The technique, known as mitochondrial replacement, enables women to give birth to children with less risk of passing on a mitochondrial disease. Mitochondrial diseases can sometimes cause muscle weakness, intestinal disorders, heart disease, and shorten life expectancy. According to the HFEA, around 1 in 200 children are born with a form of mitochondrial disease.

So what’s the catch? The mitochondrial replacement technique uses mitochondria from a donor to replace the mitochondria in a pre-implantation IVF embryo. The embryo is then implanted as normal. Any children born this way will share a small amount of DNA with the donor, meaning he or she would technically have three biological parents, and could eventually pass the donor’s DNA on.

The HFEA, which is an independent regulator, has been asked by the U.K. government to “seek public views” on whether the technique should be available to couples who risk passing a mitochondrial disease to their child.

“The Government has asked us to take the public temperature on this important and emotive issue,” said HFEA Chair Lisa Jardine. “The decision about whether mitochondria replacement should be made available to treat patients is not only an issue of great importance to families affected by these terrible diseases, but is also one of enormous public interest. We find ourselves in unchartered territory, balancing the desire to help families have healthy children with the possible impact on the children themselves and wider society.

“We will use our considerable experience of explaining complicated areas of science and ethics to the public to generate a rich debate that is open to all.”

Nokia did issue an apology immediately after their ruse was discovered, and stated that the ad was only meant to “simulate” the image stabilization that would be possible with the Lumia 920′s camera. To be technical about it, Nokia only apologized for not putting a disclaimer on the ad, but the whole thing was a silly and unneeded screw-up. The company has since released a real demonstration of it’s PureView technology, which is impressive enough on its own.

Today, Nokia told Boomberg Businessweek that it will have an ethics and compliance officer officer conduct an investigation and prepare an independent report on the incident. Sounds like some heads are going to roll at Nokia.

It’s all a shame, really, since Nokia’s new smartphones look pretty slick and well-designed. The company should be able to market the phones on their own strengths. Nokia has now fully thrown in with Windows Phone 8, tying its future as a high-end smartphone manufacturer to Microsoft’s new tile-based OS ecosystem. According to Bloomberg, Nokia’s stock is down 45% since the beginning of this year.

“Ethical behavior and decisions are about how we expect one another to behave in this world — about being competitive and accountable and making sure our values are at the heart of the culture we want to have. This culture has served TI well for more than 80 years and has the ability to be the longest term competitive advantage we have. It’s the way we do business,” said Rich Templeton, Texas Instrument President and CEO. “TI is just as good as all of us behave as individuals.”

This is the sixth year Ethisphere has published the “World’s Most Ethical Companies” rankings. The Ethisphere Institute reviewed hundreds of companies and evaluated a record number of applications using its propriety methodology through in-depth research and multi-step analysis, naming the companies that surpassed their industry peers to this year’s list. The 2012 list features companies in more than three dozen industries, including 40 companies headquartered outside the United States. The full list will appear in Ethisphere Magazine’s first-quarter issue.

“We take ethical leadership and corporate citizenship seriously at TI, and we’re honored to be included again on this year’s list,” said David Reid, Texas Instrument Vice President and Director of Ethics. “TI understands that ethical practices not only support a stronger and more solid business overall, but they benefit the community and raise the bar for ethics and integrity within the industry.”

The full list won’t be available until May so we’ll have to wait till then to find out how less scrupulous tech companies that manufacture our most revered gadgets are busily destroying the lives of their workers.

This is the source of an ethical controversy that has sprung up recently in the arena of journalism. Each month, the Post runs a paid supplement called China Watch, along with a regularly-updated website of the same name. The “paid” part gets done by the Chinese government. In return, China gets to publish articles produced by China Daily, the house organ of the Chinese government, in the Post, and using its masthead. Articles in China Watch portray China and its government in the way you might expect–that is, positively, or else with a particular diplomatic glibness. Ad copy, some call it. Others call it propaganda.

It’s a hard boundary to find, that line between advertising and propaganda. People who don’t like being sold to are quick to label all advertising as propaganda of a kind, while free market advocates might suggest that if you pay for it, and if you make it clear that you paid for it, then even a government can simply advertise. The Washington Post says that it makes no attempt to conceal the paid nature of China Watch. Both print editions of the publication and its corresponding website bear a small disclaimer box in their top right corners. But critics of the Post’s partnership with China Daily argue that the disclaimer is not nearly as prominent on the page as the Post’s masthead at the top of the insert. While readers have technically been informed that China Watch has been paid for, critics argue that the prominence of the Post’s masthead makes a bigger statement, confusing readers who might think the Post at least officially endorses China Watch content. The web-edition of the pro-China publication is hosted under the Washington Post domain name. Moreover, the Post neglects to disclose who pays for the ads.

Of course, there’s no law generally requiring companies to disclose details about their advertising partners to the general public. However, things are a bit different when you’re dealing with a representative from a foreign government. The Post’s dealings with China Daily could run afoul of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires that foreign agents and their activities be properly identified to the American public. Such disclosure involves more than a box in the upper-right-hand corner.

Nor is this the only instance of dealings where The Post has been accused of serving as a mouthpiece for the Chinese government. In an editorial last month, Patrick Pexton, The Post’s own Ombudsman, lambasted the newsroom for at the very best, lazy journalism, and at the worst, kowtowing to the Chinese PR machine. Particularly at issue in the editiorial was the February 13 publication in The Post of an “interview” with Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping. It was later revealed that the “interview” was hardly an interview at all — Post reporters submitted written questions to Jinping, and in return they received a response to questions that had been modified, deleted, and added. Pexton disagreed with the newsroom’s decision to print the reponse:

So, The Post submits written questions — already a far cry from a live face-to-face unscripted interview with journalists — and the Chinese say, thanks, but we don’t like your questions, so we’ll provide our own questions and answers. Take it or leave it.

The Post took it. I think it should have left it.

Of course, Pexton pointed out, this is a complicated issue. While both the printing of the interview propaganda and the lack of transparency regarding China Watch suggest the Post is soft, even misleading, in its coverage of China, The Post also does its fair share of reporting that embarrasses the Chinese government and others. It’s a difficult world to navigate, especially when dealing with China, which often withholds press visas, or grows mum around reporters asking too many uncomfortable questions.

It’s not just The Post that faces this difficultly. China is sitting on a billion citizens, nuclear weapons, the world’s fastest-growing economy, and $1.2 trillion of U.S. debt. So it has a lot of weight to throw around with governments and major corporations, let alone media outlets. But is it right for The Post to lend its masthead and domain name to China Watch? Pexton observes:

That’s the thing about China, whether you are The Washington Post, the U.S. government or Apple computers. There is interdependence in the relationship, and constant negotiation and compromise. The Chinese know it, and they take advantage of it.

Right might not always come into play these days.

Hat Tip: The Washington Free Beacon

Whether you agree with this path of least resistance and prefer some other course of action so as to amicably resolve the potential problem, there is one thing you should most certainly not do: act shady about being Facebook friends with your students by telling them to keep it on the down-low or, worse, set up fake accounts altogether in order to befriend students.

A couple of teachers in England apparently missed this policy memo and are now being investigated for maintaining inappropriate relationships with students via Facebook. One teacher who, incredibly, exchanged comments with a former pupil about posing for erotic photos over a webcam received a 12-month suspension. Another teacher received a reprimand for using a decoy account in order to interact with students via Facebook.

This isn’t exactly breaking news because everybody knows there are creeps on the Internet. That’s not even to say that these teachers are explicitly creeps; they could very well be decent humans who just happened to make some very questionable decisions this time. It happens. It’s happened in the United States, it’s surely happened elsewhere, and it’s a pretty safe bet that it will continue happening in places. But if you’re doing something that makes you self-conscious enough to try to obfuscate your actions, then what you’re doing is more than likely not a good thing.

In the world of journalism, there’s this thing called a breakfast test. It goes like this: when determining whether the material you’re about to publish is appropriate, you ask yourself, “Would this be too shocking for someone to read while eating breakfast in the morning?” The metric here is that if the material is offensive enough to cause someone to choke on their Cheerios or spit out their bacon, then you probably shouldn’t publish it.

Similarly, if you’re a teacher, consider how some of your colleagues would pass the breakfast test if they were to discover in the morning news some day that you’re being investigated for how you’ve been corresponding with your students on Facebook. If you think your colleagues might require the Heimlich maneuver upon hearing the news, then you might want to re-evaluate the importance of those Facebook interactions with your students.

Our humanistic legal system—usually—would say no, it’s not the same: You can’t convict somebody for murder if they kill a virtual person or video game character because they didn’t actually commit harm to anyone. Then again, Muhammad Ali’s daughter was once arrested for intent to shoplift, not actually shoplifting. She put that picture frame back, even.

But that was in Ohio, where you can be arrested for pretty much anything, contrary old ladies included.

For some, depending on which side of the moral fence they stand, Tuplin’s premise is ridiculous. It isn’t even credible to blame Grand Theft Auto for actual violence, much less apply any kind of moral judgment to vicarious unreal behavior—it’s just a game. Pretend kill and rob all you like, have fake sex with all the fake hookers you want.

None of it’s real so none of it matters. The other side says, often while sweeping their own naughtiness under the virtual rug, that of course it matters: The secret desires of the heart and mind pollute from the inside out.

But as Tuplin either expressly addresses or leads the reader to think about: Porn surfing and virtual sex aren’t technically cheating on a physical spouse—but it may feel the same to the spouse. Not good enough of an argument in favor of virtual morality? Other than actual child porn appearing on Second Life, why was there such an outcry about virtual adult avatars having virtual sexual experiences with virtual children (who were actually adults)? Why is virtual rape out of bounds?

None of it’s real so none of it matters right?

Well, obviously there is a line somewhere, and these types of virtual sex acts are pretty far across it. Even still, there were protests (by those participating, naturally) that LindenLabs had no business in their creepy pretend business.

Tuplin concludes, “Either we will be forced to concede that as long as no ‘other’ is being harmed, people are free to do absolutely anything (torture, rape, molest, murder, etc.), or we will conclude that morality does indeed have a place in virtual worlds.”

You could add to that: stalk, harass, insult, or generally be mean to, but I’m sitting this one out as far as actual conclusions. No doubt some of our readers haven’t. In real life, I try to be good, and most of my most closely-held morals I adhere to online as well. Virtually, I’m a reprehensible criminal: I’ve killed scores of pretend people, dealt virtual drugs, given assumed names to assumed strangers, participated (in the early days of the Net) in gang-flaming in chat rooms, wished for the untimely demise and/or misfortune of real people I’ve never met or seen and only imagine what they must look like and how they must act in my head (pasty and fat and bald and in-their-mom’s-basement loserish), assassinated fictional heads of state and mentally whacked real heads of state, silently cursed, quietly and distantly lusted, run over the heads of cartoon cats with a law mower and innovated sadistic ways to kill pretend mimes.

Does all that make me a bad person? I’m going with no, it makes me a human person. If pretend-child-molested was on that list, though, I would have had to have said so.   
 

The Marketing Management Survey, conducted annually in May, polled 252 chief marketing officers, VPs of marketing, marketing directors and managers about digital media and marketing ethics.

Mark Hass

Ten percent said they had an implicit/nonverbal agreement with a reporter or editor for favorable coverage of their company or product in return for buying advertising. One in 12 provided valuable gifts in exchange for coverage.

“Any kind of undisclosed paid placement spells trouble for consumers, the media and the marketing industry,” said Mark Hass, worldwide chief executive officer of MS&L.

During this advent of new media, marketers didn’t exhibit much faith in the system getting much better. The resulting ire directed at fake blogs and fictional authors, for example, haven’t changed much. The number of senior marketers admitting to pay-per-play schemes is actually up two percent from last year and over half (53%) this year don’t see ethical standards improving any time soon.

“The online world creates a whole new unsettling platform for marketers who are willing to engage unethically,” said Hass. 

Consumers in general (begrudgingly) tolerate product placement in entertainment content like movies or television shows with the understanding such arrangements help pay for otherwise cost-prohibitive productions. But most would draw the line when it comes to news coverage where they expect at least ethical disclosure, if not complete objectivity.

But more and more those ethical lines are becoming blurred. Not too long after the DVD release of The Onion Movie, where a traditional television news anchor has to cope with the new conglomerate owner’s battery powered bunny drumming across his news desk, life began imitating art. Local Fox News affiliates began placing McDonalds iced coffee drinks in front of them, recently, with ice that won’t melt under production lights.
 

UPDATE: It occurs to me later, upon further thinking, that Rachel Marsden, based on her history isn’t the most credible source in this case. First red flag that popped up that didn’t make into the original narrative: who saves tawdry IM conversations like that? First rule of wicked affairs: don’t record anything. So take Marsden’s "proof" with a grain of salt, she’s been called crazy more than once.

Wikipedia Logo
(Photo Credit: Wikipedia )

Because I’m sure he’s probably sorry for it, given that his hand is still pretty stuck in the cookie jar. I couldn’t know if he’s sorry for sure, just a hunch. The man himself hasn’t spoken to me directly since he got mad at me for saying Wikipedia didn’t like Sam Vaknin (which was said as a sarcastic jab at Vaknin in defense of Wikipedia). I tried to smooth it over, even apologized for being a poor communicator, and asked for clarification that never came (neither did any subsequent requested interviews).

Can’t blame him. There are better-looking TV pundits to talk to about it anyway. I’m used to being told no. Rachel Marsden, it would seem, is not used to such a thing.

Okay, enough melodramatic introduction; let’s get you caught up in case you’ve missed it. (Surprisingly, the US media hasn’t picked up on this much, not when compared to UK, Canadian, and Australian outlets—not that it should distract from Presidential primaries or Britney Spears coverage, either.)

James Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, founder of Wikipedia, leader of a small, cultish band of editors as well as an entire open Internet movement, self-avowed "Objectivist to the core," and chafe in the craw of elitist academes everywhere, flat-out goofed. The kindest way to put it is that there was a series of unfortunate judgments, none of which was made in isolation from inside his cranium. That is to say, if it’s all true, Little Jimbo ran this fiasco right off the cliff.

And whose Gary-Busey-dark-side-lower-companion hasn’t done that at least once?

For Jimbo, that time is now, and unfortunately for him (justly or not) the fall from the cliff is a fall from grace, even if at least one blogger characterizes him as one who got lucky with a spaghetti-against-the-wall approach. (It’ll all blow over, of course, even if lots of people are having a good time right now dining on the entrails of a certain self-righteousness.)

Over the weekend, Wales posted an interesting response on Wikipedia, now moved to his blog, to rumors of an inappropriate relationship with former Fox News pundit by the name of Rachel Marsden, also known as "the Canadian Ann Coulter." If you haven’t heard of her (I hadn’t), her sketchy past is detailed on her Wikipedia page, which is a large part of this controversy. Dave Winer characterized it as trading edits for sex, but I’m not sure we can exactly, well, prove that.  

On Saturday, Wales wrote:

"Over the last few days, a few gossip websites have decided that my personal life is somehow of interest to people and, against my wishes, are publicizing details about a brief relationship I had with Rachel Marsden…. I considered myself single at the time of my one meeting with Rachel Marsden on February 9th, 2008. I am no longer involved with Rachel Marsden. Gossipy stories suggesting that I have been in a relationship with her ‘since last fall’ are completely false." 

By "gossip websites," he means Valleywag and Gawker. At least part of that statement was news to Marsden, too, who not only put "ex-boyfriend" Jimmy Wales’s shirts up for auction at eBay (current bid on one t-shirt currently over $12,000) while claiming he broke up with her "via an announcement on Wikipedia," but also released some lewd (and somewhat incriminating) instant message conversations to Valleywag, where all things sex and Silicon Valley live. Gawker says "one meeting" was more like seven meetings, and they weren’t really "meetings," either.

Your first objection, rightly, is wondering what Jimbo Wales’s sex life has to do with anything. Well, it doesn’t, especially, until it looks like, according to those salacious IM conversations, that Wales gave her a hand cleaning up her Wikipedia page. He even appears to acknowledge the huge conflict of interest there.

And there sure was a lot to clean up: No less than four other high-profile rabbit-boiling episodes, three of which involve harassment charges from old boyfriends*. The fourth, as far as the story from Fox goes, was that Marsden was fired for "erratic behavior."
 
If you ever saw the movie "Amazon Women on the Moon," there’s a classic sketch in it where Rosanna Arquette runs a dating background check on Steve Guttenburg to learn what kind of date he is. That would be a pretty convenient device to have in real life, and Wales sort of had one that warned: Marsden has a real history of sex scandals, despite whatever details she was disputing.

Did he not trust his own creation, or did Little Jimbo effectively slap on the blinders? Were the blinders that effective at blocking out the giant red flags? (Or Scarlet Letter, whichever you prefer.)

None of that matters, I guess, even if it gives some insight into the man’s judgment and weaknesses. We’re not supposed to hold those things against Bill Clinton, either, right? Sometimes otherwise brilliant men have questionable taste in exploits. Fine, we can deal with that, and any honest man would say that (as sexist a double standard as it is) that sometimes men do dumb things.

But here are the bigger matters: 1. Wales, who has been our champion of integrity when it comes to his community-edited online encyclopedia, lobbied his editors to clean up Marsden’s profile while having a steamy affair with Marsden, and seems to have lied about that relationship just before the proverbial caca hit the fan.

I thought there might be more "bigger matters," but that’s pretty much it. When you set yourself up on a pedestal, you have to be very careful of missteps at the edge of it. Wales built his community around trust and transparency. He may have to be transparent (and therefore vulnerable) to his community and trust that they’ll forgive him. I think they will, and in a few months or weeks or days will forget all about it. Until then, I imagine it’s pretty hot under Jimbo’s collar.

As of right now, Wales’s Wikipedia profile reads, "Wales had a brief relationship with Canadian journalist Rachel Marsden." It sources an article from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Perhaps that’s enough.

*The word "boyfriends" is used loosely here. One involved two-way sexual harassment charges and a college swimming coach; a second relationship earned her probation on criminal harassment charges; a third charge of harassment came from a Canadian policeman with whom she had a two-year affair.

Blogs became a problem quickly once the meme hit critical mass a few years ago. What used to be a novel event – an employee being fired for blogging – has become so standard that it is hardly newsworthy anymore.

While a blogging policy may work to an extent on a top-down basis, even if the company comes out occasionally looking like the bully, what do you do when an executive airs the company’s dirty laundry? Pack your desk, probably, as the company’s often sunk when that happens.

It used to be that the main risk you faced was an employee blabbing at a bar to a few indifferent earlobes, or worst case scenario, a disgruntled employee going to the press with a complaint, whether valid or not. But there was no guarantee the press would cover the incident.

And now it’s out there, just out there, on blogs, on social networking profiles, over instant messaging, via SMS, on YouTube, on Twitter. Everybody has their own personal broadcast network.

On a macro-level, that’s a good thing. It gives voices to the voiceless, puts pressure on the corrupt, robs the powerbrokers, spooks the machine. But idiots, too, can use it. And humans, who sometimes make mistakes.

Michael Krigsman at ZDNet, writing specifically about Twitter and the danger it poses as a many-to-many communication device, suggests companies have three options when dealing with a new platform that’s clearly not going away: ignore it; block and/or monitor; establish clear information-sharing guidelines. He recommends the last one, with strong enforcement.

But there’s something else that could evolve as well, something that will make the communication professionals job easier in the long run. It’s an optimistic model that will have to allow for the occasional negative exception.

When everyone’s a potential whistleblower, and the ears potentially listening to that whistle are ever expanding, we could see the rise of greater corporate consciousness toward ethical consistency, Google’s Don’t Be Evil philosophy expanded beyond Mountain View. This is a somewhat traditional moralistic view, an invisible eye that makes you behave.

I told you it was optimistic, as even Google has trouble with it. But the potential is there, a goal to strive toward, if a company is in this game for the long run. Transparency breeds trust (or distrust, if you don’t watch it), and when there’s trust and fulfillment of trust, controlling the message is easier as there is less to control.
 

Here’s Amy’s description of the panel and panelists.

My thoughts and notes …

Honesty and transparency – is it ever okay to mislead or deceive my omission? Compensation and influence – how does that affect what you say or don’t say….

Do people change the way they review, to continue to have access to junkets such as TV previews or book reviews ….

Bloggers do not necessarily get the respect that journalists get, but does this taint / color how they write to get that legitimacy? Small town newspapers, smaller media publications, also have the same problem, though. It’s a question of credibility – my credibility.

Astroturfing – it does happen on blogs and social media, but what can be done, and how do you expose it. Should it be exposed, and what is the responsibility of the blogger being spun or the corporation doing astroturf.

To acknowledge an error on the post is to be ethical. To just change the issue, you’re lacking transparency and not being smart about it.

::I called out the bullshit that there needs to be an organization, but that blogging wants to be both professional and still amateur – it wants its cake and to eat it too. There is Media Bloggers Association that is trying to get an insurance policy together, to protect bloggers::

Don’t be lazy – it’s a good aspect of ethics for life, no matter what you are doing.

Is anyone who they really say there are online, though. There are times that people have pseudonyms, but is that unethical? There’s a line that you have to protect yourself (career, etc) – but what is that line. Do you hide behind a pseudonym to be a prick and attack – then it’s not ethical. To protect and save yourself (job), then it appears fine.

Does character blogging fall into unethical? If it’s disclosed, does it violate the sense of ethics in blogging?

But, what is transparency and does there need to be a blogging code of ethics, a la Tim O’Reilly. Can you really set a standard and code for a bunch of divergent people, especially when the majority of bloggers are likely small bloggers and not into the whole scheme of things like a lot of the more seasoned or professional bloggers.

::For PR, this is an important issue – PR seems like it could and would violate the basic rules of ethics to get what is needed to be done for the clients (this is the PR people that are not involved in social media, nor understand it). It seems like the astroturf / fake blog would be the first thought in the brainstorm::

Payperpost (and in some ways, Federated Media) come up in a way that marketers are paying bloggers for chats and posts. If it’s not disclosed, is it unethical. There are all kinds of compensations that are meaningful, such as gifts, junkets. Is it relationship building, though? There are hospitality suites … and that’s part of it. Even link exchange, in a way, can be considered a way of bribery. Heck, we even got a wine offer for friendship from Christopher Calicott as an example of how it is just about relationships, but it can be misconstrued.

::Ethics is a tricky issue. At the U, it was always fun in the ethics classes because there really is no right answer. If you are a utilitarian, you do organ harvest from your own kid for the greatest good (if you’re saving the great minds of the world). But, that seems unethical. There are all these stories and issues::

Tris Hussey also wrote up the panel here. And, Amy Sample Ward is going to post also.

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