What's the Trouble?

This was a really great story though I was a little frightened at times. But I do understand the problem that this article poses: we all make judgements based on our experiences and conditioned biases. When I took intro psychology, we learned about this phenomenon. People unconsciously make judgements about people based on attractiveness, gender and race. I remember seeing Dateline or 20/20 do a study on this same phenomenon. They sent two women, one with a blond wig and the other with her natural brown hair, to collect donation door-to-door. The blond girl got more donations.

People judge others on first impressions and these first impressions are tough to overcome do matter what the previous behavior is. I know my neighbor has for years refused to convert their home heating to gas, as the rest of the street has, because as a child she was burned by the stove. This relates to the evidence about the businessman who won't make a business deal based on past failures rather than the data that is presented to him.

I think the important lesson from this article is to have other people voice their opinions. In two of the cases, serious errors were saved because another person, who was not as conditioned as the first doctor, made a different diagnoses. For our purposes, to establish if something is true, we could have multiple people check sources. This reduces the chances that conditioned responses will influence our decision making.

Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery

This is certainly a strange story. I would like to know more about the fallout from this book. Was there an investigation of the nunneries in Montreal and Quebec? How did the public respond to this? It is obviously very believable. The characters she develops and the detail with which she describes the nunnery are so believable that they can only be written by an expert. But there are some things which, if I did not already know it was fiction, would have sounded alarms in my head. First, these are just normal people, not members of a cult and yet this seems to be what Monk describes. I don't believe that normal people could carry out the murder of a nun, by jumping on her for that matter, without serious moral qualms. Secondly, it's too derisive towards Catholics. Anything that is so strongly negative has to be questioned.

From an ethical standpoint this is horribly unethical. Mencken's fiction was a harmless experiment that uncovered some flaws in people. But this slander has the potential to do damage to the reputation of Catholics. We know that it was responsible for the burning of one nunnery.

Lastly, I don't think people would be as gullible towards this article as they were towards Mencken's. I think people have a pretty good ability to call out exaggeration and discredit it. Mencken's article slipped under the radar because his fabrication was harmless and presented without such high drama. This story, I think, wouldn't be as easily believed by readers simply because of the great exaggeration that takes place.

A neglected Anniversary by H.L. Mencken

Last semester in my Hemingway and Fitzgerald class, I remember reading a story of Hemingway's where his main character has just returned from the war. When talking to the people from his town the veteran realizes he must embellish his war stories for people to believe him and listen to him. It reminded me of what Mencken talks about when explaining his bathtub story. He believes people are too eager to believe. And once they put their faith in something--he references the Washington Cherry Tree fable--it becomes part of history. This is what Mencken, with his experiment, found very distressing--that people are naturally gulible and antagonistic of changing their beliefs.
I would believe Mencken's article if I took it at face value. If someone told me it was legitimate I would believe the article was true. So I believe Mencken is being too critical of his readers and those who published encycopedia enteries about his article. People expect the article, written in a newspaper, to be real. The encyclopedia writers should have been more thorough, but the average reader can't be expected to question everything printed in newspaper. People rely on truths and yes Mencken fooled us, but it wasn't a fair test.

From a journalistic standpoint, the articles on child pornography don't pose an ethical dilemma. They present the issue of pedophile chat rooms and child pornography as investigative reporting. When conversations were cited in the articles, they use aliases or screen names which already protect people's identification. There is a legal dilemma however. In the case of child pornography, almost every case has to be reviewed independently. The old saying about pornography is, "I know it when I see it." Because no law can be written to cover every case, each picture must be judged on its own. This allows for a lot of judicial discretion. One judge could rule a picture while the other may not. This aspect of pornography makes it a very murky issue for lawmakers. Lastly, I would not want to be the reporter assigned to this story. Must readers probably just dismiss the news story because they don't even want to know about the vulgar nature of the subject. Also, I would let the FBI know that I'm working on this story so agents don't break down my door.

I read the story about Bob Greene before for Dr. Spinner's class, but I'd forgotten what Greene had done wrong. It's funny because when I re-read this story, I thought he was being fired for cooking stories--the same thought I had the first time I read it. Zehme builds up this monumental transgression and my initial thought was, "What could be worse for a reporter than cooking stories." (By "cooking" I mean making up facts, sources and quotes). But no, Greene had an affair with a woman 14 years ago. His credibility as a columnist was weakened, but, as Zehme says, it was not illegal and it does not violate any journalism codes.

The other thing I suspected while reading the column was that Greene kills himself. But he doesn't and in fact the story ends kind of abruptly. Considering how journalists have been abused by things they've done: Rush Limbah took prescription pills and Dan Rather cooked a story about the Bush Administration. Both of these guys have gotten off easily compared to Greene and yet it can be argued that their actions were worse, or at least had a more immediate effect on their jobs.

Dr. Spinner's Ethics Writing Class

Comments on Steve Elwell and Malcolm Gladwell.

Steve's article is so good because it so structured well and involves two story lines. Steve's opening and his description of the pathological disorder are well placed in the story and really keep the reader engaged. Yet the most interesting aspect of Steve's article in dealing with confronting Stephen about his lying. Ironically, Steve retreats from the situation with a lie. Without saying it, Steve reveals how we all lie to people in little ways, to avoid confrontation or awkward situations. So, while our lies may not be as extravagant as Stephen's, normal people are liers too.

Gladwell brings up the frustratingly complicated issue of copyright laws. His main example is a Broadway play that was copied directly from a profile he did for the New Yorker. He also talks about several songs that were copied, modified or adapted from previous works. While the article was written well enough to capture the difficult topic, I really hate this issue. First, it is mind numbingly nit-picky. Gladwell gives an example of Andrew Lloyd Webber used three bits of an earlier composer. But the challenger had to piece together three desperate songs to vaguely get a comparison. Who cares? The article reminded me of the story about the boyscouts (or girlscouts) illegally using the"happy birthday" song. Or the guy on the Maxwell Coffee can who realized they used his picture. Usually these people just see a chance to make money (however pathetic their attempt). Gladwell had a right to accuse Bryony Lavery of stealing because she should have consulted with Gladwell and Dorothy Lewis. But I can't agree or sympathize with the other examples.