Ethics news:
7 September 2005
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A glimpse behind the public mask
Politicians can lie about going to war but they have to get the little things right, writes Hugh Mackay. Just three words: "Mail-order bride." But in the media-savvy world of 2005, and at a time when voters are revising their expectations of political leaders, they were more than enough to bring an opposition leader undone. Let's put John Brogden's appalling remark about Helena Carr into context ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 30 August 2005
Choking on a scandalous feast
We haven't seen the last of the 1950s mentality of good and bad, black and white. Like Rene Rivkin, John Brogden's fall from grace unmasks a subtle but somewhat unsavoury side to the media and society: characteristics that might be summed up as a quickness to judge and to judge simplistically, supported by a grotesque tendency towards moral grandstanding and not the smallest iota of human understanding, let alone sympathy ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 1 September 2005
When the story becomes the story
Newspapers don't always get it right, but they should take responsibility for deciding whether to publish. There is plenty of anger towards the news media on talkback radio and on letters pages today - and that's fair enough. This week we have seen again the media's power to make decisions about news coverage that can unleash a torrent of dramatic, tragic and unpredicted events. Editors and journalists need to take responsibility for their actions ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 1 September 2005
The ghost of Paul still haunts his foes
Is journalistic ethics a jokey oxymoron, similar to military intelligence? Since former NSW Opposition leader John Brogden left the ranks of the roosters to become a feather duster, many letters to the editor would have it so. And there has been more self-mortification within the profession than you get at a convention for the mysterious Catholic sect Opus Dei ...
The Australian - 6 September 2005
Little freedom when jail threatens
The media need help to be an effective watchdog. It is a grave matter to jail someone. Graver still when that imprisonment is for the expression of views, the publication of ideas or the reporting of an issue. In a healthy democracy, it is hard to believe that a journalist might be jailed for accurately reporting a story of significant public interest which poses no risk to national security. And yet we are facing the prospect of contempt of court charges and the jailing of two journalists ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 29 August 2005
Mail-order insult shows women still lack respect from society
The slur against Helena Carr should be condemned as much for being sexist as it was racist. Why is it that in Australia today the racial slur is seen as far more offensive than the sexual one? In July, Bryan Fletcher was fined $10,000 and stripped of the captaincy of the South Sydney Rabbitohs for calling another player a "black c---". It was the "B" word that was deemed to be the insulting one ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 30 August 2005
An 'inappropriate' remark
The Bush administration is not shy about denouncing people who say intemperate things on television. When Senator Dick Durbin compared the Guantánamo military prison to the Gulag, the White House furiously demanded an apology, which Durbin delivered. But even two days later, President George W Bush and other senior officials had expressed no real criticism of the religious broadcaster Pat Robertson's call for the assassination of the president of Venezuela ...
International Herald Tribune - 26 August 2005
New Orleans: the awful questions
The disaster response falls short of what you'd expect from America. Before 9/11, the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all" ...
The Age - 3 September 2005
Serious mess of Bush's making
Is George W Bush a serious person? It's not a question to ask lightly of a decent man who holds the US presidency, an office worthy of respect. But it must be asked. No one "anticipated the breach of the levees" due to Hurricane Katrina, he said, after being criticised for his administration's dilatory response to the suffering in the city of New Orleans ...
The Australian - 5 September 2005
It's ludicrous to blame Bush
There has been much smug finger-pointing in the hurricane's wake. If you believe the recriminations flowing thick and fast in the trail of hurricane Katrina, President George Bush has an almost superhuman talent for calamity. According to his critics, the President can be blamed for causing hurricanes because he ignored the risks of global warming. He can be blamed for exacerbating the consequences of Katrina because he diverted funds and manpower to Iraq ...
The Age - 6 September 2005
Murder and rape: fact or fiction?
There were two babies who had their throats slit. The seven-year-old girl who was raped and murdered in the Superdome. And the corpses laid out amid the excrement in the convention centre. In a week filled with dreadful scenes of desperation and anger from New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina some stories stood out. But as time goes on many remain unsubstantiated and may yet prove to be apocryphal ...
The Guardian - 6 September 2005
Regional disaster creates hope for greater assistance
This week I will join my brother, Treasurer Peter Costello, on a visit to tsunami-devastated Aceh. The trip comes amid mounting criticism that just a fraction of the Australian Government's $1 billion tsunami package for Indonesia has been spent. It has been reported that only $7 million of the $1 billion promised by the Howard Government ... has been spent. But despite this, such criticism is ill informed ...
The Australian - 5 September 2005
Can humans and animals be allies?
Is it possible to be for both human rights and animal rights? Can there be a movement or an alliance of movements that links the two? PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has just made it a whole lot harder, with its display of pictures of predominantly Black people being tortured, beaten, burned, sold and hanged, juxtaposed with animals in similar circumstances ...
Common Dreams - 23 August 2005
How can anyone put guinea pigs before people?
What's the difference between an activist and a terrorist? Britain has a proud and rather noble tradition of people agitating for causes they strongly believe in (Catholic emancipation, votes for women) and against things they can't abide (nuclear weapons, foxhunting), and there has always been a comprehensive disparity between those who want to blow up the Houses of Parliament and those who would settle for chaining themselves to its railings or petitioning its members ...
The Daily Telegraph - 25 August 2005
The task of countering the enemy within
All Australians, not just Muslims, have to address terrorism. After last week's summit in Canberra with Muslim leaders, and before the federal and state governments' meeting on terrorism next month, a media and political circus is developing around the issue of what Australia expects from its Muslim citizens. The question, if it is to provide useful answers, should be more broadly framed; what are the rights and responsibilities of citizens in democracies and those who govern them in the age of terrorism? ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 30 August 2005
Religion good and bad
Governments should not be promoting or favouring religion in schools. 'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities," said Voltaire. The books of the major religions contain passages that are absurd and worse than absurd. What are today's kindly Christians to make of this instruction to genocide in the Bible: "Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man ...
The Age - 25 August 2005
Why Muslim schools? What about the rest?
To combat ignorance, the focus should be on all schools. What do Iraq and Islamic schools have in common? First, they are suspected of hiding something that was never there. Second, the suspicions will create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Thanks to Opposition Leader Kim Beazley and his free kick to put schools on the summit agenda, Prime Minister John Howard and federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson have run with the ball ...
The Age - 29 August 2005
The age of intolerant tolerance
The meaning of tolerance has mutated in recent years. If the slogan of the Second World War 60 years ago was 'Victory', the slogan of the war on terror in Britain today appears to be 'Tolerance'. Almost before the last bomb had exploded in London on 7 July, government ministers, opposition leaders, London's mayor, police chiefs and anybody else who could get the media's attention were all emphasising the need for tolerance in our society ...
Spiked-Online - 19 August 2005
The struggle over science
In his weekly opinion column, Harold Evans considers rising concern in the US over the Bush administration's hostility to science. I used to get mad at the way it was left to America to bring to full fruition fine achievements by Britain's scientists, inventors and engineers. Take Alexander Fleming's penicillin, Frank Whittle's jet engine, Alan Turing's computer and Robert Watson Watt's radar ...
BBC News - 23 August 2005
Vioxx: who's responsible?
Making pharmaceutical companies pay millions for the unpredicted consequences of their drugs could put a brake on innovation. Last week's news that a jury found the pharmaceutical company Merck negligent in its marketing of the painkiller Vioxx, awarding $229million in punitive damages, is bad news for all consumers who hope that pharmaceutical companies will continue to develop new drugs ...
Spiked-Online - 24 August 2005
Why can't you buy heroin at Boots?
Picture this: beside the electric toothbrushes at your local chemist, you can pick up complete kits of syringes, needles, cotton balls, lighters, rubber tying-off cords and cute stainless-steel spoons - all vacuum-sealed in plastic. Just as you can request some high-strength cortisone cream to treat that pesky eczema on your shin, you can ask your GP for heroin. Thus you can hand the pharmacist an NHS prescription for a two-week supply of commercial opiates ...
The Guardian - 23 August 2005
Winston warns of stem cell 'hype'
The potential benefits of embryonic stem cell research have probably been oversold to the public, fertility expert Lord Winston says. He fears a backlash if science fails to deliver on some of the "hype" around the cells - as he believes may happen. He says the notion that a host of cures for serious, degenerative disorders are just around the corner is fanciful ...
BBC News - 5 September 2005
'If anyone is exploited it is the men'
Many people argue that pornography is degrading and exploitative to women. But Michelle Thorne, who has worked in the porn industry for six years, does not agree. "I have never felt exploited. If anything it's giving you power over men. The only people exploited, if anyone is, are the men who go out and spend their money on porn," says the 26-year-old from Bristol ...
BBC News - 25 August 2005
The right to speak out
Relatives of murder victims could be given the right to speak out in UK court, according to new government proposals. But in the US "victim impact statements" are an often controversial fixture of American justice. It is about "rebalancing" the criminal justice system more in favour of victims, says the government. But for the relatives of murder victims, having the right to speak out in open court about their loss could be the only chance they get to confront their loved one's killer ...
BBC News - 1 September 2005