Donald Trump and his lawyers fined $1 million for ‘revenge’ lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, but you wouldn’t know that by only reading FoxNews.com
By Chris Roberts It’s news when a former president sues his opponent, and in March 2022 news organizations such as FoxNews.com placed at the top of their website the news that Donald Trump filed a $100 million lawsuit claiming that his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, were among those part of a conspiracy “to create a […]
Yes, free speech is not consequence-free
By Chris Roberts It’s hard to think that $1 billion will actually ever be paid to victims of Alex Jones’ libelous speech about the parents whose children died in mass shootings, but it’s easy to recognize that our First Amendment right to free speech does not mean speech has no consequences. Here’s the FoxNews.com story […]
Never take financial tips from a Kardashian or other celebrities, especially when they don’t tell you it’s an ad
By Chris Roberts Never take financial tips from advertising. And never, ever take financial tips when it’s advertising and they don’t tell you it’s advertising. Kim Kardashian peddled EthereumMax’s crypto asset in Instagram posts in June 2021. What she didn’t do was tell her audience that she was paid $250,000 for the sales pitch. That’s […]
Define your terms, or the propagandists win
Iowa State’s Michael Bugeja makes a strong point in a Poynter Institute column (June 30, 2022) about how some Republican candidates use the term “RINO” — Republican in Name Only” — to describe other Republicans who show “apparent disloyalty to Trump as GOP kingmaker.” His commentary includes Republican Jim Jones, who in 2021 provided a […]
How should news organizations respond to non-responsive responses for comment?
Ethical news organizations follow the tenet in the Society of Professional Journalist’s code of ethics that says good journalists “[d]iligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations of wrongdoing.” More and more of those subjects don’t actually answer the questions, however. Companies, politicians, and others often respond to […]
Facebook’s public relations efforts raise ethical questions
The New York Times took a penetrating look at how Facebook has handled the continuing questions about how it deals with its own shenanigans, and its difficulties in stopping the shenanigans of those who would use Facebook for its own propaganda and misinformation purposes. The Times‘ “Deny, Delay and Deflect” story makes the world’s biggest […]
When ‘fake news’ isn’t fake, and the ethics of a spokesman
It’s been a few months since news organizations caught the criminal lie flung by Melissa Howard, a GOP candidate for the Florida House of Representatives. Short take: She claimed she had a degree from Miami University in Ohio, and she did not. Once caught, and after some lying before acknowledging the truth, she dropped out […]
The Ethics of artificial intelligence: Platform magazine says public relations has to think about AI, too.
Artificial intelligence is slowly taking over the world. And, as usual, the technology is bounding far ahead of the law and the ethics. In this Platform magazine article, student writer Skylar Spencer raises some of the questions that everyone — whether in the AI business or a consumer of AI-enhanced technology — ought to be […]
Ram ad was bad, but Bell Pottinger story shows worse persuasion ethics
Discussions of the fundamental flaws of a Super Bowl truck ad are soaring higher today than any missed field goal during the game played Sunday, Feb. 4, 2018. But that’s not the bigger story in persuasion ethics today. You’ll read much righteous indignation of the ad that peddled Ram trucks using Dr. Martin Luther King’s […]