Oct. 7, 2010
James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times ran a column on Wednesday about the route consumer watchdogs have taken in the past few years. Names that consumers trusted to protect them, such as David Horowitz and Alan Mendelson, have left their former positions and joined the public relations side of business.
Horowitz lost his official job hosting a television show to test advertisements and companies about their products in the 90s. But he still tried to hold onto his title and persona of a watchdog, keeping things like a website under the same catchy name of his former television show and continuing to use a catch phrase people associated with him and his show — ‘Stay aware and informed. Fight back and don’t let anyone rip you off.’
After Horowitz’s show ended, Rainey said Horowitz began promoting causes to the public only when a monetary profit was offered. Horowitz also recently began writing a monthly column in Costco’s consumer magazine. The column offers general advice and Horowitz also accepts questions from Costco shoppers about problems they are having with products or corporations. Rainey also reports that Horowitz has begun his own consultation firm, charging consumers a price for over-the-phone consultations and for investigations.
Mendelson held a similar consumer advocacy job, and when he lost it a few years ago he also began to accept offers from companies to promote their products. Mendelson’s websites still offer the same promise that he did when he worked as a consumer reporter — he will find the ‘best deals’ for the public.
In Rainey’s interview, Mendelson said, “I didn’t want to do this. I was very happy in the news business. I loved my job. I had a following. It broke my heart to leave. But I had to eat and I was too young to retire. I had to do something.”
Rainey does not criticize the paths that Horowitz and Mendelson took after their initial jobs ended. Instead, Rainey just said, “I got to wondering what had become of Horowitz and a handful of other local TV reporters who focused on the rights of the customers after writing recently about the disturbing trend of pay-to-play news.”
Analysis:
Horowitz and Mendelson both changed their career paths somewhat drastically. The move from being a consumer reporter to becoming a paid promoter seems like a move from one side of the media spectrum clear to the other side. There is nothing wrong with this career jump, in fact, they are both better off for it, since it probably brings in a much steadier income.
However, I think the problem in this case is ‘Should Horowitz and Mendelson still represent themselves the same way?’ Horowitz has kept his longtime slogan, ‘fight back’, which an entire generation of people probably associate with his consumer advocacy show and work. Mendelson has also kept his ‘best buys’ theme, promising that he is a ‘black belt in shopping.’ If people still associate these two with those themes then do consumers still assume that Horowitz and Mendelson have remained in their consumer advocacy roles?
Technically, Horowitz and Mendelson have not broken any rules — they changed careers, and codes of ethics certainly don’t have to carry over from journalism to public relations. However, Horowitz and Mendelson do have loyalties. I think their first and most important loyalty should be to the consumer, since that is whom they have advocated for, for the majority of their careers. If they have not made their career shift painfully obvious to their consumer readership then they have violated that loyalty.
Working through Kohlberg’s levels of moral development I think both Horowitz and Mendelson are operating at stage two — what’s in it for me? The two of them are not afraid so much of being punished for their actions, but they want to work in the career that is going to make the most money for themselves and still keep their reputations as consumer advocates. As Mendelson told Rainey, “But I had to eat and I was too young to retire. I had to do something.” If Horowitz and Mendelson were to begin operating at a higher level of moral development, stage five perhaps, they would do what is best for the consumer because that is where their loyalties lie. In no way do are they operating on the consumer’s behalf right now, by only promoting products that companies pay them to promote they don’t give consumers the whole story. There may be a better product out there for the consumer, but the consumer would never know if they only listened to or bought the products that Horowitz and Mendelson hawk. In order to operate at a higher level, I think they need to make sure their new loyalties — to the company who is paying them — is fully disclosed to the public.
Because of their consumer advocacy reputations, Horowitz and Mendelson have a substantial influence over the general public in terms of how marketable or consumer-friendly a company might seem. I think that using these reputations for profit is unethical and one could argue that in the public relations world these actions are not unethical. But Horowitz and Mendelson both spent a significant amount of their careers in journalism and therefore understand a journalist’s point of view on ethics. After abiding by a journalistic code of ethics for a period of time Horowitz and Mendelson should have gradually begun to adopt some of those codes into their personal lives and therefore, these codes should have carried over into their next professions.
I think a consumer advocate should hold their honesty and trustworthiness higher than any other value because that is their job — to be honest and report the truth about consumer products to the public. I also think that these values should become terminal or lifetime goals and not disappear as soon as the consumer advocate takes a new job. So, while I don’t think Mendelson and Horowitz have done anything wrong, I don’t think their moral development is very high or at least instead of progressing higher throughout their careers, it has steadily decreased to an extremely low level of development. And this is a problem, because the public expects people in their positions (consumer advocacy) to operate at a high level and continually do what is best for the public interest. These former journalists are no longer true consumer advocates and ethically, in the best interest of the public — their former most important loyalty, they should make sure everyone realizes this fact.
– By Emily Johnson