Judging Ethics and Morality based on Behavior

All of the news about separating children from their parents keeps bringing me back to questions of ethics and morality, and the ACTIONS of the current administration, which many are judging to be immoral.

Behavior stems from ethical principles and moral judgments about right and wrong.  Thus we can evaluate a person's (or government's) ethics and morality by observing their behavior and actions.

I teach ethics in most of my media classes, so here are some definitions:  Ethics are general principles, morality is the ethical judgment of good and bad, and values are actions based on ethics and morality.

I don't like being partisan. I am registered without any party affiliation and I have said for years that I base my election choices on my perception of the ability of the candidate to perform critical thinking, as well as stance on specific issues of importance to me. Critical thinking, applied to ethical principles, is where morality and behaviors come from.

The morality of separating children from their parents is not defensible, particularly since they apparently have no plan for how to reunite the parents and children.  Adults who have been released still can't find out where their kids are.

The attempts at rationalization do not hold up and are often logical fallacies:

• "They broke the law."  Sorry, but many of them did not, because they stopped at the border and requested asylum. And even if they did, first-time violations are no more than misdemeanors. Separating children from parents in a way that they may not be able to find each other again is cruel and unusual punishment, particularly when it is done before conviction. Even felony convicts can have family visitation.
• "Obama (or somebody else) did it too."  Sorry, but alleged past infractions are irrelevant to current unethical behavior. Morality must stand on its own, not through "whatabout" logical fallacies about the past. 
• "The Democrats made me do it." Sorry, but the Trump administration's policy changed in April 2-18, through a directive from the Republican administration.  Nobody MADE them do anything. You have to take personal responsibility for your actions.
• "The Bible made me do it."  Sorry, but narrow out-of-context Bible verses, particularly verses that have been used to justify immoral actions in the past, cannot be a basis for ethical policy today. Holistic reading of the Bible makes clear that you do not mistreat foreigners or children.
• "We need the WALL, wah, wah, wah..." Sorry, but this is a policy question that is unrelated to tearing families apart. Republicans have not been motivated to pass funding for The Wall, so the Trump administration tried blackmail (although the GOP is trying). 

The list of rationalizations and logical fallacies goes on and on, but the point is that immoral behavior cannot be lessened by weasel words. Actions tell the tale about ethics and morality.  We judge a person's (or government's) ethics by ethical or unethical actions.

This is exactly why we need organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).   We need organizations that are willing to TEST the morality of the "groupthink" that can lead policymakers astray. The causes ACLU champions are often not popular, but the way to push back against immoral governmental behavior is to challenge it in the courts, and that's what ACLU does well.

By the way, I wonder if it has occurred to Trump supporters that if they LIKE the separation policy as a deterrent, they should be thanking Democrats, who they feel are responsible for the wording of the law.

So, if you, or politicians you support, make immoral decisions, and act accordingly, don't be surprised if YOUR ethics and morality are found to be lacking.

Formula Scripts in TV and Movies

The growth of original series on streaming video services and cable has resulted in an explosion in the demand for scripts and "pitches" for series, not to mention movies, many of which never end up getting produced.

Nevertheless, many of these scripts, as diverse as they are, follow the same basic formulas.  One could argue that a "formula script" lacks creativity...but creativity actually resides in how new it feels, i.e. what is different, as opposed to what is similar to other uses of the formula.

Here are three storytelling formulas that we see over and over, including one that I consider to be particularly troubling:

1.  The Hero's Journey.  

In the 1940s, Joseph Campbell studied myths from many cultures (mostly Western) and found common elements.  A young reluctant hero is called to a journey that takes him out of his ordinary experience and discovers a villain or threat to which he has a hidden connection.  He has fellow travelers who help him as he is tested, and an older mentor.  The older mentor is taken away, and the young hero most stand up to the villain alone, eventually triumphing and returning to his ordinary life.

Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings are all basically this same "Hero's Journey" story.  Even the original Die Hard movie used a lot of elements from this formula.

Because this formula is so familiar, writers use it all the time, or at least elements from it. The familiarity allows readers/listeners/viewers to easily engage in the story.

2.  Save the Cat

Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need by Blake Snyder
was published in 2005 and rapidly became the "bible" for many movie writers.  Save the Cat software is even available to help writers structure their story to Snyder's sequence of "beats."  If you know what to look for, you can find these "beats" in many movies and even TV shows.

At one level, Save the Cat is an interpretation of how to translate Joseph Campbell into visual storytelling terms.  At another level, it allows writers to make use of the psychology of the audience in terms of primary and secondary (A & B) stories, major milestones in the plot, and pacing.

Follow those links and you may be surprised.

3. Dystopia

Dystopia is the opposite of Utopia.  In dystopian stories, times are dark, there is little hope, and people are generally bad.  Such stories are often set in the future, with totalitarian governments, dehumanized citizenry, rampant crime, and environmental disaster.  Brave New World, 1984, and Lord of the Flies were dystopian, but in the last decade, we have been deluged by dystioian settings for movies, books, and TV shows.  Sometimes the heroes are admirable, but sometimes not.

Science Fiction writer and futurist David Brin has call dystopian stories lazy, cliched, and cookie cutter.  They are easy stories to tell, resonate with conspiracy theory and suspicion of authority, and they often do not require nuanced characters, which makes it a lot easier for the writers to create.

What does it mean?

The main goal of the movie, television, and publishing industries is to make money.  To make money, they need to produce content that audiences will buy.

That is why so many stories today follow the Hero's Journey, Save the Cat and Dystopian structures.  They resonate with people and gain acceptance more easily than some unusual storytelling approach, but to their foundation of familiarity.

The question media critics and even psychologists must ask is how these stories affect our psyches. The media has incredible power to influence people's perceptions and actions.  Heroes, like Luke, Harry, and Frodo, may well subtly influence people to do what is right in the real world, not just what is easy.

But how about the modern dystopian orientation of story after story? Does it subtly influence people to see conspiracies everywhere, distrust authority, accept thoughtless ideology, and expect people to conform to the dictates of the perceived majority?

Waves of dystopian fiction usually come during times of social unrest and war.  Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 459, and Animal Farm all stemmed from the Cold War and deep concerns about communism. Today's stories are written against a background of seemingly endless war, unstoppable terrorism, and fake news.

This recent New Yorker article suggests that for every present-day dilemma, there is a dystopian novel to match it, and that the resulting "radical pessimism" has resulted in the unravelling of trust in science and the weakening of a commitment to political pluralism.

I think that dystopian story after dystopian DOES affect our national mood and makes "the ends justify the means" more and more acceptable, when it shouldn't be. So if the "heroes" are unlikable and do unethical things to each other, don't expect me to watch.

What is a reporter's job, really?

Many people today misunderstand what a reporter does, and how the reporter is supposed to do the job. The reason is that there are so many people out there writing things that seem like they are journalism, but are not.

The pictured tweet is a reminder to reporters to be persistent, but for those of you who have never BEEN a reporter, let's try to understand more about the job really is.

News Judgment

The definition of what is, or is not, news is complex, because it can vary from day to day.  When a hurricane hits Texas or Florida, most other things are not news.  The same stories might get a lot of attention on another day, when the weather is fine.

But my working definition of news is things that are out of the ordinary.  Another way of saying that is things that are "new, different, or changing."  Same-old-same-old is not news.  "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead" is not news.

Reporter's Opinion

The reporter is not supposed to be part of the story.  In particular, the reporter's opinion is not supposed to be stated, or even allowed creep in.

Any opinion or value judgment in a professionally-writtten news story must be attributed to someone.  If no source for a value judgment is stated, then the "story" is not news.

The only things that do not need to be attributed in journalistic writing are facts that are "widely known or easily verifiable." We don't need to quote a source as saying that a hurricane hit Texas, but we DO need to quote sources concerning details of damage, etc.

Furthermore, if there are multiple legitimate sides to the story, they must all be told, and in a way that each side perceives the story as fairly representing their position. But note the word "legitimate."  We do not need to place the Flat Earth Society on an equal footing with astronomers in our eclipse stories.

Be persistent

As the Overheard in the Newsroom quote suggests, a reporter must be persistent. A reporter cannot be helpless, just because some official does not call back.  A reporter must try again and again.  Email, phone, go to the person's office, camp out on their home front steps (if it is an important enough story).

If it is a story worth covering, it MUST be covered, whether that one person calls back or not.  There are other people who you can find to interview and quote, even if they are not the ideal person, who has failed to call back.

Follow the story

Once a reporter has reported on a story, developments in the story must also be reported.

If we report that someone is arrested for something, we need to report on what happens when the person gets to court.

When President Gerald Ford tripped a couple of times on camera, it then became an expectation that future klutz moments must also be reported.

When President Trump was found to be tweeting inaccurate information, future inaccurate tweets also had to be reported.

Sometimes journalism is a "one and done" story, but more often, it is following a developing story, even if the developments come weeks apart.

Get details right

I tell my news writing students to quadruple check facts.  Reporters cannot make assumptions, misquote, or allow other inaccuracies into their stories.  Accuracy is one of the things that separates journalism from advocacy using journalistic formats.

Avoid anonymous sources

Yes, that's right, "avoid."

Journalistic standards say we can ONLY cite anonymous sources when the source could be threatened with punishment or could otherwise come to harm from having the source's name known publicly.

There is some wiggle room here.  Often we hear about a "White House staff member familiar with the issue" and we know that it is actually a coordinated intentional release, but they just don't want a particular name associated with the information.

So what?

There's a lot more to a reporter's job, of course, like complying with AP style, strong leads, use of effective quotes...

But in today's environment of persuasion cloaked in trappings of journalism, it can be hard for the general public to understand why journalists do what they do, even when there are strong ethical and professional reasons.  It is even more complicated when politicians criticize journalists for doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing.

We need to remember "Caveat Emptor," or "let the buyer beware" and bring our critical thinking to bear.  Much of what you initially think is "news" is really propaganda and persuasion.  Just because you may agree with the conclusions of some article you read does not mean it properly tells all sides of a story, or is even true.

Who Posts Trump's Tweets?

When I first read the president's tweets about Charlottesville, my immediate reaction was that some of them didn't read the way he says things.  It turns out that some of them MAY have come from a staffer, not Trump himself.

During the campaign in 2016, we know pretty certainly that some @realDonaldTrump posts were made by the candidate himself, and some were made by staffers.  The language was different, but also some were posted from an Android device and some from Twitter for iPhone.  Trump was using the Android device during the campaign and staffers had the iPhone.

This is not unexpected. There are a LOT of politicians and celebrities who have staffers or publicists manage or contribute to their social media.  It is pretty much standard procedure, except that most politicians probably do the hands-on tweeting less than Trump has.

This article from March scrutinizes the Twitter dynamic of the Trump campaign/presidency. It turns out that some tweets are STILL probably written by somebody other than the president, personally. Again, not at all unreasonable for a politician.

The @TrumpOrNotBot bot analyzes the president's tweets and uses machine learning and natural language processing to estimate the likelihood Trump wrote a tweet himself.  It uses an algorithm that compares new tweets to the president’s massive Twitter record, and calculates the odds that Trump, personally, wrote the new tweet. Supposedly the algorithm is continually updated.

So what do I conclude from looking at the analysis?

I think it's really hard to accurately analyze the language, but the platforms the tweets come from are interesting.  This week, most tweets have still been sent from an iPhone, but some are from the "Media Studio" Android app.

The Media Suite Android posts are more likely to be announcements about events, videos of the president, government reports, etc.  Advocacy posts (and insults) are more likely to come from the iPhone app.

So what did @realDonaldTrump tweet?

iPhone:  We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one! 

iPhone: What is vital now is a swift restoration of law and order and the protection of innocent lives. #Charlottesville 

Android Media Studio: We must remember this truth: No matter our color, creed, religion or political party, we are ALL AMERICANS FIRST. 

Android Media Studio: We will continue to follow developments in Charlottesville, and will provide whatever assistance is needed. We are ready, willing and able. 

iPhone:  Deepest condolences to the families & fellow officers of the VA State Police who died today. You're all among the best this nation produces. 

iPhone: Condolences to the family of the young woman killed today, and best regards to all of those injured, in Charlottesville, Virginia. So sad! 

iPhone: Our thoughts & prayers are with the families, friends & colleagues of #Virginia's @VSPPIO Lt Cullen & Tpr Bates #Charlottesville

I don't think it is likely that sometimes the president uses one phone and sometimes another, sometimes iOS and sometimes Android. It would not surprise me if more than one trusted person using an has access to post to the account. So I interpret the Android Media Studio posts as being the White House Communications office or other trusted party, and most, if not all, of the iPhone posts being directly from the hand of the president

In some ways, none of this matters, other than as a curiosity to observers. If something is released over the signature of the president, it IS functionally the president saying it, no matter who wrote it.  But given the unique Twitter dynamic the president has established, I find it to be intriguing to try to understand which tweets fall into which categories.

And particularly in light of the recent criticism of whether Trump should have called out white supremacists the way he calls out everybody else, I do wonder who really is posting what content to the president's accounts.

Strategic Distraction in Social Media

Given the power that social media has to influence society and social agendas, it's become a regular tactic to use social media ti divert attention away from the bad stuff.

Trump does it.  Lots of other organizations do it. But we are hardly aware of what is going on.

Two stories have prompted this post. The first is about a study that concludes that the Chineses government employs a tactic of diverting attention from bad news or dissent. They do this NOT by addressing the issue to counter arguments, but by inundating social media with other, positive content that leads the conversation away from the dissent. The study concludes that they do this with an "army" of 2 million people who flood the internet with positive news posts.

The article quoted one of the authors of the study as saying:

We had always thought that the purpose of propaganda was to argue against or undermine critics of the regime, or to simply persuade people that the critics were wrong. But what we found is that the Chinese government doesn’t bother with any of that.  Instead, the content of their propaganda is what we call “cheerleading” content. Basically, they flood the web with overwhelmingly positive content about China’s politics and culture and history. What it amounts to is a sprawling distraction campaign rather than an attempt to sell a set of policies or defend the policies of the regime.

The second story I read recently concludes that bots are a major factor in spreading "fake news" on Twitter. Automated accounts are particularly active in the early spreading of viral claims, and tend to target influential users, according to the authors.

I have addressed bots before and not all are bad, but in the political realm, they are doing more than just auto-liking posts.

So what can we learn from these two stories?

• There are organizations and governments that are actively manipulating the flow of information via social media and the Internet, for their own benefit.
• Often, their goal is distraction.

The Chinese government uses "good news" to overwhelm the "candle in the wind" of dissent.

Donald Trump uses insults to distract from the criminal investigations centered on his election campaign.

But whether he knows it or now, Trump also distracts from OTHER important things going on in the American government.  Because the insult of the day has to be reported and analyzed in the media (it doesn't but they haven't figured that out yet).....

Other important things never bubble up to the surface for broad discussion, like this story about a Commerce Department plan that could reduce the size of 11 marine sanctuaries and monuments.

If the opposition wants to retake Congress in 2020, and retake the White House in due course, they have to get MUCH more sophisticated about how they disseninate simple, straightforward Twitter-like talking points that will REALLY get the attention of undecided voters. Armies of people doing coordinated posting and bots are clearly fair game, but false information is not, in my opinion.

The Bots are Taking Over

The news has been going around this week that millions of Donald Trump's Twitter followers are fake -- automated "bot" accounts that are not real people.

Not all bots are bad, but they can easily be used to falsify interactivity in social media.  How do bots work?