case 8, truthiness

Does anyone have any notes about the Colbert case? Can you post them? I am working on the case tonight...it is pretty challenging to think through. The case description does not point to a clear key ethical question, and I am finding it hard to arrive at a clear conclusion. Can we talk about case 8 during our meeting on Thursday?

here are some thoughts I have so far. Basically my position is that Colbert/the 5th estate has an ethical responsibility to appeal to truth, and is necessary for our democracy.

The market determines what is news worthy. One tragic event, such as the earthquake in haiti, might get close to three straight weeks of constant news coverage, but another important political event might get one tiny mention. There is a group mind mentality among traditional media outlets that gives more coverage to sexy, simple, emotional events than to more dry, complex but equally or more important events. At this point, news is about telling a certain story. However, people in the 5th estate often cover events that are not in vogue among traditional media. Therefore, having a robust 5th estate that tells a different story than traditional media can be helpful for our democracy because they bring up issues that cable news just won't cover.

Colbert's term "truthiness" was a critique of the bias of traditional news. The term was not a label for what Colbert does on his show. Basically what he does in his show is call for more reason and objective truth in the news, and while he does this through satire he on his show always tries to stick to the truth. Watch the Truthiness video at the end to see what I mean!

cable news, and increasingly network broadcast news and other "traditional" media outlets, are becoming more and more polarized and subjective in their coverage. But the real danger is that they still market themselves to the public as having an even, and balanced perspective. The subjective, market-driven biased in traditional news is masquerading as the traditional 4th estate of our democracy, when in fact it does not even come close to objective journalism.

They key ethical question here: how beholden to the truth are people who participate on the 5th estate? Does Colbert have to appeal to any notion of Truth in his show? Do bloggers and twitter users have to stick to the truth? I think yes.

Also, watch this http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/24039/october-17-2005/the-word---truthiness

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Truthiness
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Does anybody other than Jen have the notes to case 5, voting? If so I would greatly appreciate if they posted them.

Notes to case 6, Facebook privacy

I know Marnie has taken more detailed notes since we made these, but I wanted to go ahead and post anyway.

The below notes have ideas/research conduced by several team members. Some pieces may say similar things but hopefully in total they will be useful to the case presenters.

Case #6

Is Facebook going too far and is it safe to use? We could stop using our Facebooks,We could email Facebook and tell them that they need to automatically set our Facebooks to “private” or atleast tell us about our Facebooks going “public” and where we can fix the setting to “private” if we wish.

Mathew:

Case #1 the essential question is whether it is right for them to be talking about homosexuality in the bar and whether john aught to go over and argue with them. The two main resolutions would be John aught to go talk to them (depends a lot on location if it is a bar or a bar where lots of homosexual people go then it’s a big difference). Also if he aught to just go ask them to be a little quieter with their opinions or if he should start a argument about beliefs.

The other resolution is that he aught not to go talk to them: You should keep to yourself in a bar and that he shouldn’t go and confront them because it is their business.

Marnie/Dan: (I think, might have been someone else)

Essential question: whether it is right for Facebook to sell your information and change your privacy settings in updates

Aught: Facebook states in their terms and conditions that they own anything that you post on Facebook and that they can change your privacy settings in a update back to the default. They also usually send out a reminder. So facebook aught to be able to do that

Aught not: It violates your privacy for Facebook to be changing your settings so anyone can see the stuff you posted on Facebook. Facebook should not be able to sell and use your personal information.

Also the issue of keeping it free. We could pay to have a facebook, and have it be more private.

By paying for facebook, it would be less effective, so maybe having your information sold is a necessary evil.

They should make the statement a lot more clear, and shorter.

By doing all this, are they respecting our privacy in general? Is it a respectful relationship?

for some reason I was unable to open the link for the youtube video. I found it somewhere else, though. I think it's the same one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tqJq2gOBY0

• I still haven’t figured out how to post specifically in one of the links for the cases, so feel free to move this if you know how. Here are my notes on the whaling case, to be added to Emily’s.


• Main questions: 1) Whether or not acting is appropriate at all in this situation (if it’s any of their business what is happening in Japan) and 2) Whether or not the destructive nature of the action they’re taking is okay.


• We are arguing that it is important for people to stand up for what they believe in and that action is altogether appropriate, but that being destructive or even violent in that action is not okay.


• -They should inform people, take action, and use the media all they want, but we believe that damaging property is not a productive way to make the change that they’re looking for. (Two wrongs don’t make a right.)


• “The sea shepherd extremism is becoming more violent…their actions are nothing but felonious behavior.” –spokesman


• “We agree with the assessment by Martin Luther King that violence cannot be committed against a non sentient object.” But they do use minor forms of violence and they are destructive.


• United Nations world charter for Nature, sections 21-24 provide authority to individuals to “act on behalf of and enforce international conservation laws.”


• It is an international conservation law that you cannot kill whales.


• So they certainly have a right, even an obligation, if it’s something important to them, to act. They’re guaranteed that and it’s important. --Media a very effective way of doing that.


• I know this one’s not quite as cohesive yet… this is just what I had in my notes. I also took notes during the meeting in which we talked about this one, but they were in a different notebook that I left at home by accident. I’ll put them up as soon as I can.

The 14^th Amendment states that “All persons, born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

-Because it’s people “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” we’re not talking about foreign visitors, ambassadors, etc… we’re talking about people who live here and live under the constitution like everyone else.

We (CFS) are taking a consequentialist argument. We’re not looking at it as a human rights argument, we’re not saying anything about what we as a country “owe” to these people, we’re not talking about a moral obligation. We’re simply saying that the consequences of not granting these children citizenship far out way the consequences of granting them citizenship.

Consequence 1:

FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform) estimates about 363.000 children born to illegal aliens each year. If these children are not considered citizens, then we as a country have 363,000 children growing up without an education in America.

-This leads to a lot more problems, one of which is the money we then have to spend on jails, where uneducated people often end up. (Recall that these people ARE subject to jurisdiction, so we can still send them to jail even if we can’t send them to school…)

-The argument can be made that parents come to the U.S. in order to make their children U.S. citizens, and thus the number of illegal immigrants would go down if we took away this law. Many illegal immigrants come here for work opportunities or other reasons, however, and when they have children, the above problem still remains.

Consequence 2:

Children of illegal immigrants are statistically more likely to become orphaned or suffer from unstable family circumstances due to deportation or other circumstances. If these children are not citizens, social services cannot help them, and our country is left in a sticky situation. These children do not have citizenship in any other country, and so they will be left without care.

--this is sort of a weak point in the argument, we don’t have much evidence/it seems a little weird… look into this?

Consequence 3:

Healthcare-esp. for women giving birth.

-Look up hospital in L.A. (I can’t remember the exact statistic), but if these children aren’t considered citizens, we are leaving A LOT of women and children in danger by denying them help during birth.

Consequence 4:

If we don’t adopt these children as citizens, we leave them without any citizenship. Just because their parents are from somewhere does not mean that they will be granted citizenship in that place.

-if we do grant them citizenship, we avoid the above consequences. With support, they have as much potential as anyone t grow up to be productive citizens.

-It is a law for children to attend school because it allows them to grow up and support our society—in other words, because it’s for OUR OWN GOOD. This is no different for children who live here now whose parents happen to be from somewhere else.

Consequence 5: The creation of a permanent underclass, or shadow population. It’s not just the chidren of illegal immigrants who aren’t citizens, but their children, and their children’s children, etc. We will have effectively created a society with a dead end for immigration, something our country was founded on. The above consequences will also not be restricted to short term, one generation; they will be a continuous problem until something is changed.

parr center/unc vs clemson

http://parrcenter.unc.edu/ethics-bowl/high-school-ethics-bow

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tqJq2gOBY0&feature=relmfu

Presentation Guide

PRESENTATIONS

Be sure to look at the judges and TALK to them as if you are conversing with them.

1. Once given the case and question: In the 2 minutes you are given to collect your thoughts together for the presentation, write down the outline of your case in the following format. If you have this outline your presentation will flow nicely and coherently.
Remember: STRUCTURE is very important.

2. PRESENTATION: OUTLINE

A. Thank the judges and Team X for participating in the Ethics Bowl

B. In answer to the question [restate the question given] UNC will take the position that [give the position we are taking]

C. In support of our position, I will

a. First give a brief outline of the case

b. State the main moral dimensions of the case

c. I will support our position by looking at:

--who is being affected

--what are the consequences

--what and whose rights are involved

--whose autonomy is being affected

-- duties and imperatives—universalizability & using persons as means

D. I will then give a few objections to our position.

E. And will conclude by answering those objections and wrapping up our position.

F. Then do just as you say you are going to do, then conclude by restating the question or gist of the question and your position.

REBUTTALS

UNC would like to thank Team X for their thoughtful, interesting, argument. We would like to address their position first pointing out: [choices: they didn’t address the question, they missed the essential moral dimensions of the case, or their arguments were unconvincing…]

RESPONSE

UNC would like to thank Team X for their thoughtful critique of our position, however, we feel that Team X misrepresented, misunderstood our position—show how. Team X did bring up a new argument, but UNC believes that it misses the real moral issues or is irrelevant to the question or case.

ANSWERING JUDGES QUESTION

1. That is a good question. Thank you for asking it as it gives us the opportunity to clarify our position even further.

2. Thank you for that very interesting question, which has no easy answer. Our position [state is in one sentence] so our answer to this would be…

REMEMBER: After the initial presentation, anyone can speak, but be unified and everyone participate. Take time to think before you answer; Be articulate, speak clearly, distinctly and slowly.

Marnie's notes

Logistical Ethics Bowl Things... The actual Ethics Bowl is April 30th from 9AM-5PM (Don't worry, UNC will be providing some type of lunch). There will be a total of twelve teams competing; two of which will be from CFS. Each of our two teams will have five people on them. On the 30th there will be three initial rounds to compete in, then scores will be totaled and the top teams will move forward to the quarterfinals, semifinals and then the final round. A coin toss starts out each round, the team who wins the coin toss selects wether or not they want to present or rebut. Presenting first involves having one person give up to a ten minute explanation of their team's stance on the case at hand and answer the question the judges have proposed in addition (during this part it is vital to restate the main question at hand)! No outside materials are allowed during the competition- pencils and paper are provided so during the presentation team members may pass notes to the elected presenter and can also write outlines, notes, thoughts, during the rebuttal. Next, the opposing team has two minutes to come up with how they want to rebut. Any member of the team is able to speak during this time. The beginning team then counters that rebut. Finally at the end judges ask questions such as, "why did you choose to take this stance?" *Next Thursday (January 20th) each team should be prepared to give a 2-3 minute presentation about one of their cases pretending as if they were actually competing. **We're also thinking about starting an Ethics Bowl blog similar to the Senior Seminar one but instead of it being a long string of comments have an individual page for each case.