Ethics and the Mass Media

I think I have a reasonably well tuned moral compass. I work at making sure that my life decisions are ethical ones. I have long agreed with John Ralston Saul who suggested that ethics are like muscles - we need to exercise them regularly so that when we are faced with the really tough decisions, we make the right ethical decision without hesitation. Having said that - I am a bit confused over the recent tempest in the teapot known as the CBC. With the understanding that for many people the words ethics and media being used in the same sentence verges on creating an oxymoron, our mainstream media has been buzzing with the firing of Evan Solomon by the CBC because of ethical issues.

By all reports Mr. Solomon knew someone who had some expensive art to sell and he knew people who had money to buy expensive art. He created a small business where he got paid for hooking up the person who had something to sell with at least one person who wanted to buy. Because the paintings were very valuable, his commission was substantial. When it became known that he was doing this, he was fired.

The issue appears to be that he violated the public's trust in him as a recognizable public affairs/political correspondent  because he used his professional contacts to arrange for the sale. That is - if he had not been employed by a national news organization he would have never have met either the seller or the buyer. He used his contacts to make money. The suggestion is that in doing so, he also may have been "gentler" while interviewing the buyer so as to not spoil the deal. There is no proof, not even the suggestion that he did, but the possibility that he could have, made Mr. Solomon too toxic of an employee to be kept on.

Should  Mr Solomon been aware of the optics of his activities and decided not to do it? Probably yes. Did he know these people because of his status in the political world? Without a doubt. Was it unethical? I am not too sure. Ethics are frequently a private matter sorted out (at least for me) in the wee dark hours of the night. They are frequently deeply personal. If Mr. Solomon thought (as he said he did) about whether or not he could act as a broker for fine art and still do his job without conflict, I think we should believe him or at the very least take some time to think about it.

The fundamental error in people's over-reaction as to Mr. Solomon's actions and subsequent firing is that we chose to believe that the news is neutral. In fact Peter Mansbridge , the CBC"s anchor for the 10:00 national news, has a commercial airing currently airing on that station that suggests that all he does is read the news. How naive of anyone to believe that! How Mansbridge reads the item, where the item is placed within that hour, or whether or not it gets even reported upon are all the result of someone's bias.  There are countless examples of bias within all media whether they be labelled as mainstream or "independent".  Was Mike Duffy's reporting completely neutral when as reporter for CTV he discussed national affairs? Why didn't anyone criticize him when he shortly after retiring, he was appointed to the senate and started to act as the Prime Minister's shill?  Didn't he get the Senate job because of his previous activities? Wasn't he useful to the Conservative Party because of his contacts developed over years of working for CTV? Why isn't anyone crying foul? The only difference between Mr. Duffy and Mr. Solomon is that the former waited until he retired to trade in on his contacts, while the latter did not. At the risk of offending someone, it is difficult for me to believe that in the months before Mr. Duffy's retirement that there were not discussions as to how to use his work trained skills and contacts.

We live in a world where we are told, with some justification, that networking is critical. It is why social media is so powerful and so useful. To expect a semi-public person such as Evan Solomon to play by a different set of rules than other people is hypocritical. He is allowed to make a living. He needed perhaps to be more public about his activities, but it is not a moral crime to use one's contacts to make money. Like it or not - that is what we all do in some form or another. I am not convinced that we should punish the man. Give him a slap on the wrist? Sure. But to ruin his career opportunities for life seems a bit harsh.

Dress Codes

In the past month or so, the annual pre-summer debate as to what young people should wear to school has once again become a topic for the mainstream press. It is a discussion that by my memory is at least fifty years old.

The school that I went to had a very clear dress code for the girls. In grades one through seven girls had to wear a grey jumper over a white blouse. They had a choice as to whether or not they wore a blue sweater with gold trim or a blazer with the same trim. In high school they had to wear a grey pleated skirt, a white blouse and either the blue sweater or the blazer. The school board argued that by having a dress code, it meant that the girls would not have to compete with each other and that no one would know which child came from a rich or poor family. Of courses, families with less money could only afford one skirt and other families could afford two. Which meant that some girls could get their jumpers or skirts dry-cleaned through the school year. Wearing the same skirt everyday for three and half months could make the grey jumper or skirt look tired to say the least. We always knew who came from which families if for no other reason than only some families could afford the far more expensive blazer. The girls hated it. The guys didn't care.

The guys were not allowed to wear blue jeans but except for one year we never really had a dress code. Was it unfair - of course. Was it sexist? Without a doubt. Did the school board ever say that the young women had to wear a uniform so that they would not distract the guys? No. I am not sure if they even thought about it or if they had, that they would have had the courage to talk about it. The dress code in our little town had far more to do with issues of class and an attempt to stop the young people from becoming either James Dean or Marlon Brando (in the Wild Ones) than stopping young people from thinking about sex. As far as I can remember, those white blouses did nothing to stop the guys from thinking about sex.

Jumping ahead to 2015, the issue as to what female students can and should wear to school is far more about sexuality than the debates of when I was a teen. The argument from young women and those who have the ability to see the story from only one side is that if a female student is wearing something that a male student finds provocative or stimulating - that is his problem; that the male needs to his redirect those thoughts to something less distracting.

I would agree completely that is a male only problem only if the two following statements are true: (1) that anyone and everyone can turn off the mass media programming that all young men are exposed to that shows them what is sexually stimulating (give me a group of males for six years starting when they are in grade four and ensure that they are only exposed to the media I provide and I could make the majority of those males be obsessed with noses!) and (2) give assurance that no young female ever knowingly wears anything to school that is provocative because it is provocative. To suggest that it is only the males that have a problem is to ignore the reality of socialization and of biology.

None of which is to say that what a women wears ever gives a male permission to stare, make comments or unwanted advances. Never. What a woman is wearing should never be an excuse for males acting badly. The young women are right - guys need to grow up and get past this stuff. But it would be useful if some of the women who are placing all of the responsibility on the men would accept that what they wear can be distracting and that school might not be the best place for anyone to be distracted.

So in the next ten or so days, another principal (most likely a male one) will be afflicted with foot-in-the-mouth  disease and say something stupid, another administrator will over-react because a strap is showing ( bra straps are far less interesting or distracting in 2015 than they were in 1965) and students will rightly be angry that they are not allowed to wear what they want, when they want. It is an age old conflict - old fogies get to try and enforce standards that worked when they were young, and young people get to be angry about it.

We live in a post-modernist age. The old rules as to how people need to behave don't seem to apply anymore. I am not sure what the answer is, but I am reasonable sure that blaming half of the population for the problem is guaranteed not to be the solution.  As a matter of fact, I think we have already tried that. It didn't work out very well.