The Ethics Score for 2005: Muddy and Muddled in a Year with Few Heroes

Nothing better symbolizes the kind of year it was for ethics than the conspicuous shortage of ethics heroes on the national stage. There were complex ethics dramas galore…the battle over Terri Schiavo, the CIA leak controversy (a.k.a. the Valerie Plame Affair), Lobbyist Jack Abramoff's crumbling influence peddling network, the baseball steroids scandal, and more…but they all seemed to soil everyone and every institution involved, with no clear role models or unequivocal good actors emerging.

Both political parties openly sacrificed principle to score political points, expand their power, kowtow to supporters, or all three. The Bush administration proved by turns inept, with key officials like FEMA head Michael Brown being exposed as unfit for office, and deceitful, as in its extended rhetorical dances over whether it engaged in, approved of or facilitated torture. While there were still blurry ethical and legal issues surrounding the role of White House staff in revealing Valerie Plame Wilson's security status, it appeared likely that at least one high official, "Scooter" Libby, had lied to investigators. He was promptly invited to Vice President Cheney's Christmas party, making it clear to all that loyalty was valued over honesty in this Republican Administration. The ethical performance of the Democratic opposition was different in particulars but hardly better, as party leaders and spokespersons engaged in demagoguery and exaggerated attacks, used "Big Lie" techniques, and encouraged racial discord.

There were ethics scandals in the Congress, with Randy "Duke" Cunningham and others admitting to accepting bribes and Tom Delay being forced to give up his leadership position after multiple indictments. There were ethics scandals in State Houses too, as California Governor Schwarzenegger was revealed as being on the payroll of a fitness magazine, and Ohio Governor Taft pled guilty to violations of his state's ethics statutes. If you were looking for ethics, the jungles of politics and government proved to be barren.

So was, surprisingly, the world of higher education. Washington State University actually set out to disrupt a performance of one of its own student's plays because it deemed the artistic work politically objectionable. So much for academic freedom. Tuck Business School's Dean decided that students who hacked into private computer data bases were nonetheless fit to become captains of industry, while the president of American University in Washington D.C. was confident that his position gave him license to live like Diamond Jim Brady at the institution's expense. High school education's ethical miscues were different but no better, and included the particularly obnoxious trend of middle-aged teachers using their juvenile students as sex toys. Pin-up-pretty Debra LaFave epitomized this misconduct, but she had company.

More evidence of past child molestation by Catholic priests, facilitated by bishops who refused to remove them, continued to emerge, but it was the fundamentalists and evangelicals who committed the worst ethical offenses in the name of God in 2005. While Pat Robertson used his holy pulpit to recommend the assassination of a foreign leader and to call for God's fury against Dover, Pennsylvania, like-minded Americans attempted to undermine a century of knowledge in physics, biology, geology and genetics by forcing "the universe according to Genesis" to be taught in science classes. The effort required being dishonest about whether the doctrine of "intelligent design" was actually the same as Constitutionally forbidden creationism, which of course it was.

It was not one of the more horrible years for corporate misconduct, as the news was dominated by stories of past corporate crooks finally getting their just desserts rather than new corporate scams, though there were a few of those, as there always will be. Merck's alleged deceptions regarding the dangers of Vioxx were ominous, but as yet unproven.

Of course, we must remind ourselves that sport is a business, and based on 2005, an unethical one. The NHL shut down an entire season, doing great harm to small businesses that depend on pro hockey and the communities that support it. Major League Baseball's self-induced blindness regarding the widespread use of steroids finally caused the sport enough embarrassment to take action, but not before several stars, past and present, were exposed as cheats and liars. Pro football had Eagles star Terrell Owens showing the nation's youth how not to be a loyal employee and teammate, and the Minnesota Vikings showing them that the professional way to relax after a hard-fought game was by having an orgy. Meanwhile, the NCAA apparently felt the threat posed by college teams with Native American-themed mascots was more worthy of aggressive measures than dishonest recruiting practices. And when college athletes whose teams were shut down by the devastation of Katrina tried to transfer elsewhere, the NCAA said that they couldn't play anyway: it wouldn't be fair, the NCAA said, to the competition. Athletic programs, not the athletes themselves, are all that matter to the NCAA.

But the worst ethics this year, as in most years, was displayed by the news media, electronic and print. Columnists, like Armstrong Williams, belatedly revealed that they were paid to render pro-government opinions. More journalists, some of them prominent, were discovered to have fabricated or plagerized stories. With complex and important events needing clear, thorough and responsible reporting, cable news spent the majority of its air time on the trial of a washed-pop star, the Aruba disappearance of one comely high-school girl, and the murder of one pregnant woman. Meanwhile, "experts" mangled the facts, law, and issues during the scant time allotted to genuine news. Reporters like Anderson Cooper abandoned professional objectivity and reported hysterical rumors as fact in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Bias, on the right and on the left, was more blatant and self-righteous than anytime since the heyday of yellow journalism in the early 20^th Century. On-line "blogs" often performed a public service by exposing the traditional media's worst excesses, but other's of their tribe helped lower the standard of debate by employing paranoia, incivility, exaggeration and gratuitous cruelty as tools of their trade.

Heading into 2006, there is reason for hope. The end of the reign of Tom DeLay combined with the lobbying scandal on Capital Hill may actually cause Congress to start taking ethics seriously again. More companies are installing real ethics programs that are more than window dressing; sports leagues are cracking down on drugs and jerks, "intelligent design" is in momentary retreat, and newspaper circulation is way, way down, which might inspire the idea that becoming trustworthy again might be good business as well as good ethics. Doctors, lawyers, non-profits and many companies are reworking their ethics codes, causing more people to think about ethics more often. This is always helpful. And more people than ever are visiting the Ethics Scoreboard, which has that as its objective: not to make definitive statements about what's right and wrong, because there are often no definitive statements to be made, but to encourage visitors here to think about how we ought to measure right and wrong, give them some useful guidelines and tools to go about it, and to apply those standards to the individuals in society who need to be accountable…which includes all of us.

Here are the winners of the 2005 Annual Ethics Scoreboard Awards, as voted by its readers. Thank you to everyone who participated; you did an excellent job.

2005 Ethics Hero: Don Bedwell
(Significant Runner-up: The nation's judiciary)

Bedwell, who gave a kidney to a virtual stranger to save her life, epitomized the individual whose natural ethical sensibilities should serve as an inspiration to all.

The judiciary received considerable support, and deserved it. Its courageous stand against the bullying tactics of the President, Congress, interest groups and Florida Governor Jeb Bush to meddle in the judicial system on behalf of Terri Schiavo's parents preserved the integrity of both our courts and the U.S. Constitution.

2004 Ethics Dunce: A dead heat between former American University President Benjamin Ladner, and Michael Jackson trial jurors Ray Hultman and Eleanor Cook

The university president spent tuition money to live like a Czar. The jurors voted to acquit the child-loving pop star, then tried to sell a book that said they really thought he was guilty. The president betrayed his students for greed, the jurors betrayed the legal system for greed, and all of them betrayed their trust. They deserve each other.

Liar of the Year: Ex-Orioles First baseman Rafael Palmeiro

He pointed his finger at Congress and in front of TV cameras and under oath declared that he never, never, never used performance enhancing steroids. Then he tested positive for one of the strongest steroids around. A liar for the ages.

Unethical Website of the Year: Ashleymadison.com

The website that encourages adultery, and is self-righteous about it to boot

Runner up: .000, the pro-anorexia website.

In the remaining six categories, Ethics Polluter of the Year, Worst Ethics Story of the Year, Most Unethical Corporation, Most Unethical Politician, Most Unethical Media Outlet, and Most Unethical Sports or Entertainment Figure, the nominations from voters carried due weight. The award winners, however, were determined by the ProEthics staff, and we will take the heat.

The Final Nominations for Ethics Polluter of the Year included TV revolting "looks-are-everything" reality show, The Swan; the Bush Administration and its reluctance to hold itself accountable for mistakes, misconduct, and ineptitude; Howard Stern, whose goal is to make crudeness universal and acceptable; the bile-filled "blogosphere;" Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, for popularizing the notion that being shallow, ignorant and without talent is no impediment to success as long as you are appallingly thin and rich; and columnist-for-hire Armstrong Williams.

But the Ethics Polluter of the Year goes to: Cindy Sheehan

Radicalized by the death of her soldier son in Iraq, Sheehan stood for the proposition that being a grieving mother gave her "moral authority" to demand special consideration from the President as she proceeded to call him a terrorist, a Nazi, a mass murderer and worse. Her endless and emotional protests were largely unsupported by rational arguments or facts, but were seized upon by anti-war commentators as diverse as Maureen Dowd, Michael Moore and David Letterman to make the baffling argument that a devastating personal loss justifies one's use of vitriol, slander, and disrespect.

It doesn't.

The Worst Ethics Story of the Year (awarded to that news event that represented the low point of ethical conduct in 2004) was: The Terri Schiavo Mess.

The "Oil for Food" UN scandal and the still incomprehensible Plame Affair bear mentioning, but it was really no contest. The Terri Schiavo' controversy sullied everyone it touched: religious groups, Senator Bill Frist, Rep. Tom DeLay, Jeb Bush, his brother, religious leaders, doctors, her husband, her parents and the media. It was interminable, it was sordid, and it was terribly sad.

The title of Most Unethical Corporation goes to: No winner!

This is hard to believe, but 2005 just didn't produce a deserving corporate winner in this category. All the nominations related to past scandals or future ones, in which not enough proof is in to be certain of what misconduct occurred. But don't worry: 2006 already has produced a couple of strong candidates. 2005 may have been the lull before the storm.

There were nominations galore for Most Unethical Politician: Governor Jeb Bush, last year's champ Tom DeLay, Ohio Governor Bob Taft; New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, bribe-taking Congressman Randy Cunningham; "Scooter" Libby, Nancy Pelosi, Governor Schwarzenegger and his side deals with the fitness mags, Al Gore, Senator Arlen Specter, Howard Dean, Vice-President Cheney and his support of torture, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her tortured denials of torture, President Bush and his quickly re-phrased promise to dismiss any White House staff who did anything illegal in connection with the CIA leak case… legitimate nominees all.

The title of 2005's Most Unethical Politician must go to Senator Bill Frist for pure versatility.

Any politician can violate the ethics of government, as Frist did when he aggressively assisted in passing a special law aimed at just one person, Terri Schiavo, authorizing federal meddling in a Florida State legal matter in violation of principles of privacy, federalism and separation of powers. But Frist also violated medical ethics by "diagnosing" Schiavo without an examination. Then he violated financial ethics by selling stock in his family company just before the stock price fell…a remarkable coincidence, since he had resisted selling the stock for years. Holding the stock was probably also a violation of Senate conflict of interest rules; selling it when he did has the SEC doing an investigation of possible insider trading. Now Frist wants to be President. He will find it difficult to run on an ethics platform.

Identifying the Most Unethical Media Outlet is like trying to find the tallest emperor penguin, and there were only a few nominations for the honor, including the increasingly slanted New York Times, Newsweek, which managed to set off in international incident by publishing an inaccurate account of alleged Koran abuse by American soldiers, and the Fox News Network, which often seemed to be making excuses for conservative newsmakers rather than just reporting the news.

Still, the award for Most Unethical Media Outlet in 2005 was locked up during the aftermath of Katrina, when CNN's reporters decided to make up the news as they went along. News anchor Aaron Brown went to great lengths to extract accusations from African Americans and Democrats that the slow response to Katrina was motivated by racism on the part of the Bush administration, while Anderson Cooper was reporting hearsay accounts of rampant murder and mayhem, bodies floating down the streets, baby raping (!) and other horrors, doing so with a degree of self-importance and indignant righteousness that previously only the shameless Geraldo Rivera had ever dared to display. Afterwards, the CNN crew compounded its offense by actually professing pride in its Katrina reporting, though it was unquestionably the most unprofessional, inaccurate, hysterical and politically biased journalistic performance in recent memory. The good news: Aaron Brown lost his job. The bad: Anderson Cooper got it.

The final 2004 category is Most Unethical Sports or Entertainment Figure, and the multitudinous nominations included Britney Spears, for spiriting her soon-to-be husband away from his pregnant girlfriend, and her husband, Kevin Federline, for being spirited away; football's super-jerk, Terrell Owens; that happily adulterous Hollywood couple, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie; last year's winner Barry Bonds, who broke his own previous record for disingenuous and slippery statements about his alleged steroid use; former homerun champ Mark McGwire, whose pusillanimous statements before the Congressional Committee regarding his alleged steroid use made the answers of Bush's Supreme Court nominees concerning Roe v Wade look candid by comparison; Sammy Sosa, who actually pretended to forget how to speak English to avoid answering questions about his alleged steroid use.

There could be many, more, but the final winner would still be Rafael Palmeiro, 2005's Liar of the Year. He achieved the double triumph by attempting to implicate teammate Miguel Tejada as the cause of his positive steroid test, hypothesizing that the star shortstop injected him with the steroid without Palmeiro's knowledge. This theory, which was rapidly discredited, immediately send the upset Tejada into a slump and the Orioles into a tailspin.

Some team player, that Raffy. He is, hands down, this year's Most Unethical Sports or Entertainment Figure.