Brief 4 - Plagiarism and Fabrication

Fabrication and Plagarism are dangerous subjects for a publication. Your stories are not worth anything if nobody believes them. Not to mention they can open your entire company up for lawsuits if you don't pursue this action. So when The Guardian found one of their reporters had fabricated sources and interviews, they took immediate action.

"After sources quoted in several stories denied speaking with a freelance reporter, Joseph Mayton, the Guardian has fact-checked all of his stories. We are taking down 13 and removing quotes and information that could not be verified"

This was a preemptive move to show the readers that they take fabrication very seriously. They hired an independent fact-checker to double check all of his sources and claims. And in case you're worried that Mayton was not given a fair chance, the Guardian writes...

"Our editors met with Mayton twice in person and emailed him dozens of times, giving him more than a month from the time the first allegations were presented to him to provide notes, phone records, contact information and other evidence. All evidence he provided has been taken into account, but he was unable or unwilling to provide information on most sources. "

And to put a nice bow on the whole ordeal, The Guardian came up with ways it could have prevented this mess. They wrote that they would commit to being more diligent in their background checks of who works for them. They also pledged to look into incidents where anonymous sources are used in stories where it is not necessary.

The main point the Guardian wanted to drive home in their article was that they were taking responsibility. A liar will lie to his bosses as well as the people who buy their paper, so one might assume that it is not fair to blame the bosses in question. But in the world of business, and especially in the realm of journalism, publications take responsibility for ethical breaches like these, even when it was against their knowledge. This way, the few people who blamed the Guardian for not being psychic have their concerns addressed, and the rest of the people see that The Guardian is committed to going above and beyond what is reasonable to ensure quality, truthful stories.

And when it comes to fabrication, some crooked reporters go even further to cover their tracks. Juan Thompson, an ex-reporter for The Intercept, allegedly created fake emails and impersonated false sources in order to deceive editors. Among his fake stories was an interview with the cousin of Dylan Roof, the Charleston shooter.

"Scott Roof, who identified himself as Dylann Roof’s cousin, told me over the telephone that “Dylann was normal until he started listening to that white power music stuff.” He also claimed that “he kind of went over the edge when a girl he liked starting dating a black guy two years back”...
“Dylann liked her,” Scott Roof said. “The black guy got her. He changed. I don’t know if we would be here if not …” Roof then abruptly hung up the phone"

It would certainly seem to contextualize all his actions into a neat box, which is a big clue that it's too good to be true. When asked about a cousin named Scott Roof, the Roof family denied his existence, along with any story of an ex-girlfriend leaving Dylan Roof for a black man.

The Intercept made a point to let their readers know how far Thompson went to deceive them, in order to keep the public's trust. Other fabrications by Thompson include lying about previous job experience. He now claims to have testicular cancer. And while I don't want to doubt a cancer survivor's suffering, I questions whether or not he's telling the truth here.

Brief 3 - Advertising Ethics

During presidential campaigns, television advertisements have been a mainstay of politics as long as television itself. Recently in the 2016 presidential race, both candidates ran ads attacking each other, or "Smear campaigns." Let's take a look at one.

What he believes | Hillary Clinton

This video plays the ethics component relatively safe. At the start, it's just quotes from Donald Trump, devoid of context. Then it gets into more vague attacks with the caption "And [Trump] did this:" before showing news footage of sexual assault charges brought against Trump.

Now was the Clinton campaign suggesting that Donald Trump was indeed guilty of the claims brought against him? They certainly seemed to be implying it by juxtaposing the words "did this" with footage of accusations that would later be proven false. But there is wiggle room here: it could be that what Trump "did" was provoke accusations against him. Maybe these accusations were provoked by something that Trump did, like running for president against a corrupt regime. Naturally this wiggle room is enough for plausible deniability on part of the video creators.

The most important part in clarifying ethics in this video is the caption "Approved by Hillary Clinton, paid for by 

Hillary for America," followed by the This idea of being transparent in political advertising is important.

Now let's look at a video that Trump ran.

Do you really need to ask?

This video shows Hillary Clinton asking a question out of context: "Why aren't I fifty points ahead?" The ad goes on to say that Director James Comey of the FBI said she lied about her emails. They then play a clip of Comey saying "There was classified material in the emails." In my opinion, this is a risky move by the video's creators. The exact quote of what Comey said was not that she lied, but that there was classified material in the emails that was on her unsecured server. The idea that she lied comes from context between what Comey said and what she said in her hearing, not directly from what Comey stated, as shown in the video itself.

The rest of the ad is implications of Hillary's foreign relations policies to allow ISIS to spread, along with a quote pointing out how she called roughly half of Trump's supporters "A basket of Deplorables." Not the most upstanding campaign, but not an ethical breach either. My favorite part is the snarky line at the end of the video: They show the clip where Clinton says "Why aren't I fifty points ahead you might ask." with the narrator chiming in: "Do you really need to ask?" This video also closes with a statement of transparency. A caption reads "Paid for by Trump for President INC, approved by Donald J. Trump" along with Trump saying "I'm Donald Trump and I approve this message."

When it comes to the third parties, they tend to not be as vicious in their personal attacks. Let's look at some ads from the alternative candidates from the race and see what they had to say.

Jill Stein - The Greater Good

Stein opens up with criticizing Trump and Hillary in vague, appropriate terms. But even though her campaign has less smear than the top two contenders, her claims get a bit shaky when it comes to ethics. She claims her new green program will "Create 20 million new jobs. halt climate change, and make wars for oil obsolete." Which is quite an impressive claim if it has any truth to it.

Sadly, most third party candidates have no chance of winning a presidential race. So the ad campaigns they run during the election are more designed to give themselves a career boost rather than be strictly competitive. So Stein can afford to pretend to take the high ground without dirtying herself in the political mudslinging. She can also afford to make dramatic claims that will never be tested. Maybe we really missed out on the 20 million new jobs and an end to all the wars in the middle-east, but I doubt it. As a final note, even though Jill Stein appears in her own video, explaining her message to the people, she still has a transparency disclaimer at the end of her video. After all, even if she said the words, it doesn't mean she approves of the context the video used them in. Trump's words were used in Hillary's ads, and Hillary's words were used in Trumps ads. So even though she is speaking directly into the camera, she still has the caption "Paid for by the Jill Stein for President Campaign" with the words "I'm Dr. Jill Stein and I approve this message."

Brief 2 - Tabloids

Allegedly, Hillary Clinton has been caught trying to flee the country. The Globe writes she was attempting to flee to a remote, middle-eastern country called Bahrain. The implication of course being, that since Bahrain does not have an extradition policy with the United States, that she was fleeing prosecution from the reigning Trump administration.

An Arabic kingdom, Bahrain is the third smallest country in the world.

During the election, many accusations leveled against Clinton included some sort of criminal activity. This was no doubt in part caused by her subsequent investigations by first the Behghazi scandal, and later the FBI for mishandling classified information. In fact, the Globe even made a claim weeks after the election that the Clinton family was about to be indited. Even Trump himself liked calling Clinton "Crooked Hillary" on live tv during the presidential debates. Trump even made the comeback remark of the century when he said "Because you'd be in jail." out of turn, when Hillary referred to how she thought it was good that Trump would no secure the presidency.

Now, the source is from an anonymous "D.C. insider." who said that when Clinton tried to leave officials "made it clear to her it would 'be better' if she didn't leave town." One might ask themselves if she really was fleeing from the threat of imprisonment why she would be stopped by vague threats of "It would be better if," but then again questions like this don't come up when considering grabby headlines.

Shortly after the election, many were asking the question of whether or not Clinton would be pardoned by Obama before the Trump administration obtained power. There is certainly precedent for new presidents to pardon the people they succeed. President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. But with Trump silent on the question, it was left to the media to speculate endlessly...

Going back to Bahrain, funnily enough, Clinton has had dealings with Bahrain in the past. Josh Rogin of the Washington post writes...

"Correspondence about the request was released by the conservative advocacy group Judicial Watch, which is pressing a Freedom of Information Act-related lawsuit against Clinton in response to her use of a private email server. The Kingdom of Bahrain has donated between $50,000 and $100,000 to the foundation, and the Crown Prince has spent about $32 million on an educational program that funds Bahraini students in conjunction with the Clinton Global Initiative."

Depending on who you ask, this is either a natural extension of Obama's blundering policy regarding the Arab Spring, or it's something more sinister. John Hayward at Breitbart writes

"Did Prince Salman get what he wanted from Secretary Clinton? It sure looks that way. “Soon after the correspondence about a meeting, Clinton’s State Department significantly increased arms export authorizations to the country’s autocratic government, even as that nation moved to crush pro-democracy protests,” writes International Business Times.

More specifically, IBT notes that “between 2010 and 2012 the Clinton-led State Department approved $630 million worth of direct commercial arms sales to Salman’s military forces in Bahrain. That was a 187 percent increase from the period 2006 to 2008, and the increase came as Bahrain was violently suppressing uprisings.”

Most disturbingly, Clinton’s State Department approved the sale of over $700,000 worth of “toxicological agents” to a regime accused of using chemical agents like tear gas against its own people."

Of course the United States making foreign policy blunders is not limited to Hillary Clinton, the Obama Administration, or even the Democratic party. But it does make a plausible escape hatch, especially because of Clinton's questionable history with the country. Especially if you're getting paid "Big Bucks" for your "Hot Story."

As a last comment, if you click the above link, and go to the tip section of the GLOBE's website, you'll find that they ask the tipper to not include "fake photos from the Internet!" Funnily enough, the don't mention anything about fakes tips, or fake stories.

Brief 1 - Freedom from Religion

CNN.com recently broke a story about what President Obama had to say about the Trump Administration's recent immigration ban on 7 Middle-Eastern countries.

Frm Pres @BarackObama is heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country. pic.twitter.com/X5Fk3xRDEX

— Kevin Lewis (@KLewis44) January 30, 2017

The former president gave a brief vague support of the idea of protest, but the real kicker is where he says he "fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion."

This of course, is where the bias comes in. President Trump did not ban immigration based on faith, he banned immigration from a few select countries for a temporary amount of time. This includes Christians, Atheists, and Muslims. In addition, he did not ban any immigrants from Indonesia, India, or any of the many African countries.

The big problem with this bias comes when CNN didn't bother correcting the former President. The writer had no trouble explaining why the Obama Administration set the precedent for this immigration restriction a few years ago, but the simple sentence "This is not a ban on Muslim immigrants" never made its way into the paper, letting former president Obama's misinformation continue to spread.

No one can deny the controversy surrounding the executive order, but it's not easy to have a conversation about the validity of the order with media outlets spreading misinformation categorizing a precedent-following act of immigration limitation.