Ethics in Writing

[xlpanel]

Today is the day my brand new bright Red Scouter Magazine for Jan/Feb 2010 arrived in the mail.

 

The first lengthy article in the magazine is about .... ETHICS!

 

The magazine goes on to present the story of a web page on the internet that talks about students and teachers at a school. Specifically, the page "suggests that a married teacher is having an affair."

 

Then the page goes on to continue that 1 boy knows who maintains the website, but he agreed not to tell anyone else.

 

The principal wants to know, but the boy agreed not to tell anyone.

 

Now, the article continues,

 

"Now, the principal discovers a program that enables him to identify each person visiting the web site. He is asking students to come forwards with the names of the creators of the web site. If no one does, the principal plans to question each student that visited it."

 

The article ultimately ends, "What should David Do?"

 

Now, lets discuss the ethical writing seen in the article on ethics.

 

First of all, if the site perpetrates the fact that a teacher is having an affair, and does not present it as a rumor, the site can already be taken down for slander. A simple call to the domain registrar and hosting company get this done quickly. If it is presented as a rumor, it is perfectly legal (see the tabloids by the checkout), which means the principal can do nothing, anyway.

 

If a site has illegal content, it doesn't matter who owns it. Contacting the host and registrar will get it down. Thanks for following journalistic ethics here.

 

Next, we have the principal crowing about his program to find out who visits the web site. There is no such program in existence. In fact, it is impossible to have a program that does this. Of course, the principal could see who tried to visit it AT SCHOOL, but no where else.

 

To find out who visits a web site, it is impossible, without getting the logs from the website's host. And THEN after getting the logs, you have to supoena EVERY ISP whose IP number accessed the site for customer information. Of course, as there is nothing illegal about viewing a site that presents slander the supoena would not be granted, and this would fall through. And that is ignoring the fact that the only way to get the access logs from the host would be to supoena them, and you wouldn't get those, even it teh site was slander. (You don't need the logs to see who published teh site.)

 

Thanks for keeping the writing ethical and truthful through that part of the article also.

 

The best thing that anyone could do to help the principal was give him the domain registrar records (publicly viewable) and ask him to have (in the case of slander) those slandered to contact the cops, and let them take it from there.

 

If there is no slander, sorry principal, but you can do nothing, even with your fictitious programs.

 

It would be nice to see a little journalistic truthfulness and ethics in an article about ethics.

[shortridge]

xlpanel wrote:

 

"If a site has illegal content, it doesn't matter who owns it. Contacting the host and registrar will get it down. Thanks for following journalistic ethics here."

 

Sorry, but that's incorrect. Actually, a principal - or any other public official or individual citizen - has no legal authority to demand that a website be taken down, unless it's operated by the school district. A call to the ISP demanding that it be taken down would get him a bunch of guffaws over the phone, and nothing else. Simply asserting that a statement is "slander" gets you nothing.

 

On the other hand, if the people named on the site were to pursue legal action, they could probably leverage the ISP to take it down. But the principal doesn't have any legal standing to take such action.

[Twocubdad]

I'm a bit confused. Is your point that the article inaccurately -- and I assume unethically -- reports the facts of how ISPs operate and the technical possibilities of diagnostic software?

 

If I've accurately captured your point, I would respond that in the full article ( at http://www.scoutingmagazine.org/issues/1001/d-ethics.html ) the story is clearly labled as hypothetical, that is, fictional. As such I don't have a problem that the writer creates details to better illustrate a point.

 

If one wanted to do so, could you not question the ethics of omitting that the story is hypothetical?

[packsaddle]

While the situation may be flawed the central question that the article asks is valid and relevant to the second point of the Scout Law. What are the limits of loyalty?

[John-in-KC]

Everything, including the Scout Law, in moderation. CHOOSE the places and cases to take one or more points to the extreme.

 

Absolute trustworthiness and loyalty ... gives you Mafia underlings and mid-level managers in the Colombian cartels.

 

Absolute revernce ... gives you Jonesboro.

 

Absolute bravery ... can get you a Medal of Honor ... posthumously.

 

Am I choosing 4th and 5th standard deviation events? Certainly. Am I doing so as an illustration? Yep.

[Beavah]

Yah, gotta agree with xlpanel, eh? That's a very poorly written ethical dilemma. Problem is so few of da folks in Irving really understand the internet. "Wild West?" Try "Open Bulletin Board". And it's not like this sort of thing is at all new, eh? High schoolers have been distributing homebrew school newsletters since da dawn of the printing press.

 

Now, I don't have any problem with a school administrator who knows the perpetrators to have a sit down with the lads and their parents, eh? Far better for the matter to be handled by parents and educators tryin' to teach the boys an important life lesson than for da courts to be dealin' with it as a free speech vs. libel issue.

 

But da way it's presented in this article, the ethical dilemma is how to resist a school administrator whose behavior is a bit over the top. There's no need for the boy to lie, eh? He simply says "Yes, I know who posted the site, and no, I won't discuss it with you. And if you persist on questioning every student who visited the site from the school, I'm calling the superintendent and my mom's colleagues on the school board to discuss your unprofessional behavior."

 

Beavah

 

[John-in-KC]

My copy showed up in todays' mail.

 

Yep, badly written.

 

SB Member Mom should call the Superintendent and ask "Why isn't X following procedure and asking for advice from the District General Counsel?"

 

 

[OldGreyEagle]

I thought we were suppsoed to be teaching the youth to respect those in authority and not teach them how to play games with adherence to the rules

[Twocubdad]

I thought we were teaching citizenship, which includes both rights and responsibilities, and ethical decision making.

 

In this case, the kid seems to be stuck between two sets of sleazeballs -- his friends who published some fairly vile stuff, and the principal who seems to feel his ends justify lying, intimidating.

 

The kid is under no obligation to participate in a witch hunt. He does have a moral obligation to look at the overall situation and use his best judgement to do the right thing.