000 which represent close to 10 % of the Swiss population.

Media is a reflection of society and I believe that we get the media we deserve.

Such publications would not exist unless people purchased them. The same applies for tabloid television with programs such as Hard Copy, Inside Edition, and A Current Affair, as well as reality shows. Corporations would not advertise in such media unless distribution and ratings were high and thus making it profitable. So ultimately, the public (you and me) are responsible for the media we get and pay for.

Should we just accept the fact and move on or should we rebel against elements of our culture that we think are not positive? Surely the craving for gossip, dirt, scandal and violence are not the sign of a good mental health for a society.

Someone said that every society needs a king (leadership) a poet (to show us the beauty in life) and a prophet (to let us know when things are not right, that we can do better for ourselves and the world.)

Yaakov Astor, a former Yeshiva teacher and prolific author believes that the secret and greatness of the biblical prophets was that they could touch that small, still voice and ignite the flame of moral conscience in an instant. No matter how much one has become immersed in an empty culture, gotten used to morally lax standards, veered far from one’s true self there remains that “still, small voice” inside that knows right from wrong, truth from untruth.

Maybe the role of the ethicist or anyone concern about values should be akin to the one of the prophet.  Maybe an ethicist like a prophet should sometimes have the courage to go against current trends in culture and try to raise the standards of decency, civility and respect in society.

As Irish journalist Lise Hand once wrote:

“That’s what it takes to be a hero, a little gem of innocence inside you that makes you want to believe that there still exists a right and wrong, that decency will somehow triumph in the end“

News Corp, Rupert Murdoch’s company is going through a tsumani these past two weeks.

The phone hacking and alleged bribery by journalists employed by Rupert Murdoch working at the now defunct News of the World is a full blown scandal. News Corp, Mr. Murdoch’s company, lost more than 6 billion dollars of its market value in one day!  In the past three days we learned that Rebekah Brooks, CEO of News International and the editor of News of the World was arrested, that Les Hinton, the CEO of Dow Jones (publisher of The Wall Street Journal) had resigned and finally (for now) that Sir Paul Stephenson, the head of Scotland Yard had resigned, all in the wake of the scandal. The FBI is investigating whether the phones of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attack have been hacked as well.

Mr. Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks (released on bail on Sunday) are scheduled to testify at parliamentary inquiries at the House of Commons this week.

Investigative journalism has it rightful and very important place in the media and society. It is not an easy job. Investigative journalists are asked to obtain secret information that can have significant repercussion on the lives of citizens. Government and corporate scandals have often been exposed by investigative journalists such as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post who exposed the Watergate scandal in the 70s and Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker who revealed the Abu Ghraib torture of prisoners.

However there are ethical and legal limits not to cross. In the News Corp scandal, it is obvious that such limits have been trespassed.  Ethics codes are important but not enough. Margaret Simons, a media commentator says: “Those of us who have worked in media organizations know that it is rare for ethical codes to be referred to or taken seriously, if they stand in the way of getting the story. It is also almost impossible, particularly in this country, to enforce the codes.”

I suspect that could be true in the U.S. as well. This is a very serious issue because a free press is a corner stone of Democracy.

A legitimate question to ask is whether the hacking and bribery was to work of a few rogue journalists or whether the culture at News Corp is to blame. The ongoing investigations will tell. A scandal of this magnitude, involving so many parties, generally does not happen in a vacuum and is not just an accident but rather the result of an accumulation of wrong-doing that took place for a long time.

The wise question to ask when such events occur is whether this could happen to me, individually and corporately.

If the answer is a categorical “no” meaning “this could never happen to me (or my company)” we better be sure that it is the case, because self-delusion can be very dangerous and is the upmost betrayal.

However if we are not absolutely sure that such events could not possibly happen to us then we have some serious soul-searching to do and most likely actions to undertake, to protect ourselves and/or our company from self-combustion.

Sir Paul Stephenson said, following his resignation, that he had done nothing wrong and that he would not “lose sleep over his integrity.”

I hope we can all truly say the same.

In the past couple weeks two very high profile legal cases had an unexpected turn of event.

Casey Anthony was found not guilty of murdering her daughter and the prosecutor’s case against Dominique Strauss Khan has crumbled because of the lack of credibility of the accuser.

In both cases the reaction to the news was one of shock.

Why?

Although the presumption of innocence is fundamental in our justice system, I am afraid it is not in our collective psychology. If we hear of an accusation, most of the time our first reaction is to believe it.

For some reason the majority of the public believed they were both guilty. In other words, we were pre-judging or prejudiced. We presumed they were guilty but we did not know they were. We were often encouraged to do so by the media. The media and particularly the tabloids seemed to be the ones prosecuting both cases.

Maybe we wanted to believe in their guilt because of a misplaced sense of justice. We may have wanted justice for a poor defenseless child against a dysfunctional or rather non-mother or we may have hoped for justice for a poor immigrant woman against an “arrogant” powerful man.

Let me clarify that being found “not guilty” or having charges dropped does not mean innocence. In many criminal cases the issue for defense attorneys is not whether their clients committed the crime they are accused of but rather whether the prosecution has enough evidence to prove it. Being found “not guilty” or having charges dropped is a legal reality; innocence is a moral one.

Why do we prejudge others?

Prejudging is fundamentally human and may have served the purpose of protection and survival in the early stages of human tribal history.  Encountering someone different in appearance or behavior often meant that he or she was an enemy and it was often the case. However with the advent of knowledge and rational thinking we now should determine our beliefs on factual information not on atavist instincts.

Aya Katz, author, linguist and former attorney writes in a very interesting article entitled “Why Prejudice is Bad” that: “ethics would require one not to judge another before sufficient evidence has been presented.” She adds, “because we are not omniscient, when another person stands accused of a crime, we apply a high burden of proof that if not met will set the accused free and result in a finding of ‘not, guilty’. Since we must perforce err, we err on the side of innocence because it is better for a guilty man to go free than for an innocent to suffer.”

This is (or should be) true in our legal system. We should apply the same principle in our everyday life whenever we hear of an accusation. We should refrain from judgment until we are reasonably comfortable that we have sufficient evidence to believe the accusation.

As Ambrose Bierce once said:

“A prejudice is a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.”