Please read the following article and respond to it from an ethical perspective (with reference to recognized principles) by Wednesday at 6 p.m.
http://bostonherald.com/news/politics/view/20101020mass_pr_flacks_raking_in_64m_critics_slam_bloated_payroll_of_nearly_100/srvc=home&position=6
Teaching Notes
You must become the flame on the candle. - Thich Nhat Hanh
Sunday, October 24, 2010
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Is Media Ethics Education DOA?
It sounds like a joke Jay Leno would tell during his opening monologue on The Tonight Show. Hear about the graduate students at the prestigious journalism school? They got caught cheating on an ethics exam. Ha ha ha. Except that’s actually what happened at Columbia University
No one admitted cheating despite pressure from the school’s administrators and pleas from classmates, who feared the scandal would damage the market value of their degrees. Meanwhile, the teacher of the course, New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman, refused to comment. But if the disgruntled posts on RateMyProfessors.com are any indication, his students hadn’t exactly been soaking up knowledge. “Maybe he could e-mail his ‘speeches’ to the students instead of making everyone suffer through the most wasted class in j-school. . . ,” one read.
There’s an old cowboy saying that goes, “When your horse dies, get off.” Journalism ethics education is a dead horse. Or else those aren’t vultures circling in the sky.
No one admitted cheating despite pressure from the school’s administrators and pleas from classmates, who feared the scandal would damage the market value of their degrees. Meanwhile, the teacher of the course, New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman, refused to comment. But if the disgruntled posts on RateMyProfessors.com are any indication, his students hadn’t exactly been soaking up knowledge. “Maybe he could e-mail his ‘speeches’ to the students instead of making everyone suffer through the most wasted class in j-school. . . ,” one read.
There’s an old cowboy saying that goes, “When your horse dies, get off.” Journalism ethics education is a dead horse. Or else those aren’t vultures circling in the sky.
A Question for Socrates
The question of how ethics is learned, or even if it can be, is as old as Western philosophy. In Plato’s dialog Meno the title character asks, “Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?” Of course, Socrates, being Socrates, resists giving a definite answer. But we can’t. The sad fact is, students had better get an effective ethics education now or they may never.
Last summer I conducted an ethics workshop for some reporters and editors at the Poughkeepsie Journal, a small daily in upstate
But what I remember most is the air of defeat that clung to the staff as we sat on hard plastic chairs in the break room discussing the cases. I could hear in their voices the bitterness and cynicism of employees forced to follow corporate policies they despised. Recently, for example, the paper had started running display ads on the front page and section fronts, a much more grievous ethical lapse, their mumbled asides suggested, than anything the case studies might have to offer.
I don’t want my students to ever wear the gray, defeated expression I saw that day on the faces at the Journal. But given the downward direction in which the media are moving, and fast, how in the world can I prevent it from happening?
Teaching Media Ethics by Telling Stories
A friend of mine who teaches at a big Midwestern university recounts in class the events of her first week as a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune. She was sent to Duluth to cover Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey on the campaign trail. When they were introduced, Humphrey vigorously shook her hand. “Oh yes, Susan,” he said, “I read your stuff all the time.” He couldn’t have read her stuff, though; she hadn’t written anything yet. “Just a few words,” she explains to her students, “but words that taught this fledging reporter a great lesson about pols and the little lies they tell.”
I usually find occasion during the semester to quote I. F. Stone’s dictum, “Every government is run by liars and thieves, and nothing they say should be believed,” to make the same point. But Susan’s story makes the point better. That’s because it has existential force. Her story vividly captures in a way a secondhand quote can’t the realities of a reporter’s life.
Some might think telling “war stories” is a waste of precious class time. I’ve a colleague who didn’t want to fall into the “trap” of regaling students with stories ad nauseam (“which, let’s face it, is easier than teaching or grading,” he said). So one semester he kept track. When he toted it all up at the end, he was surprised that he’d used less than an hour - out of 45 – talking about his newspaper experiences. And yet, he admitted, it was his stories that students seemed to remember most.
“Stories teach us how to live,” Daniel Taylor said in his essay, “The Ethical Implications of Storytelling.” What he meant was that stories preserve our experience for contemplation and evaluation. Although not all stories carry a heavy message, there’s an entire category of stories, so-called “exemplary tales,” that are told to convey a moral.
Our war stories are potentially just such tales. They can provide evidence, in ethicist John Barton’s words, of “how real human beings live through various crises and trials and remain human.” My colleague who kept tabs on his storytelling has described his stories as cautionary. Most, he said, deal with “screwups I learned from.”
But sometimes the storyteller and the audience can’t agree on what exactly the moral of a story is.
When Susan was a cub reporter on the Tribune, she interviewed the Beatles, who were on their second tour of the States. She got into their hotel room by dressing up as a waitress in an ugly, mustard-colored uniform and accompanying an actual room service waiter upstairs. Ringo took one look at her little plastic name tag – it read “Donna Brown” – and snorted, “What kind of name is that?” The waiter nudged her in the side. “Tell them what you real name is,” he urged. She did, as well as her reason for being there. Rather than throw her out, the Beatles politely answered her questions. They even let her phone for a photographer. The next day her story ran on the front page, with a photo of John sitting at a table and looking up at her and laughing as she poured coffee in his cup. She still has a glossy print of that photo somewhere.
Many of Susan’s students think she’s nuts for not having the photo hanging up in her office. They also think she’s nuts for saying she’d never participate in the same kind of stunt today. To her celebrity-struck students, disguising herself as a hotel waitress to get an interview with the Beatles seems soooo cool. They lose all sight of the fact that it wasn’t a story of vital public interest that demanded undercover methods.
Susan intends one lesson when she talks about her hard day’s night, but her students, living in a paparazzi-saturated culture, draw another. “It may be a lost cause,” she remarked to me.
Or maybe not. Negotiations over what the point of a story is can be part of the point of the story. In the process of negotiating, we test different interpretations, try out different themes. This is helpful. This is educational. Lawrence Kohlberg, the Harvard psychologist famous for his research on the stages of moral development, contended that “the teaching of virtue is the asking of questions. . . not the giving of answers.” Stories don’t necessarily have to yield clear moral rules to be of value. It’s enough sometimes if they just give us something to think about.
20 comments:
Okay, I think that any ethical perspective we apply to this situation is going to render it unethical. But I'll bite -- I'm going to respond to this issue using Kant's Categorical Imperative.
So, if we look at the first formulation, we must ask ourselves if the action the government is engaging in can be formulated into a rule that we would want to be applied universally, in all governments and institutions. Here's the rule: "In all institutions that spend taxpayer money, it is ethical to take away from services directly benefiting the taxpayer before taking away from services directly benefiting that institution and the individuals serving in it."
Is this a good rule to apply to all taxpayer funded institutions? That when money needs to be cut, it should be cut from external services that serve those who pay rather than from internal services? This is obviously not a good rule. The money paid should go directly back into the system before being spent on things that are self-serving to the institution. The rule should be the exact opposite -- those who pay get services first.
The second formulations states that we should never use people for our own benefit. Instead, we should see the benefit of others as our end result.
Let's see: high salaries benefit those being paid the salaries, and those who are in charge of the administration because those who are being paid make the administration look good. However, the press does not benefit ("We have press people all over state government, but we have difficulty getting information"), and thus the people who seek information are not benefiting. And finally, the people government is supposed to be serving are not benefiting--this is evident from the $700 million in cuts in local aid over the past four years in Massachusetts. Final verdict: Unethical. Duh!
The ethical perspective that I believe should be applied to this situation is Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative. Kant’s categorical imperative creates two formulations, the first being that humans should “act on that maxim that you will to become a universal law” and the second formulation asks that we “act so that you treat humanity whether in your own person, or in that of any other, always as an end and never as a means only”.
The first question that must be asked to determine the ethical implications of the actions is did the government make decisions and take actions that other governments being should be eligible and entitled to make? When government institutions decide to spend taxpayer’s money, they automatically assume the responsibility of protecting programs that may benefit the public as they are the source of capital funding the government’s actions. Therefore, the government must always have the public interests in consideration when they make decisions as this country is based off the principal that if the public is taxed, they must be represented in some form (an in this situation they are represented by the programs that are being cut, which is unethical)
The second formulation of Kant’s categorical imperative applied to this situation requires that governments treat individuals in society just as they would treat themselves, preventing people from being used instrumentally. In this situation, the public is being used as financial instruments as the government used their money and in addition, took away programs that would benefit the public as well. The high salaries only benefit the government officials and those in charge, leaving the public to out in the cold as the programs benefiting them are being cut. I would have to say that the governments actions were ethical.
Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative would be a perfect way to look at the situation in Massachusetts. Using the two parts of the imperative to see the wrongs within the case makes the most sense to me. The first one,“act on that maxim that you will to become a universal law,” makes us look at the government itself. Is the government acting in a way that other governments should always act? These government PR people are payed with the tax payers money. With the huge cost to the tax payers it seems a bit unethical that the government which is supposed to be protecting its citizens would demand this absurd amount of money for PR people. So no, governments shouldn't be acting in such a manner.
The second part of the imperative states, “act so that you treat humanity whether in your own person, or in that of any other, always as an end and never as a means only”. It seems like the government is using the tax payers money for an unnecessary amount of staff. Therefore they are using the tax payers just so they can cover all bases on their public appearance. As long as they have top PR professionals working for them and the taxes cover them, the government is using the people.
I would apply the Bok model to this situation, only because its a more introverted model, one that calls for a lot of questioning your own actions and really considering how that decision effects others involved. To me, that's what this situation lacks the most, consideration and care for all of the people effected by these inflated, unjustified salaries.
The Bok model asks us to first consult your own conscience. This is particularly applicable because a PR professionals conduct is largely dependent on the individuals character. Ones conscience, or lack there of is very much a part of their character. Is it in good character to either receive an extremely inflated salary or award someone else an extremely inflated salary at the same time your state is announcing a 2.5 billion dollar deficit? No.
The second step asks us to seek expert advice for alternatives. These salaries were coming out of the Governor's office, the Executive Office of Administration and Finance, the Universities, these are all government run institutions, government paid for institutions. These are the same institutions who are telling us they're facing a 2.5 billion dollar deficit. Clearly, they are not capable of properly allocating money and prioritizing taxpayer's money. Clearly they need to seek the council of those more qualified to handle the situation, as Bok says.
And lastly Bok calls for us to discuss the problem with those involved. The taxpayers have a right to know that in a time of economic distress, their state officials have been signing off on unjustifiably high paychecks for years? Paychecks and salaries totaling 6.4 million dollars this year alone. Taxpayers have a right to determine if those jobs even need to exist, or if they would rather their tax dollars go toward schools, and the local funding that was just cut.
I am in agreement with the previous comments in regards to the relevance of Kant’s “Categorical Imperative” to this particular case.
In the first formulation we are guided to act with certain behavior, which can be accepted as a “universal law”. If such a concept were applied in this case, then I am certain that these public relation representatives, as well as the governmental affiliates who hire them, would certainly not be comfortable with the circumstances of this situation if the tables were turned on them. They would not be forgiving of the fact that in the midst of an economic crisis, some people were having a significant increase in their salary, and at their expense. That is precisely what is happening in this case. People who have worked long, hard-working years serving the public are being laid off left and right, while the money of taxpayers is funding the raises of PR representatives.
Ultimately, my argument ties into Kant’s second formulation, which indicates that we “treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of any other, always as an end and never as a means.” In simplest terms, this concept states that we treat people as dignified and respected people, as well as to treat ourselves with self-respect and not allow others to cross us. In no way are we, as taxpayers (or in reference to the laid-off firefighters, teachers and policemen), being treated as such. Professions that are depended on by the public are being undervalued and put on the backburner as a last priority. In substitution, $6.4 million is practically donated out-of-pocket to the corrupt institutions we refer to as our government and their gang of defensive spokesmen. Our state’s financial crisis is not a crisis for everyone.
I wanted to use the categorical imperative but to generate a variety of answers, I will use utilitarianism.
From a utilitarian perspective, the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people, the salaries earned by these PR professionals working for the government is unethical.
When comparing the population in the United States and salaries, putting $6.4 million+ into the pockets of 100 public relations staffers is ridiculous. In today’s economy, it’s hard enough for an average employee to keep his/her job and many people are even picking up second jobs. Meanwhile, a small percentage of 100 public relations staffers are earning well over six-figures. Considering that the state has a $2.5 billion in next year’s budget and these selective PR professionals are not benefiting others, but are actually damaging the society by increasing the wage gap and pocketing our tax dollars, these salaries are unethical.
In response to the article, the reality of our government's relationship with the media is disturbing. The line between what is right and wrong becomes blurred, especially when the rule-makers are making the wrong decisions.
When looking at Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative, the first formulation states “act on that maxim that you will become a Universal law.” The question here is, are other governments worldwide taking money out of education and state jobs to pay for government representatives. Do other governments have as many spokesmen as we do, and if so, do they get paid as much as we do? We are represented by government officials, not their reps. Most importantly, being that we are in the financial crisis that we are in, as mentioned in the article, media related jobs should be cut over city and teaching jobs.
The second formulation states that you treat humanity “always as an end and never as a means only,” not using people for your own benefit but acting to benefit others instead. In relation to that, the government is not following the second formulation, paying the PR officials with the people’s tax money to “benefit,” the people, but do they really benefit the people? It is understood that the PR officials work to better connect government officials to the public, but when the PR officials are getting overpaid and the people are getting underpaid, is it really the people’s benefit? What they really need is a reality- check.
Considering the ethical issues surrounding this case, I would use the Bok model. I believe the Bok model allows a person to evaluate not only the situation and themselves, but more importantly in this case, how it affects others. Regarding the inflated salaries, I think that there is a complete disregard of how this situation affects others, as well as consideration for public knowledge.
The first step of the Bok model is to consult your own conscience. The PR people accepting these ridiculous salaries, knowing that the money is coming from taxes, must consider their moral character. It seems in this case that the people accepting hundreds of thousands of tax dollars during an economic recession with a huge deficit, lack moral character. How could you accept your paycheck knowing that it not only is tax payer’s money, but also, what the hell did you do to deserve that kind of cash? Political PR reps are an extension of the corruption that is our government. Also, taking into consideration that the deficit exceeds two billion dollars, adds insult to the whole situation. So, we can see that when consulting one’s conscience in this case, that they clearly lack moral character.
The second step of the Bok model is to seek expert advice about the situation and what other options are available. Considering where the cash flow is coming from, it’s difficult to say who has a higher authority. The government is responsible for allocating these huge paychecks, but also are stating the amount of the deficit is 2.5 billion dollars. This shows a complete lack of control on the government’s behalf. Instead of shrinking budgets for social programs or jobs or education, they should first cut unnecessary high government salaries. Since they clearly have not taken this into consideration, someone else must be asked to give advice. It is difficult to say who is higher than the government. Personally, I don’t really know who would have a higher rank, if it would be the Supreme Court, or Congress. Either way, the government needs to be put in check by some power that is greater than it’s own.
The final step of the Bok model is for discussion of the issue with those who are involved. The tax-payers are the ones who are being exploited the most in this case, yet have been unaware of the issue for quite some time. During economic hardships, money is the first subject to be discussed. In a perfect world, the government would have been upfront with the monetary situation and would have allocated budgets and salaries to be more economic in a positive sense for the public. Tax-payers have every right to know where their hard earned money is going towards. It pains me to see that someone who works a blue collar job 12 hours a day and makes a measly living, has so much of their salary taken away by taxes, only to be given to those who lack a moral character and aides government corruption.
The Boston Herald article is asking if it’s ethical to have so many government spokespeople with so many salaries exceeding six figures and I say no.
If the government handled the public and press by themselves, a lot of confidential information would be so leaked and carelessly scattered that wikileaks would be out of business. However, with the country facing a very real $2.5 billion deficit and steep unemployment rate, it’s beyond ridiculous that so many people make so much money that seems undeserving. This is where it gets complicated for me because the media and these spokespeople are not entirely useless, it just depends on which PR firm keeps wasting taxpayer’s time and money. Once that PR firm is found, I would like to it to disappear and the money can go to something else that can help the economy for everyone else. On the outside looking in at this unethical dilemma, this wasteful spending can be treated using the Bok model. There is an increase in harm for the underpaid or unemployed people that read those salary numbers.
Publishing this information, even though it’s by a tabloid, was the right thing to do by Bok’s standards. Since PR firms are huge and affect more than just one group of people, choosing to get everyone’s input can prove effective when deciding which spokesperson to cut. By understanding the others’ values and regulating the amount of spending in one PR firm, this decision-making process must continuously weed out the other communications culprits because these firms won’t risk losing/giving up that kind of money to make others feel better.
The Golden Rule, or do unto others as you would do unto yourself wouldn’t work because you can’t compare an unemployed person with a director of a PR firm because the job duties are different and situational experiences matter.
As unoriginal as it may be, I too am going to use Kant’s Categorical Imperative to analyze this case. It applies here so well it’s impossible to resist. The first part of the Categorical Imperative states that one should “act on that maxim that you would see to become a universal law.” Because the taxpayers’ money is being put into the pockets of the PR reps, the people of Massachusetts are basically paying to be lied to. The worse the economy becomes, the more the need for the PR managers grows, thus their salaries increase. Other jobs that benefit the taxpayers are being cut, yet one of the lease helpful (to the general public) positions thrives.
The second formation explains that we should always see people as an end, never as a means. People should see the benefits of the situation, not be used by it (if that even makes sense). Obviously, in this situation, the taxpayers are being used to pay the PR salaries, but not seeing any of the benefits of it. The only ones, besides the ones with the six figure salaries, who get anything out of this situation are the government officials who are being portrayed in a good light in the press. Their ineptitudes at running the administration are covered up at the taxpayers’ expense. Not quite what Kant had in mind, I’m sure.
I'll agree with the general consensus that Kant's Categorical Imperative is particularly applicable to this clearly unethical situation.
The first formulation states, "act on that maxim that you will to become a universal law." The universal law, in this case, favors taking money from services that benefit taxpayers instead of taking money from the services that benefit only those involved in the institution itself. Obviously, this is not an ethically justifiable law. Money is being taken from the people who already give the most, while those who give little are rewarded. It's uneven, unfair, and dishonest. The government's first priority should be the well-being of the public, and, here, that is definitely not the case. The public is being used.
That brings us to the second formulation: "Act so that you treat humanity whether in your own person, or in that of any other, always as an end and never as a means only”. $700 million cuts in local aid while $6.4 million is being raked in by PR flacks (all amidst a $2.5 billion state deficit,) seems to contradict everything the second formulation stands for. The higher-ups are reaping the benefits that should be going to those who need them. Not only this, but even some members of the press are disadvantaged. They can't get the information they need to move up, but the people who are paid to make an immoral administration look saintly move up without any problems at all.
There is a complete lack of balance in this case, and, in the end; what is going on is far from ethical.
I agree with the majority and I believe Kant's Categorical Imperative is the best way to respond to this article.
The first part of the Categorical Imperative tells us that we should only act in a way in which we want to be formulated into a universal rule. In this case I think a big NO should be applied. I don't think the government would like everyone getting payed exuberant salaries whether they deserve it or not. I also don't think tax payers would agree to throwing their money into other people's wallets, who in some cases are in the same line of work as these PR practitioners.
Looking at the second part of the Imperative it states that we shouldn't use people to egt to our own means but have the means be the benefit of the people. This is definitely not the case with this situation. School teachers and other state and government employees are loosing their jobs, but these PR people are raking in the dough. So the fact that these people are being payed so much is only benefiting themselves. Everyone else is at fault because taxes should be to pay for community needs, not to be put into the pockets of unethical Pr executives.
I agree with Annie with using the utilitarianism method, of the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people. However, these PR workers are dealing under unethical issues that the government is enforcing. How could the government possibly think that it is okay to provide such high incomes to these sort of jobs when there are so many other professions that are suffering due to the economy? PR can be very beneficial for companies, yes, as good publicity is necessary for any business, but providing such high salaries really could be overdoing it.
Coming from an ethical perspective, no I don't believe in this case that the greatest amount of good is being performed for the greatest amount of people. Like David Turek said in the article, "As we’re cutting back on school teachers and firefighters, they should also look at jobs that deal with the media." It just seems that the ethical views are very skewed here and the importance in jobs isn't being noted. Teachers, firefighters, etc., will do the greatest good for the greatest amount of people, not PR professionals, but yet why are these jobs being cut? It really says something about the current generation we live in and the rankings of professionals.
Government-run institutions should carefully examine where money is being allocated and question where it belongs. I think the Bok model involves the proper amount of steps in deciding whether or not spending $6.4 million on Public Relations practitioners is ethical or not.
In my opinion, spending so much money on Public relations staffers is out of line and should not be happening while the government continues to cut from education, healthcare and other service programs.
Because the government is not thoughtfully allocating money to the taxpayers’ advantage, they should not be in charge of deciding where the money goes. Instead, taxpayers should have more of a say in where their money is going.
In this case, the people who are constantly affected by the budget cuts in education or other important services should be approached and asked whether or not they believe PR staffers should have such a high salary.
Because there have been so many answers that deal with Kant’s Categorical Imperative and people have brought up other options as well, I am going to attempt to apply Aristotle’s Golden Mean to the situation. The Golden Mean says that the ethical thing to do lies between two extremes. In this case The extremes would be PR professionals getting paid exuberant amounts of money to spin problems we have instead of using that money to correct the problems that are in need of spinning in the first place. The other extreme would be not having PR Professionals to spin situations and using all of the money to go to direct dilemmas that the government faces.
With this model, it is clear that the current situation is exactly that of one extreme. The massive amount of money that PR practitioners make to cover up mistakes that the government has made instead of using some of that unnecessarily large paycheck that the get is exactly the extreme that I think Aristotle would give as an example. Therefore this is not the golden mean and ultimately is unethical.
I will use the principle of Kant’s, Categorical Imperative to analyze whether the article about there being close to 100 government PR officials in Massachusetts that raked in $6.4M is ethical. In Kant’s first formulation he states, “Act on that maxim that you will to become universal law.” If that’s to be taken literally we would expect all of the states in the U.S. to take after Massachusetts, which would waste $320M in taxpayer dollars. That’s a lot of taxpayer dollars that could go to fixing the things that government PR people are trying to spin in the first place.
The second formulation states, “Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person, or in that of any other, always as an end and never as a means.” The government in this case in my opinion is doing the exact opposite. There will always be a need for PR officials to be that contact person for information. But the government engages in using the public as a means when they cut funding to everything from education to fire departments, but don’t cut their own PR ensemble.
Looking to help the greatest number with the greatest good, otherwise a utilitarian standpoint, the amount of taxpayer money being wasted on pr practitioners who lie and spin the truth to those same taxpayers is unethical.
That same $6.4 million could have easily been put to better use on a small scale level. Instead, by giving that same amount of money to 100 or so staffed pr professionals, the public is not only losing out on those millions, but being hurt by them. While the argument that they are keeping people employed in this economic hardship is a valid one, it is simply a singular positive that they are using to spin the obvious overwhelming negatives about the situation.
In the long run, $6.4 million may not have an impact on a national level, but lets put those 100 staffers to work in our schools, giving the money to people who are helping society, not hurting it.
In order to assess this case study, I would use the Bok Model. This allows the decision to be put in the perspective of both the decision maker and considering the impact the outcome will have on all those involved, which is important because the state budget effects much more than just those making the decision.
To begin with this model, one's own conscience should be referred to. Personally, if I was in the position of those being affected, I would not appreciate the large salaries received by the PR professionals when my child's school budget grows smaller every year. I don't feel that it is very fair nor ethical that the state is spending so much money on their public officials publicity.
Step two considers the harm that will be done by either outcome of the decision. If the state continues to award these PR professionals with inflated salaries, the huge deficit that already exists will only grow larger.
The final step of the Bok model considers all those affected. The taxpayers are all in the position to know where their tax money is going to, and it should not be the PR professionals. There should be a much larger sum being used for other public programs and funding.
The ethical dilemma presented by the Boston Herald should be deemed unethical.
I too, am going to use utilitarian principles in order to break down the ethical dilemmas that the article entails. We are facing an economic crisis within our country and almost ten percent of Americans are unemployed. The Massachusetts state government is spending 6.4 million dollars on public relations related activities while funding for social service jobs are getting cut.
The utilitarian principle decides if a decision is ethical or not by examining the consequences. It also maintains that we should make decisions with the mindset of doing the greatest good for the greatest number. So, what are the consequences of the government spending 6.4 million on PR? Well, using all that money for PR means that the government is using tax payer money in ways that do not serve or benefit the taxpayers. This means that the government is taking money away from things that do serve the public, like teachers, police officers, etc. It is a direct abuse of taxes. Therefore, the Massachusetts government is not doing the greatest good for the greatest number, but rather for themselves. Just look at the poll on the side of the article; the majority of voters want to cut the state budget in the legislature.
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