June 2012 Archive

On June 12, 2012 Gawker published the story of Stephanie Harnett, a public relation professional working for the PR firm of Mercury Public Affairs, in Los Angeles, had infiltrated a union meeting of Warehouse Workers United in L.A. on behalf of her client Wal-Mart. Mercury Public Affairs is (or was) trying to help Wal-Mart in obtaining a building permit for a new store in Chinatown. The Union opposed the project.  According to news report, Stephanie Harnett pretended to be a student- journalist named “Zoe Mitchell” to obtained access to a restricted press conference organized by the Union.

Both her employer, Mercury and her client, Wal-Mart, claimed that she has acted on her own. She no longer works for Mercury. It is hard for me to believe that she acted alone and that neither her employer nor her client was aware of her action.

Even if we assume that it is true, then the question is: Would it be ethical to use the information that had been obtained illicitly? Roger Salazar, MD of Mercury says that the agency did not use the information collected.

I was asked by Chris Daniel of PR Week in an interview for an article he was writing on the story, whether it is ever “ok” for anyone to pose as someone he or she is not.

I believe the real question is whether it is ever ethically acceptable to be deceptive.

In principle and in most circumstances being deceptive is ethically unacceptable. In some circumstances such as saving a life or saving your own life, it is permissible.  There is the Biblical story of Kind David who when captured by King Abimelech, pretends that he has gone made. Abimelech says to his servants:  “do I not have enough mad men in my own kingdom? Let him go.”  Nowhere in the story is King David blamed for his deception.

There are forms of deceptions some of them totally acceptable. For instance, one can argue that wearing make-up is, in a way a deception or a “masking of the truth.” The same can be said about retouching a photo. Other forms of deceptions are illegal, such as impersonating a police officer.

Determining what is unacceptable and what is permissible in terms of deception can be quite a challenge. I would think that the determining factor should be the intent or purpose of the deception.  

Adin Steinsaltz writes in his book Simple Word that masks are “symbols of the parts we play in the drama of our lives. We may play one role at one time, and another role at another, but we wear masks almost all the time. We human are never completely naked.” He concludes by saying that “our unique nature, then, is in our capacity to choose our mask: the demon or the angel.

I would go for the angel.

The announcement last month by Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly that Pedro Hernandez was in custody after confessing to strangling 6 year-old Etan Patz more than 30 years ago brought back painful memories to both Etan’s family and to many New Yorkers.

 Mr. Hernandez has been charged with 2^nd degree murder and is undergoing psychiatric evaluation. His lawyer says that he has a history of mental illness that included hallucinations.

Most shocking, (if possible) was the revelation that in the 80s, Mr. Hernandez had confessed to a number of people in a church group to having killed a child in New York City and apparently no one in that group reported it to the police. That is very disturbing yet not uncommon.

Jennifer Peltz in her Huffington Post article entitled Etan Patz Case: A Complex Question of Duty in the Arrest of Pedro Hernandez writes that hearing disturbing claim raises a sensitive legal and philosophical question: What’s a person supposed to do with information like that? Are the obligations different for someone who is party to an oblique confidence about a seemingly serious crime than for an actual witness to one? What if the scenario is laced with family ties or religious fellowship? In the U.S., relatives, friends and bystanders may well not be legally required to report such information to authorities. But ethics experts say people have a more duty to do so.”

Jack Marshall of Ethics Alarms is more forceful.  In his May 30^th column: Reporting the Confessed Killer in Your Midst: An Ethical Dilemma that Isn’t he writes that we should not hesitate to report when made aware of a past crime because “by not reporting Hernandez, the family members and prayer group members placed every child the killer came into contact at mortal risk over three decades, and for all we know, he might have murdered some of them.”

Why are we so reluctant to report a crime?

In December 2007 the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency Forum on Witness Reluctance issued its 15-page report.  

In its conclusion, the report says that “much attention is paid to the problem of crime and the development of an effective system of justice but less has been done to recognize the central role that witnesses play in solving crime and ensuring that justice is served. All of the laws, police, prosecutors, courts, juries, corrections, probation and parole and other infrastructure of the system are meaningless without witnesses who are willing to provide truthful information about what they know and swear to it in Court.”

 The report listed a number of major causes of witness reluctance. Among them, the fear of retaliation, the fear of social rejection and individual apathy.

Fear is rarely a good motivator. We should overcome our fears and individual apathy when it comes to reporting a crime and remember that by doing so, we may save a life or many lives.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote:

“He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life”