The Business Ethics Blog

The publicly-subsidized transit company in Halifax, Nova Scotia (the town where I live & work) is in the news today for its decision to reject what it considers “controversial” ads.

Here’s the story, from the Chronicle Herald: Metro Transit rejects Godless ad

Metro Transit will not allow an advertisement saying You Can Be Good Without God on its buses.

“We’re a public transit service first, and then we sell advertising on the side, and normally the standard procedure is we have a contracted agency who sells our advertising,” said Metro Transit spokeswoman Lori Patterson on Monday.

“If there’s something that’s viewed to be controversial, as part of our contract we get to see the messaging on it, and so they advise us if they think something’s going to be controversial and then we review the message.

“If we feel it’s going to be something that’s going to upset a number of people, we don’t choose to advertise it,” Ms. Patterson said.

Humanist Canada, the organization behind the advertisement, says on its website that it hopes to place the message in bus terminals and subway stations across Canada over the next few weeks.

“We want people to know that belief in a god is not necessary to live a full, moral and happy life. Humanists embody this concept every day,” Humanist Canada president Pat O’Brien wrote on the website on Friday.

Metro Transit doesn’t have a leg to stand on, here. They’re not wrong when they say that a number of people could be upset by the ad. But that’s a lousy criterion. In a society that values free speech, messages can’t be suppressed just because they might upset someone. (And for what it’s worth — though I think this is technically irrelevant — the message in question, here, is pretty inoffensive. Indeed, it’s a happy, hopeful message. And one that rings true. Readers of this blog will know that the arguments presented here never mention God. Ethical behaviour, and most ethical argumentation, does not have to be rooted in religious belief. Religious belief is a source of ethical inspiration for some, but religion is neither necessary nor sufficient for ethics.)

Private companies have more ethical leeway in terms of deciding what messages to broadcast. As I said three days ago, “When your local paper decides not to publish your letter to the editor, they’re not censoring you, they’re just not letting you use their privately-owned resources to make your point.” But Metro Transit is a public service, subsidized by tax-payers. It’s subject to a different standard.

Toronto has faced this issue, too. The Toronto Transit Commission did the right thing. Here’s the story, from City News:
‘No God’ Ads, Soon To Appear On TTC Vehicles, Spark Heated Debate

“There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

It’s certainly not everyone’s opinion, and it may or may not be yours – but if you’re a transit user in this city you’ll soon be seeing that message frequently.

It’s part of a controversial ad campaign by the Toronto-based Freethought Association of Canada that has been approved by the TTC to appear on buses and inside subway cars.

Let’s hope Metro Transit comes to its senses, and decides to be a little more open-minded and supportive of free speech.

Back in 2005 I wrote about “Bumvertising,” the unfortunate name given by Ben Rogovy to his company’s practice of hiring homeless people to hold placards with ads on them. The practice was roundly criticized — people thought it tasteless at best, and perhaps seriously exploitative. (I offered a limited defence: the name “Bumvertising is demeaning, but Rogovy was actually providing employment to people who desperately need it — which is more than most of us do for them.)

Now a Toronto radio station is playing on the same turf: an ad campaign for talk-radio CFRB has panhandlers holding signs that say “Should panhandling be illegal?” and prostitutes holding signs that ask “Should prostitution be legal?”

Here’s the story, from the National Post: Ad agency hires prostitutes for talk-radio stunt

As the snow fell Saturday night at the corner of Jarvis and Carlton streets, vehicles slowed to watch two sex workers on the corner. Some drivers honked. Others rolled down their windows to talk about the law.

The women held signs with a question: “Should prostitution be legal?”

The stunt is part of a controversial ad campaign created by the zig ad agency for CFRB 1010; it is its latest ploy to get people talking about issues in Toronto.

Again, as with Rogovy’s Bumvertising, I don’t see much of a problem here. Indeed, I can see even more plusses, here: the prostitutes in question were paid the “normal fee that they would get for a job,” for carrying a sign for an hour — in other words, they were paid the usual, to do a safer-than-usual job.

Now, the prostitutes involved clearly thought this was a good deal; advocates claiming to represent those same prostitutes disagreed, calling it exploitative. But as is so often the case, the charge of exploitation received no useful explanation: if “hiring” counts as “using,” then all employed people are being used. Is it “use” in the negative sense, just because they were being used to draw attention to an issue — and to provoke public debate? That doesn’t make sense: they were carrying signs asking a question that they have a legitimate stake in.

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Thanks to Paul for the story.

Facebook Rejects Image from Gay Magazine

Here’s the story, from Toronto-based Xtra magazine: Xtra cover too sexy for Facebook

Facebook hit 150 million registered users on Jan 7, and the site’s founder boasts that if the social network were a country, it would surpass Japan, Russia and Nigeria in population.

But if Facebook Nation really existed, it would be a prudish state of the worst kind.

Censors at the popular site have removed the cover image of the Sep 11, 2008 issue of Xtra, with only a vague explanation: Facebook was trying to “protect” children from viewing the image.

(The image in question (shown incompletely above) shows several people — men and women — all nude and clearly in the midst of a menage-à-five-or-six or something. The only “private” parts showing are one woman’s breasts.)

In the article cited above, Xtra fights back. Says the author, “Clearly, the breasts in question are neither violent nor malicious. One could assume that Facebook decided that the image is obscene or offensive — but under what criteria? Facebook won’t say.” What the author leaves out is that, if you look closely at the picture (down near the, um, bottom of the cover) you see much much more than a couple of bare breasts. You see evidence that an actual sex-act is going on. I’m not sure Facebook’s decision in this case is prudishness “of the worst kind.” (To be fair: gay publications have historically been disproportionately subject to censorship, so it’s forgivable if they’re a little sensitive to the subject.)

But ok, that’s beside the point. The point is that Facebook is censoring content posted by its members. And on one hand, why shouldn’t they? It’s a privately-owned company, and people enjoy its services for free (since Facebook is supported by advertising, rather than by subscriptions). Indeed, it’s not clear that the term “censorship” applies, here. That term is usually limited to the suppression of ideas (including images) by government. When your local paper decides not to publish your letter to the editor, they’re not censoring you, they’re just not letting you use their privately-owned resources to make your point. Seen from that point of view, Facebook is totally justified in autocratically enforcing its own rules, and even, arguably, refusing to clarify what those rules are.

But it’s worth considering whether the scale & pervasiveness of a company makes a difference. With regard to most companies, it’s easy enough to say, look, if you’re not satisfied with the service (if you find the company unacceptably prudish, for example), take your business elsewhere. No one is forcing you to use their service. If you don’t like it, take your business elsewhere. But that line of argumentation weakens, perhaps, with regard to companies like Facebook. For a certain demographic, Facebook is basically the social networking site. If you’re not on it, you might as well not exist. My point is that it’s worth considering whether there’s a point at which the market share of a company, and its degree of integration into clients’ lives and communities, becomes such that it needs to function, ethically, more like a democratic government than like an autocratic business.

At what point does business ethics become political philosophy?

(Note: I also posted this item on the other blog I co-write, the The Research Ethics Blog, under the title, “Pfizer: Sued in U.S. Courts over Nigerian Experiments.”)

From MSNBC: Pfizer faces NY lawsuits over human medical tests

Nigerian families can sue Pfizer in U.S. courts with claims that the giant drug maker violated international law banning involuntary medical experimentation on humans when it tested an antibiotic to treat meningitis, an appeals court ruled Friday.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned rulings by a lower court judge who had tossed out the lawsuits in litigation that began in 2001.

The lawsuits sought unspecified damages on behalf of children and infants who were part of a 1996 study of the oral antibiotic Trovan. The testing occurred during a meningitis epidemic that killed more than 15,000 Africans.

(Here’s an entry from the Business Ethics Blog back in 2006 that gives some of the back story: Pfizer’s Unapproved Drug Tested on Nigerian Children)

The main reason this court decision is news is that the court is reaffirming that foreigners can sue U.S. companies when those companies seem to have violated international law. If that seems obvious, it’s not: though I think there are good arguments, it’s important to see that you do need good arguments for why a U.S. court should have jurisdiction over something that happened in another country, with its own government and its own courts.

From a research ethics point of view, it’s worth nothing (and criticizing) the fact that — at least as reported by MSNBC — part of Pfizer’s defence seems to be that the ends justified the means. Whether the fact that the trial in question went on under exigent circumstances, during an epidemic, matters to the validity of that defence is an interesting question.

Here’s an interesting interview with the Chief Executive of diamond giant DeBeers, from the Wall Street Journal: De Beers Polishes Its Image

When Gareth Penny became De Beers Group’s chief executive in 2006, the world’s biggest diamond producer was mired in some of the worst crises in its 120-year history.

Rapper Kanye West’s “Diamonds From Sierra Leone” in 2005 and the movie “Blood Diamond” in 2006 were triggering a wave of negative publicity about buying “conflict diamonds,” which were sold in the 1990s by African rebels to help pay for their wars. De Beers had already worked with the United Nations, governments, and human-rights groups to introduce the Kimberley Process, a voluntary certification program for rough diamonds that allows the origin of the gems to be traced, but the company was vulnerable to a consumer backlash nonetheless.

The most interesting part of the story is about the Kimberly Process. The WSJ interview, read alongside (say) the Wikipedia page for the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (seriously worth reading!), makes for a pretty good case-study of how industry, NGOs, and international “soft law” can together go a considerable distance towards rescuing a once-dubious product.

The Guardian had this interesting piece today on corporate ethics during economic downturns: Hard times turn spotlight on business ethics.

Most major U.S. companies have an ethics officer, but as investors survey the wreckage of a deepening financial crisis that has exposed behavior ranging from risky to downright illegal, one might ask “What were they doing?”

Laying the blame on ethics officers is probably unfair, but it is fair to ask, of the companies whose wounds seem self-inflicted, just what their ethics officers have been up to for the last few years, how much authority ethics officers were given within the organization, and how well-resourced ethics officers’ offices were.

Interestingly, the article discusses both the ethical failings that might have got companies into their current messes, and also the extent to which financial difficulties make unethical behaviour more likely. Talk about a vicious circle.

Last Friday, I blogged about Layoffs at Profitable Companies. That same day, I did a series of interviews with CBC radio on the topic. One of them is archived here. (Scroll down to the Jan 23 section. The interview is a .ram file & requires the free Real Player. Thanks to the folks at CBC Cape Breton for making it available.)

It’s a good time to give the subject more thought. Witness today’s NY Times: “Layoffs Spread to More Sectors of the Economy”. In the current gloomy economic climate, it’s entirely likely that more companies — including profitable ones — will choose layoffs as a way to guard against what they worry will be worse times to come.

See that molecule at left? It’s sucrose. Sugar, a.k.a. “C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁” to you chemists out there. Sucrose can be derived from lots of plant sources, such as sugar cane, sugar beets, sorghum and sugar maples. But wait! Is the sucrose molecule pictured at left from a regular sugary plant, or from, like, a genetically modified sugary plant? The short answer is: it doesn’t matter. Sucrose is sucrose. It’s chemically identical whether it comes from sugar cane or sugar beet or sugar maple trees, and it’s chemically identical whether it comes from a genetically modified plant or a “normal” one. Plants also give off oxygen, you know. But genetically modified plants don’t give off genetically modified oxygen: it’s just good old-fashioned oxygen, plain & simple.

But don’t bother trying to explain this to groups currently lobbying businesses to promise only to use non-genetically-modified sugar. Check out there story, here:
Coalition of Ethics-Based Investors Aim to Stop Planting of Genetically Modified Sugar Beets

An investors’ coalition called the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) has launched a campaign to secure promises from companies not to use sugar from genetically modified (GM) sugar beets.

The http://www.DontPlantGMBeets.org campaign encourages consumers to write to 63 U.S. beverage, food and restaurant companies and ask them to swear off the GM beets for the spring 2008 planting season.

Now, why would anyone genetically modify sugar beets in the first place? The main reason (as explained here) is to render sugar beet crops more resilient in the face of herbicides. Why would anyone object to that, you ask? The groups protesting are concerned about “weak governmental review and oversight, and the lack of long-term, independent and peer-reviewed safety studies.”

Now, I’ve blogged about GM foods before. At this point, I’ll only say that of all the foods to worry about, sugar — sucrose — is very far down the list. If you’re eating a genetically modified potato, I guess you could wonder whether, of all the many many things that make up a potato, there might be something in there that could hurt you. Science says “no,” but at least it’s not crazy to wonder. But sugar — from genetically modified plants or not — is just that: it’s sugar. And hopefully the companies being lobbied, here, will have the good sense to state that in their replies to this campaign.

Last weekend, I ate at an excellent Ottawa-area burger joint (“The Works”). A family member asked for her all-beef burger “medium rare,” and the waitress cheerfully said, “OK, no problem…you don’t mind signing our waiver?” Pictured below is the waiver:

The picture’s a little blurry. But the text says:

I HEREBY DECLARE MY LOVE OF ALL MEATS RED!

To that end I request that my beef burger be cooked rarer than the Ottawa Health Department prescribed doneness of 165 Degrees Fahrenheit.

I make this decision freely, and will not hold “The Works” or any of it’s managers, employees, shareholders or directors responsible or liable for any illness, side-effects or sickness that may occur as a result of the eating of an undercooked ground meat burger as requested by me.

I declare that I am at least 16 years of age.

This isn’t unique. For articles about restaurants in other countries doing the same thing, see:

• Hotel serves up rare meat waiver (2008) and
• Burger-loving Britons signing waiver to enjoy rare delight (2002).

(For those who don’t know, the standard advice is to cook beef well to kill off potentially deadly bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella. But people who are serious beef lovers will tell you that cooking beef as well as health officials suggest essentially ruins it.)

So, in other words, the relevant health authority (Ottawa Public Health, in this case) says what you’re about to eat is unsafe. Do you want to do it anyway? A waiver like this seems a reasonable approach: public health authorities issue guidelines that are risk-averse, probably setting a standard that allows for a substantial margin of error. It’s not insane to deviate from such standards — as long as you know what you’re doing. On the other hand, it’s not clear that this waiver does anything to ensure the latter. It is a consent form, but its use does nothing to ensure that consent is informed.

For true die-hard fans (hi, Mom!) here’s a brief radio interview [dead link deleted] I did last week, on the CBC radio show Maritime Noon. (The interview is in Real Audio format; it requires the free Real Player.) The topic was this blog, why I write it, my goals, etc. The interview is about 8 and a half minutes long.

(For more of my reflections on the whole ‘blog thing, see this short newspaper piece: Prof feted for blog.)

[Aug. 2010, dead link to radio interview deleted]