#Gamergate

While I didn’t know anything about #gamergate before reading this week’s articles, I was surprised to learn what a big deal it was in the gamer community. Having never really played video games other than the occasional Sega game as a kid, the world of gamers is totally foreign to me. It seems that this whole thing started by male gamers attacking certain female gamers over the idea that women are misrepresented in video games. One article sums up #gamergate here:

#GamerGate, a hashtag that became a breeding ground for all kinds of conspiracy theories surrounding the "corrupt" systems that allowed Quinn and Sarkeesian to figure in the industry as they do. As the hashtag spread, spectators got increasingly drawn into arguments about the ethics governing relationships between game developers and the gaming press.

 I think this issue does introduce legitimate ethical concerns because it really brought out the ugly side of some people. The whole thing seemed to have grown way out of proportion to the extent that certain female gamers like Zoe Quinn were forced to leave her home from fear of death threats. Quinn, also known as a ‘social justice warrior’, was interested in opening the medium to audiences including women and others. It seems that these people who were against her wanted to drive her away while still maintaining the issue was about corruption. I think there is a case to be made for women like Quinn and Sarkeesian who only want women to be more included in the gaming world. Just because some “traditional male gamers” don’t agree doesn’t mean they need to post private information online and prevent people from staying in their own homes. If we were to look at this in terms of one of our philosophers, I think Rawl’s Veil of Ignorance would be useful here. Rawl asks decision makers to examine the situation objectively from all points of view and essentially says ‘do unto others’. Would these male gamers want their addresses and information posted online for all to see? I think not.

http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/ladjef/gamergate

 I think this situation of doxing is very unethical and really quite frightening. While there is no way to monitor what these gamers post online, I think it’s shocking that it went far enough that people were threatening Quinn’s life. This is all over video games? I think this situation is a bit different from that of Jackie because Jackie wasn’t receiving death threats saying people wanted to kill her, while Quinn did.

I do think it’s a bit unethical to create false social media profiles to inflate the size of the movement. It’s one thing to agree with the movement and claim there is a lack of female support, but falsely creating profiles seems like it’s taking it to another level. I think Kant’s categorical imperative could be used here as it focuses on the action. The action itself does not seem to be very ethical since it is in itself, a lie.

This brings us to the issue with Intel, who decided to pull its ads from Gamasutra. I don’t think this was entirely unethical as Intel is a huge corporation and didn’t want to be involved with something messy like #gamergate. While this has happened before with other corporations, I don’t find it as troubling here since Intel didn’t want to get caught up between two sides. They say” "We recognize that our action inadvertently created a perception that we are somehow taking sides in an increasingly bitter debate in the gaming community," Intel wrote. "That was not our intent, and that is not the case. When it comes to our support of equality and women, we want to be very clear: Intel believes men and women should be treated the same” (http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/4/6906909/intel-gamergate-advertising-gamasutra).

I think Intel employed the ideas of rationality versus emotion in this respect because they wanted to do what was right for the company. I guess we could also say they were only looking out for themselves (like Aristotle’s Golden Mean) but it seems like it was the right call to make. It wasn’t a sneaky move like creating false profiles, and it wasn’t a cruel move like posting death threats online. It was merely a smart business decision.

This whole #gamergate issue seems a bit troubling. I don’t know if there is a way to resolve this, but I guess the one positive is that something like this brings more light to the situation of anti-feminism in video gaming. Although I am a woman, it’s hard for me to relate to this as I am so completely out of this gaming world. It just seems so unnecessary to hack into someone’s account, post their address online, and threaten their life, all because you don’t agree with something they did or said. 

The Interview

While I did not see the movie The Interview, I did follow the news while all this was going on.  I didn’t really care about seeing it one way or the other but I was surprised when I learned that Sony was going to pull the movie. Not only would it have been a huge waste of time, energy, and not to mention, millions of dollars, but it would have sent the message that we as a people were afraid and weren't ready to stand up for our freedom of speech. 

When a multi million-dollar company decides to create a movie about assassinating the current living leader of North Korea, I think it’s safe to assume there is going to be some backlash. Many have said if the situation was reversed and someone decided to make a movie about killing our president, Americans would be outraged. While that is a valid point, this movie is just that, a movie. It’s a piece of fiction and is an American product of creative art, not history. I think it was not an ethically sound choice for Sony to pull the release for several reasons. To begin, the movie was clearly a satire comedy and while the plot material is somewhat touchy, it’s a farce, a joke. It doesn’t actually threaten anyone and we as Americans have the right of free speech, which is defined as “the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas”. What is the point of having a first amendment if people don’t stick to their choices and beliefs? One moviegoer says, “Other governments can’t censor what movies we watch here. We need to always be sure we’re protecting the First Amendment” (http://www.wsj.com/articles/small-theaters-make-free-speech-pitch-for-the-interview-1419531898). If we don’t release the movie, what’s next?

By pulling the release of the film, Sony was essentially giving in to the terrorists. It’s one thing to be fearful of the consequences and not make the movie, but it’s entirely another thing to make the movie and not be prepared to stand your ground. I think we can look at this through the eyes of Mill’s utility principle which as we know states that the outcome is what is important to deciding whether or not something is ethical. Clearly the outcome in this case was not positive, as the decision to pull the movie was met with backlash from everyone from fans to the actors to the president himself. As Obama said, “I would have told them do not get into a pattern in which you're intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks”  (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2014/12/19/sony-the-interview-hackers-gop/20635449/). We as Americans should not let people control what we do and don’t do through the threat of violence.

I think Aaron Sorkin’s article from the New York Times was enlightening as he discusses some major problems within Hollywood today. It’s pretty telling when he details how the media finally “got serious”, not because the hackers had released social security numbers, bank accounts, and phone numbers, but because of petty salary arguments within the film industry. I knew about the hackers releasing personal information about Sony employees but I was unaware that American journalists were the ones releasing the salaries.

Is this news? Is this what’s important to people when there is so much death, destruction, and war going on around the world? Now I love celebrity gossip as much as the next person, but I don't think it was right for journalists to release this kind of information. I think it’s important that people know that huge companies like Sony are capable of being hacked, but it’s not necessary to know specific information about the hack.

 In regards to how much money Jennifer Lawrence made for the movie American Hustle, I can quote Sorkin by saying “I don’t care”. While I do believe that women should be compensated equally in the workforce, why is it something that needs to be distributed? I don’t think it was an ethical decision on behalf of the journalists to release this information. Had they used Bok’s model and asked themselves how will others respond to this information going public, perhaps they would have come to a more informed decision. I think we can also look at this in terms of Gilligan’s Ethics of Care, which says that people do things for a larger good, to minimize pain and harm for everyone involved. Clearly, in this situation, the journalists did not reduce the negative reactions of the larger public but only exacerbated them.

I think it’s impractical for Sorkin to believe there should be solidarity among the film industry. While that would be nice, it seems that everyone in Hollywood is only looking out for number one. You could almost look at it in terms of Kant’s categorical imperative, which essentially says ‘do unto others’, a mantra that was evidently not used here.

The Ethics of Data Mining

The topic of data mining for this week’s blog post seems almost eerily appropriate, as it comes right after I watched an episode of NBC’s Parks and Recreation which deals with this exact issue. Leslie Knope and her husband Ben Wyatt tackle this issue against a pseudo-Facebook type company called “Gryzll”, who has been reading all their texts, emails, etc. in order to find out what people like. In Andrea Petersen’s article, “Parks and Recreation’ takes on online privacy. And it hits close to home”, she uses a quote from Ben who aptly says of this:

The Internet is no longer optional; it's a necessity for everyone. And I think that you do know that data-mining isn't chill because you stuck it into the 27th update of a 500-page user agreement. A person should not have to have an advanced law degree to avoid being taken advantage of by a multibillion-dollar company. You should be upfront about what you're doing and allow people the ability to opt out.

I think what Ben is saying speaks very much about the topic of transparency that we have discussed in class. Companies should be upfront about what they do with their customers’ information, yet many of us do not even know how our personal information is being used. While on some level, we all know that data mining exists, it is really quite unsettling when you sit down and think about it. While some data mining can be used in a beneficial way, the majority of it is used for the company’s personal gain: to sell us products.

In term’s of this week’s article about Target, I very much think the company’s use of data mining is cause for ethical concern. We might look at this through the lens of Mill and his utility principle which focuses on the consequences of the action. Clearly, in this case, the consequences of the action were quite negative as the girl’s father was upset and confused by the situation. In looking at this outcome, Mill might say this was not an ethical situation.

Even though we as the consumers do know that this type of targeted marketing happens, I find it disconcerting, both on a personal and ethical level.  Our article for today quotes Andrew Pole who says, “…as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn’t been spied on, she’ll use the coupons. She just assumes that everyone else on her block got the same mailer for diapers and cribs. As long as we don’t spook her, it works”. This in itself is cause for concern; Target knows that what it’s doing is somewhat sketchy, yet they do it anyway, so that they sell more products. Don’t get me wrong, I love Target and shop there all the time, but in looking at this under a closer lens, it is troubling. The very fact that they knew of a teen pregnancy before her father did sounds like something from television! This goes against the entire concept of communitarianism, which looks out for the good of society. Sneakily placing baby coupons among other ads would not be considered good for society, general speaking. I don’t think the manager behaved appropriately as he did not even know what was going on. It would behoove the company to let their employees know of the sneaky practices they’re using. While the manager did apologize and called the father again, the whole thing seems somewhat fishy.

In looking at this next to certain codes of ethics, many red flags appear. Firstly, the code of ethics for public relations focuses on honesty and loyalty, among others. Target certainly did not act in an honest or loyal way to its customers, since it basically admitted in this article that as long as women didn’t realize the specific ad placement, they could get away with it. Is that a definition of honesty? I don’t think so. The same can be said for the code of ethics for advertisers; advertisers are not knowingly supposed to create “false or misleading statements or exaggerations, visual or verbal” (http://www.aaaa.org/about/association/Pages/standardsofpractice.aspx). While Target’s marketing strategy is not false per se, it can be defined as misleading. This deals with the idea of credibility, something we have read about in Wilkins and Lee’s book. Plaisance also touches on this in listing out 5 key values of credibility:

•      A sense of responsibility to consumers, community concerns, and society
•      Decency, honesty, and truth
•      Avoidance of misrepresentation and deception
•      A sense of fair competition
•      The protection and promotion of the reputation of the advertising industry 

While items 4 and 5 don’t really come into play here, items 1-3 certainly do. I think many of the philosophers we have looked at would have strong opinions about Target’s marketing practices. Rawl’s ‘veil of ignorance’ is an appropriate term to be used here; Target certainly is pulling a veil over their customers’ eyes. Rawl looks at a case by asking himself what is the best course of action for everyone? This example with Target seems to only be the best course of action for the company itself, not the consumer or the consumer’s family. As Duhiggs suggests, “even if you’re following the law, you can do things where people get queasy.” As he very appropriately puts it, stories like these are both “unsettling and unsurprising”. We know companies need to make money and keep their customers shopping, but at what cost?

Rape at UVA

This week’s blog topic deals with the story about an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia, published on November 19^th by Rolling Stone magazine. The article tells the events of a freshman student named Jackie who was allegedly gang raped by 7 men at a fraternity party. The article inevitably caused a lot of shock and outrage towards UVA for failing to report this incident. However, following the aftermath of the article, it became clear that the journalist who wrote the article, Erderly, did not fact check any information from Jackie’s initial story. They claimed it was due to the sensitive and delicate nature of the story and they wanted to give the rape victim, Jackie, the benefit of the doubt.  In her article “Blame Rolling Stone”, Hanna Rosin says:

In his statement, managing editor Will Dana says the magazine relied on Jackie’s credibility and now realizes its trust was “misplaced.” (In a later series of tweets on Friday, Dana wrote that the failure “is on us—not on her.”) But any story, much less one as damning and explosive as this one, should never rely on just the credibility of one source.

This in itself is cause for ethical concern. Rolling Stone had to have known there could be potential outrage and backlash over this story, so wouldn’t they have wanted to protect their only source by verifying her facts? While we will never know the truth, we do know that Rolling Stone did a poor journalistic job; it’s possible it wasn’t intentional or it’s possible that they only wanted to serve themselves and have their story to go viral, which of course it did. However, it is clear that Erderly did not adequately serve her source. One aspect of this story I found particularly troubling is when it was made known that Jackie explicitly asked Erderly to remove her name from the story, but was refused. An article I found on vox.com says “If Rolling Stone published the story against Jackie's will, that is a terrible mistake on the magazine's part — and a violation of the ethical guidelines reporters should follow when reporting difficult, and sensitive stories about rape”.

I think Jackie does of course deserve privacy but her story should also have been fact checked. The very nature and ethics of journalism require journalists to make sure their stories are accurate and truthful. Chapter 2 in Wilkins and Lee lists a set of values, which should exist in journalism. They include accuracy, confirmation, and dignity, three things of which the RS article did not have. One writer from New York Magazine very aptly puts it by saying, “Protecting vulnerable subjects means not just being sensitive to their privacy and trauma; it also means getting the story right. Otherwise, a reporter leaves them open to the kind of credibility attacks critics are now leveling at Jackie”. In my opinion, both the magazine and the reporter are at fault for not being more transparent in their work. They opened themselves up to serious errors and as we know, journalists have an ethical and professional duty to pursue the truth about significant issues as accurately and as possible.

In looking at this case in terms of one of our philosophers, I was thinking about Rawl’s Veil of Ignorance, which asks decision makers to examine the situation objectively from all points of view. Rolling Stone obviously did not do this; while it might have shed light on the topic of sexual assault on college campuses as a whole, it did not objectively and accurately portray the details surrounding the event. One would think that the first thing a reporter would do in when receiving a story like this would be to at least verify that a party or event occurred at the frat house that night. Erderly failed to do even that. I would also look at Ross’s duties in this situation. As we have learned, Ross distinguished between the right and the good with the help of several duties. In their book Media Ethics: Issues and Cases, Wilkins and Lee say they would add an additional duty to this list, one which is implied but not specifically stated, which is “the duty to the tell the truth, veracity “ (16). Clearly, Rolling Stone did not tell the whole truth in their story, something we expect a reporter to do.

I think activism journalism can be dangerous because the very nature of journalism is that it is meant to be objective. While it is hard for anyone to remain objective while reading a sexual assault case, it is the duty of the journalist to objectively and accurately portray their source to their readers. Unfortunately, because of their failure to do this, their source, and the victim, now has to suffer with people not believing her story.  In closing with this post, I turn to Bok’s method of decision making in which she examines the following:

1.     Is there another professionally acceptable way to achieve the same goal that will not raise ethical issue?
2.      How will others respond to the proposed act?

I think it’s safe to say Bok would not agree with Rolling Stone’s behavior in this case. This article did nothing to promote a greater good and instead caused a lot of distress and turmoil for not just their source, but also the larger community and beyond.

Blog 2-Doctoring Photos

The case study that I am focusing on is from Chapter 8 called “Manipulating News Photos: Is It Ever Justified?” (205). This case involves a staff photographer from the Los Angeles Times who had taken a photo during the 2003 Iraq War. The image was powerful, yet profound. However, it was discovered that this photographer had combined elements of two photos, in order to improve the composition. He was immediately fired and apologized for tarnishing the name of the Los Angeles Times.

Since this is a piece concerning photojournalism, I will use the code of ethics from the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics. This code states journalists have a responsibility to the following four objectives:

1.     Seek truth and report it, or tell their stories even when it is unpopular to do so (Plaisance, pg. 29)

2.     Minimize harm; journalists do not need to avoid all potential harm but just try to be aware of the fact that their stories could hurt others.

3.     Act independently

4.     Be accountable, or as Plaisance puts, “abide by the same high standards to which they hold others” (29)

People hope and assume that journalists are going to be truthful when writing an article or creating an image, yet this is not always the case, as we can see from this particular case study. I think this code of ethics is helpful in evaluating this case study because clearly, the photographer did not follow the guidelines of the code. He intended to report truth but since the photo was edited, it was not the entire truth. Moreover, he did not minimize harm since he sullied the reputation of his employer and obviously, lost his own job because of it.  Lastly, I don’t believe this photographer held himself fully accountable because although he ended up apologizing for his actions, I would imagine he did not follow the same standards in which he held his colleagues and boss.

I think if we looked at this in terms of Kant, he would not fully support this photographer’s actions. Although Kant is about the action and not about the consequences, he does also want to know “is this action good”? Patterson and Wilkins say that according to Kant, “journalists can claim few special privileges, such as the right to lie or the right to invade privacy in order to get a story” (10). This photographer did not intend to make a mistake but even so, he falsified a photograph and allowed it to be published in a national newspaper. Journalists have a moral obligation to tell the truth and in this case, Kant would say the act was unethical since it everyone did what this photographer did, it would not bode well.

Let's now turn to another philosopher: Mill. While Kant focused on the action, Mill focused on the outcome, which in this case, was not positive.  Mill believed that an act was wrong if it contributed to unhappiness or pain; this photographer’s act of falsely editing a photo caused both unhappiness and pain for all parties involved. Walski, the photographer in this case, said after this incident "I went from the front line of the greatest newspaper in the world and now I have nothing" (Plaisance & Wilkins, 206). Mill believed that if a situation had negative consequences, it was not ethical, and if it had positive consequences, it was acceptable. The very fact that this case has negative consequences shows that Mill would not agree with this situation.

In terms of this particular case, I think the journalist code of ethics was actually most helpful in helping me evaluate it. The code very clearly states four specific objectives and the photographer in this case simply did not follow them. While it wasn’t done intentionally, his job was to remain accurate and true and to uphold the credibility of the newspaper. One shouldn’t alter a photograph to make it more appealing or more popular. As New York Times photographer Laforet stated, "Our credibility is all we have" (Plaisance & Wilkins, 206).