Tag Archives: ethics

Brought To You By the Letter K

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From the Truth Laid Bear:

"We are bloggers with boatloads of opinions, and none of us come close to agreeing with any other one of us all of the time. But we do agree on this: The new leadership in the House of Representatives needs to be thoroughly and transparently free of the taint of the Jack Abramoff scandals, and beyond that, of undue influence of K Street."

"We are not naive about lobbying, and we know it can and has in fact advanced crucial issues and has often served to inform rather than simply influence Members."

"But we are certain that the public is disgusted with excess and with privilege. We hope the Hastert-Dreier effort leads to sweeping reforms including the end of subsidized travel and other obvious influence operations. Just as importantly, we call for major changes to increase openness, transparency and accountability in Congressional operations and in the appropriations process."

"As for the Republican leadership elections, we hope to see more candidates who will support these goals, and we therefore welcome the entry of Congressman John Shadegg to the race for Majority Leader. We hope every Congressman who is committed to ethical and transparent conduct supports a reform agenda and a reform candidate. And we hope all would-be members of the leadership make themselves available to new media to answer questions now and on a regular basis in the future."

I don’t know John Shadegg from Adam, but I conceptually support this appeal. In fact, I’d ask the same of all Congressman, regardless of party.

The Perils of 24-hour News

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"The scare tactics, poor reporting and lack of reputable sources came to a sad and tragic climax this week as we news junkies watched. The horror of a West Virginia mining disaster was brought into homes coast to coast and there was no shortage of misinformation. Thirteen miners had been trapped by an explosion and cave in deep within a coal mine near Buchannon. As the first dead body was recovered, Fox News Channel reported that no one knew the cause of death, as yet, but assured we viewers that they would have that information, first. Hosts Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes then badgered a Red Cross volunteer live, worldwide, demanding the woman give them an opinion about whether it would be ‘better’ if the dead man was found to have ‘suffocated from carbon monoxide inhalation? or had been ?crushed to death by the cave in’. Luckily, the volunteer kept her head, and rather than give an uninformed guess (the basis for most television news), she informed Hannity three times that she could not possibly give him an answer. She’d never been to a mining accident site, she explained, and the Red Cross’ job was to comfort the families of the victims, not to perform autopsies."

"It was hard for Sean to mask his disappointment."

"Meanwhile, over on CNN, Anderson Cooper was getting to the core of the story by interviewing an anonymous teenaged girl who had talked to somebody who had stood next to a meeting between the trapped men’s families and the coal company. The meeting, held in a nearby church, was off-limits to the press (smart move, families). That didn’t stop CNN. They found this little girl who had talked to somebody who overheard what was going on in that meeting. And with this one twice-removed completely unreliable source, they hit the air live, worldwide, to inform the awaiting viewing public about the latest developments. "

Read more of what Scott Paulsen has to say.

Taking Stock

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It’s pretty much inevitable that the end of the year inspires us to take stock of what we’ve done well, what we’ve done poorly, and what we’ve failed to do in the last year. I asked one of my readers to offer constructive criticism. Here’s the response [with links added by me].

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