Also I am pretty shocked at how no one feels ill at ease or questions the ethics of Lauren Windsor's sneak attacks on both Justices.
It seems that when James O'Keefe and his Project Veritas team misrepresent themselves and "get the goods" on their targets it is an outrage but when someone on the left does this they get lionized on MSNBC?
Also I am pretty shocked at how no one feels ill at ease or questions the ethics of Lauren Windsor's sneak attacks on both Justices.
It seems that when James O'Keefe and his Project Veritas team misrepresent themselves and "get the goods" on their targets it is an outrage but when someone on the left does this they get lionized on MSNBC?
I find both O'Keefe and Windsor reprehensible, and they would have no place in public discourse except for the power of the antisocial media.
What is the ethics at issue here, and if this kind of secret recording under an assumed identity is unethical, how unethical is it? I assume it is a violation of journalistic ethics and can understand why it would be. On the other hand, if an undercover cop gets the goods on a mobster by secretly recording a conversation under false pretenses, that is simply a fulfillment of professional duties, and we would hardly consider it to be unethical. Doing this as a kind of saboteur in service of revealing important truths does not clearly fall under either of this paradigms of unethical or ethical behavior even though it might strike one as a bit shady. IMO, the question of ethics here is not clear cut. I am not comfortable with it, but neither do I feel a “sense of outrage.”
I appreciate — sincerely — your apartisan disgusts at the methods, but I would like to suggest that you are doing "bothsideism": There is no equivocation between what O'Keefe is doing and what Windsor is doing.
O'Keefe's stunts rely on misrepresenting quotes, taking conversations out of context, and goading people into saying things that *may* connect to a conspiracy theory. O'Keefe tries to misrepresent that some person in Planned Parenthood is speaking for the entire Democratic Party — this is a complete stretch, even if the specific person O'Keefe is targeting is crazy. This is called nutpicking.
Windsor tried to get the Justices, who are important people that we *all* depend on, on the record in a very clear narrative. This is not some conspiracy theory, it is just asking them some garden variety question about what they think of the governance of this country.
Furthermore, Windsor had the honesty to both ask the same questions of everybody (so she was not really trying to customize her deception), and to share her conversations with everyone — including the ones with Chief Justice Roberts, which make him look rather good. She's not trying to embarrass anybody so much as reporting on important states of mind that we don't get anywhere else because of what some consider an oversight of the Constitution.
It's important to realize that O'Keefe and Windsor are not at all the same person. One is a propagandist, and the other is a journalist.
And I appreciate your fair and balanced evaluation of my post. I don't think this is really both siding because we all know James O'Keefe has no ethics and is a regular target of Lauren Windsor himself. Which I applaud.
Sasha Baron Cohen's comedy does the same thing but simply for entertainment.
I dispute your characterization of her as a journalist. Some call her an "advocacy journalist" others an "activist journalist." These are not in the strict sense journalists beyond the fact that they both use a keyboard.
The editor of a journalist would actually contact the subject and tell them that they will be publishing the comments and give them at least an opportunity to explain themselves. Instead she goes straight to the antisocial media and launches a million clicks, posts, reposts and essentially confirms that with which most of us already believe that Alito has some pretty far out (but not impeachable) opinions and that Mrs. Alito is an unhinged harpy. I also have to wonder whether the Alitos might have responded the same had she just presented herself as a journalist. I do believe Alito considers himself bulletproof and some of his opinions from that recording will show up in his next dissenting opinion!
Also I am pretty shocked at how no one feels ill at ease or questions the ethics of Lauren Windsor's sneak attacks on both Justices.
It seems that when James O'Keefe and his Project Veritas team misrepresent themselves and "get the goods" on their targets it is an outrage but when someone on the left does this they get lionized on MSNBC?
I find both O'Keefe and Windsor reprehensible, and they would have no place in public discourse except for the power of the antisocial media.
What is the ethics at issue here, and if this kind of secret recording under an assumed identity is unethical, how unethical is it? I assume it is a violation of journalistic ethics and can understand why it would be. On the other hand, if an undercover cop gets the goods on a mobster by secretly recording a conversation under false pretenses, that is simply a fulfillment of professional duties, and we would hardly consider it to be unethical. Doing this as a kind of saboteur in service of revealing important truths does not clearly fall under either of this paradigms of unethical or ethical behavior even though it might strike one as a bit shady. IMO, the question of ethics here is not clear cut. I am not comfortable with it, but neither do I feel a “sense of outrage.”
I appreciate — sincerely — your apartisan disgusts at the methods, but I would like to suggest that you are doing "bothsideism": There is no equivocation between what O'Keefe is doing and what Windsor is doing.
O'Keefe's stunts rely on misrepresenting quotes, taking conversations out of context, and goading people into saying things that *may* connect to a conspiracy theory. O'Keefe tries to misrepresent that some person in Planned Parenthood is speaking for the entire Democratic Party — this is a complete stretch, even if the specific person O'Keefe is targeting is crazy. This is called nutpicking.
Windsor tried to get the Justices, who are important people that we *all* depend on, on the record in a very clear narrative. This is not some conspiracy theory, it is just asking them some garden variety question about what they think of the governance of this country.
Furthermore, Windsor had the honesty to both ask the same questions of everybody (so she was not really trying to customize her deception), and to share her conversations with everyone — including the ones with Chief Justice Roberts, which make him look rather good. She's not trying to embarrass anybody so much as reporting on important states of mind that we don't get anywhere else because of what some consider an oversight of the Constitution.
It's important to realize that O'Keefe and Windsor are not at all the same person. One is a propagandist, and the other is a journalist.
And I appreciate your fair and balanced evaluation of my post. I don't think this is really both siding because we all know James O'Keefe has no ethics and is a regular target of Lauren Windsor himself. Which I applaud.
Sasha Baron Cohen's comedy does the same thing but simply for entertainment.
I dispute your characterization of her as a journalist. Some call her an "advocacy journalist" others an "activist journalist." These are not in the strict sense journalists beyond the fact that they both use a keyboard.
The editor of a journalist would actually contact the subject and tell them that they will be publishing the comments and give them at least an opportunity to explain themselves. Instead she goes straight to the antisocial media and launches a million clicks, posts, reposts and essentially confirms that with which most of us already believe that Alito has some pretty far out (but not impeachable) opinions and that Mrs. Alito is an unhinged harpy. I also have to wonder whether the Alitos might have responded the same had she just presented herself as a journalist. I do believe Alito considers himself bulletproof and some of his opinions from that recording will show up in his next dissenting opinion!