Please discuss whether the PR professionals and journalists described in the link below did "good work," as defined by Holly Stocking in our text.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/world/middleeast/syrian-conflict-cracks-carefully-polished-image-of-assad.html?_r=1&hp
Your response is due by 4 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 24.
Teaching Notes
You must become the flame on the candle. - Thich Nhat Hanh
Monday, February 18, 2013
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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.
24 comments:
Good work is defined as something that fulfills the technical aspects of a job as well as the moral aspects. Therefore, PR practitioners would need to pay attention not only to the goals of their campaigns and duties, but also the moral implications of their actions. In this case, PR practitioners did not produce good work. Even though they successfully reached the goals of their campaign by improving the perception of the Syrian Presidential family. They had the western world focus on the materialistic aspects of the family such as the first lady's wardrobe and the President's English speaking elegance, rather than the actual political interests. Despite the campaigns successful nature in the technicalities of it all, the campaign fails to recognize and meet the moral expectations of a professional. By the PR practitioners creating the buzz around the materialistic things of the family, the public failed to be informed about the political stances of this leader. No worldly facts were brought to the table. It inflated the insignificant and hid the significant. Therefore, only relaying a fabricated truth rather than the actual actions the leader had taken or planned to take.
I do not believe that the journalists and the PR professionals did “good work” in regards to their actions according to this article. Holly Stocking defines good work as a combination of work that is done with excellent quality that is done in a morally responsible manner. The PR professionals failed to meet these standards because although they achieved excellent work with the quality of the image they created of their clients Mr. and Mrs. Assad, they failed in the area of moral responsibilities. It can be considered a failure because the PR professionals focused on and only talked about their image and celebrity rank. As Mr. and Mrs. Assad are the leaders of a country with some controversy as mentioned in the beginning of this article, the PR representatives should have focused more on their political thoughts and opinions regarding any issues rather then what clothes Mrs. Assad was wearing. The journalist failed to achieve “good work” as well. This is because they did not report on things that the public should be informed about, and instead focused on what would give this family a good image, rather then focusing on what information would give the public the chance to make their own opinions on Mr. and Mrs. Assad. They portrayed them as celebrities therefore giving them an automatic great image in the public eye, and in a way fooled the public in regards to what type of people they may actually be. This goes against the moral responsibilities of the PR professionals and Journalists and is unethical. They did not lie to the public, but did not provide adequate information. Failure to provide adequate information and releasing such information in a morally irresponsible way is cause to not classify these professionals’ results as “good work.”
(My whole comment got deleted. It will never be the same) According to the text, "Good Work" is only work which meets ethical and moral responsibilities as well as being of good technical quality. I don't believe the PR professionals and journalists involved in the Assad's stories did "good work". Considering Syria's past, no reporter or PR person should have published anything positive or negative about the family without deep inquiry and skepticism. Political unrest has been plaguing the country for decades and, based on my perception of the story, have used western materialism to their advantage. They talk about Asma Assad's beauty and dress to catch us, and then litter the article with orphans, her polite (or not polite enough) children, and her tolerance. These things may be true, but they are irrelevant when thinking about the area as a whole. Just because she's pretty doesn't mean she and her husband are making good decisions. It feels as though the PR people involved were bribed. They were given large sums of money to present the Assad family in such a way that covered up the brutal crack down and attacks on innocent people that the Assad seems to know little about, according to the Barbara Walters interview. He's playing dumb. He is trying to keep his peaceful and tolerant image but it is crumbling beneath him because it isn't the truth.
Holly Stocking described "good work" as both excellent in quality and socially responsible. In the case of this New York Time's article, "socially responsible" is the key phrase here. What PR officials and journalists did in regards to the Assad family, was not socially responsible, in other words, they did not do good work. Framing the family as celebrities or a brand, much like the Kardashian family, deters the public from the real situation: the Syrian conflict and murders and injustices committed under President Assad's rule. According to the article, the president and his family sought the services of White House public relations officials to portray them as glamorous, progressive and accessible in the media. Of course, these PR advisers were paid a lot of money to paint President Assad in a deceiving light. A lot of green can make people do a lot of bad things. The PR reps know the conflict going on in Syria, they know civilians and journalists and media professionals are getting killed under the government rule, under Assad's command, but these PR advisers decided to sell the Assads with a capital "A". The fact that Mrs. Assad was glorified in Vouge magazine does not surprise me because Vouge is a terrible magazine in my opinion, but it just confirms the fact that the media glorifies the bad guys while every day heros of our time fall to the wayside. Barbara Walter's failed to do good work too. As a journalist, she took sides and the fact that she recommended the Syrian Ambassador to Columbia after her "tough" interview of President Assad was a conflict of interest. Where is her loyalty? To the general public she reports to, or Syrian officials and their families? Heck, why not write a letter for Assad's kids? The fact is, her action was not socially responsible. Her audience questioned the credibility of her interview with Assad after the stunt. PR advisers and Journalists must stick with the truth. Their jobs are not to cover, sway or distort the truth. They are not to become chummy with those who pose conflicts of interest. They need to perform good work. What these professionals did makes modern media look like a joke and today, the media really doesn't need any more jokes because it has already become a laughing matter.
Holly Stocking describes "good work" as not only technically impressive in quality, but as also fulfilling morally responsible standards. By that definition of good work, it would seem that the PR professionals who worked on the behalf of the Assads did not do good work. They succeeded in doing exactly what it was they were hired to do, in making them seem to the public as glorified great people with open minds and a knack for positive progress, but to do so when factually the opposite is occurring, especially to the extreme that it is occurring in this case is very unethical. I would believe that in any normal circumstance where lives and human safety are not involved, it would be relatively ethical to accomplish the task such as this for your client. It is sometimes in the nature of public relations not necessarily to skew the truth or to intentionally leave things out, but to emphasize certain factors of the truth in order to create a more persuasive message. But glorifying people who run a government that is almost definitely murdering thousands of people, for any reason is highly unethical, and it is unethical of the PR professionals to ignore this knowledge. Though the Assads claim they have nothing to do with it, the line of skepticism in regards to the ethics is blurred even more. In any case, an ethical PR practitioner should not take the job, but I'm sure the amount of money that they were being paid made it way too difficult to turn down.
As defined by Holly Stocking in “What is Good Work,” “good work” is work that is both excellent in quality and social responsible, good in two senses of the word. Public relations practitioners omitted the most crucial and relevant facts about the Assads, and by doing that, they were not practicing “good work.” Their priorities were advancing their careers, lining their pockets and in some cases, probably accepting bribes to portray the Assads in the most truthful way. These P.R. professionals were being faithful to their clients. But because the lives of innocent people were at risk, they were not doing "good work."
What I am really disappointed in is the examples of journalists refusing to do good work. Barbara Walters and Vogue Magazine should in theory both be objective, but as the article proved, that was hardly the case. Though some of the publications in the NYTimes article may have thought they were doing good work at the time - like Vogue’s claim that they printed a glowing article on Asma Assad because they were optimistic of the Assad regime - they were not. They may have produced quality work but it lacked social responsibility because it avoided the less pleasant topic of politics, murder and oppression that is occurring under Assad rule. Instead they focused on “happier,” materialistic details, like Asma’s fashion choices. Like Andrew Tabler said in the article, the appeal of the Assads to Western publications is “He speaks English and his wife is hot.” I think it really reflects the Western obsession with image and our aversion towards learning foreign languages and foreign cultures.
According to the text, "good work" is defined as work that meets ethical and moral responsibilities that is also done efficiently. According to that definition, I don't think the work that PR professionals or journalists did was considered "good work." Trying to show the Assads in a glamorous light and attempting to overshadow the harm they have done to their country. In this day and age, we are much more concerned with what a political leader is wearing than how they are doing their job, but as professionals who want to make a difference, we should seek to rise above that superficiality and report the truth, behind the glitz and glamour. The article discusses Vogue magazine running a "flattering profile" on the first lady of Syria immediately after action was taken by Mr. Assad that "led to the death of an estimated 10,000 Syrians." I find that ridiculous and unprofessional that in the midst of the war and corruption ensuing, we not only live in, but perpetuate, a culture so celebrity-obsessed that we can't even take the time to report on the truth. Furthermore, the article states that a lawyer had been hired an inordinate sum to act as a liaison between Vogue magazine and the family to ensure that their glamorous image be maintained. Allowing these actions to continue and perpetuating this covering-up of the truth is not at all "good work" done by these PR professionals and journalists.
In Holly Stocking's chapter of the book, for something to be considered "good work", it must meet the criteria of being excellent in quality and morally sound. If you try to apply that idea to the actions detailed in the reading (regarding the Assad/P.R. relationship), I think it's clear that the P.R. professionals fell short of what would be considered "good work". However, I think this case perfectly exemplifies how the work can be of excellent quality, in as far as achieving a desired outcome, while still not fulfilling its moral obligations.
By painting the Assad family in such a favorable and glamorous way, the P.R. professionals certainly got the best results they could hope for. In doing this, they aided in the obfuscation of the Assad's tyrannical image. Obviously, something one typically would not consider morally sound.
Good Work, as defined by Holly Stocking is "labor that earns high marks both technically and morally." In Public Relations, good work is extremely important. A PR representative always wants to stay true to his/her brand image while also incorporating only the truth into his/her work. This article proves that politics is not just what a politician believes in anymore, it is who can get the most attention and the most PR done for them.
Public Relations should focus more on what really matters in politics such as policies and other issues. Focusing on Asma Assad's style and beauty is something that is materialistic and only gets them attention. I think the PR practitioners did "good work" in the sense that they got the publicity that they wanted and did not lie. However, their focus could have been better.
According to Holly Stocking, "good work" must possess both strong technical and moral aspects--that is, a journalist must fulfill both professional and moral obligations in order to be a journalist that does "good work." According to Stocking, the PR professionals who changed the perception of the Assad family did not do good work. One of the first moral obligations of anybody who works in media is to tell the truth, in a way that does not dilute or bias that truth according to personal opinion. One of the second is to report those truths that the public has a need or a right to know. While it is true that someone can be both the ruthless wife of a political tyrant and someone who has good taste in heels, the public only needs to know about one of these facts. Furthermore, these PR professionals are skirting their moral obligation to tell the truth, because they are focusing on "re-branding" the Assad family; on making them "accessible," in an effort to take the focus off of their political actions in Syria. They made trite or insignificant facts such as what shoes the first lady wore the "truth" they were telling, all in a giant effort to hide the greater or more important truth from the public eye. According to Stocking, even if these actions were performed with talent and with technical precision, this cannot be good work because it fails to address any moral component of the job.
I read a response from Brown Lloyd James that noted this PR job was executed during a time that the U.S was strategizing to normalize relations abroad. In this sense, it can be argued that it is morally parallel with U.S political agendas that should be reflected in forms of media. Also, the work is technically good because the firm was successful at partnering with a magazine that is a cornerstone for molding an admirable perception of personal image. If we understand that to be true then, according to Holly Stocking, this is good work. To the contrary, if I take my knowledge and judgement into consideration than I wouldn't be comfortable representing this client because it avoids the side of the Assad family that is responsible for ordering troops to murder civilians. That, in my eyes, takes priority over normalizing relations abroad. I don't think that anyone can argue that money isn't the motivation. It is clear that the firm choose to represent the Assads because of the generous compensation. I say technically good work, but morally irresponsible.
According to Holly Stocking in the text, Good Work is "labor that earns high marks both technically and morally." If you leave out the second part of that statement, then the Assad's PR team and associated journalists exceeded their limits and did great work. The goal of the campaign was to paint a picture of the Assad's in a positive, flattering light. This goal would not be so hard if the Syrian government hadn't be responsible for killing thousands of innocent civilians. The Golden Rule for journalists (and publicists?) is to seek the truth and report it. It may be true that Mrs. Assad is beautiful and has great taste in clothing, but leaving out the crisis going on in Syria is like having selective vision. It's not reporting the whole truth. Hard news requires hard work and dedication, similar to what Anthony Shadid tried to do. Barbara Walters befriending the Syrian ambassador and helping his daughter into Columbia University, an obviously elite school, screams "conflict of interest," to me. Almost like a bribe to get an interview with Assad. What is also a bribe is the Assad's paying large sums of money to PR firms famous for working with other first ladies and political figures. However, in today's society people do not want to read hard news, they are looking for entertainment and the PR firms the Assad's worked with know that. Vogue was a very strategic all well-thought out medium to feature Mrs. Assad. I wouldn't expect hard news out of Vogue because that is not what the magazine does. The only reason I think the PR team and journalists did bad work is because all of this was going on during the mass-murderings in Syria. Every outlet failed to touch upon this. For this reason the PR team did a great job to cover up a tragedy. However, everyone missed out on their global responsibilities. In order for it to have been good work, the Assad's should have been advised politically as well as socially. Instead of putting themselves in the limelight to take the focus off the tragedy, they should have taken political action... started a charity for Syrian refugees, held a press conference, or maybe just simply owned up to their country's faults.
In my opinion, Assad’s own public relations team did the deceitful work. They coached Assad and his wife on how to be a perfect image that detracted away from what their regime was really doing, and our superficial society looked past it and most didn’t even see it. Considering Vogue’s main priority is focusing on fashion, and at the time they believed in her beliefs. Therefore, Vogue’s work may not have been ‘good’ in the world, but it was in their line of work. As for Barbara Walters work, that seems like an extremely personal topic to be misconstrued and mixed up with an international affair. Her interview could be deemed “good work” considering it was a hard interview, but whoever released the personal information could be cited has a negligent employee. I believe majority of the news findings are not done in a “good” fashion however, it sounds as if the journalists didn’t see the Assad issue until it was too late to fix the irreversible release of positive stories.
The text defined "good work" as work that is both morally sound and technically excellent. I do not think that the PR professionals and journalists working in Syria likely met either of these standards. The PR people, in my opinion, definitely did not. "A Rose in the Desert?" Come on. What should be important to media professionals are the issues and occurrences in a nation that is notorious for sharing information about their goings-on, many of which potentially threaten international peace. The journalists working in Syria, including Barbara Walters, may have been guided by ethical decision making and a search for truth in their work, but it seems like it may be very hard to extract real truth from sources as difficult as these. Good work is undoubtedly harder to accomplish when people are unwilling to cooperate, but nonetheless is what needs to be pursued and reported o; not what the "magnetic and hot" first lady is wearing.
Good work is being excellent in quality and being socially responsible when doing so. This is how Holly Stocking defines the concept of “good work” by journalists and PR professionals. When it comes to the question at hand and this article, I agree with the majority of the other posts in that good work was not presented here. While focusing on the less important aspects like fashion, the first ladies red shoes, and their own behinds in doing the “wrong” good work they were hired to accomplish, there were going against what their profession entitles them to do and hurting innocent people along the way. To me, this does not define good work, even though they are accomplishing what they were hired to do and doing well with that task. In the end, it doesn’t come out looking good. We have been taught since the first day of class about journalists and their main goal to establish and hold the quality of having epistemic responsibility, however, I am very disappointed in this article and the journalists associated. They are not holding that quality or responsibility of telling the truth to the world. Instead they are caring to much about the paparazzi, instead of taking care of the deaths occurring to thousands of people and getting the information out, read, and heard.
As a college junior studying Public Relations, I try to closely analyze each PR predicament I cross paths with. The New York Times article "Syria's Assads Turned to West for Glossy PR" is one that frustrates me. In my opinion, public relations should be used to promote the good, promise, and potential of services and situations...not to sidetrack the public from the truth about a serious global concern. Clearly, the PR practitioner in charge of the Assad's family's campaign succeeded in making Mrs. Assad into a (perceived) fashion icon, but at what cost? Instead of placing an emphasis on Mrs. Assad's high heels and ranking in the fashion world, PR practitioners should interest be making the political stances of the Assad family well known. Therefore, I don't consider this PR professional's world to be applauded for it turns the Assads into celebrities instead of leaders. The priorities of this campaign are warped and I really don't see the good its done in the long run.
I believe that the PR personal working for the Assad's in Syria did not fulfill Stocking's definition of what's to be considered "good work," in that it didn't stand as morally excellent, or anything close to the word "excellent" for that matter. Altough their work may have created a greater superficial image of the leaders (which may be all a PR rep. can improve on when assigned someone with such a polluted political background as Mr. Assad) it should be considered morally wrong to highlight such things, in what is an obvious effort to sweep the controversy and bloodshed caused by his regime under the rugs. However, such is the nature of the beast, right? It's pretty obvious that morals are going to be quickly thrown out the window in favor of a paycheck in most political PR cases. It's their job to accent positives, and unfortunately, it seems that two of the only positives the Assad's are working with are nice clothes and a lavish lifestyle. Also, PR personal/journalists would probably be put to death if the horrors of his campaign were reported upon publically. But such tactics obviously work if you look at how things operate here in the US. After all, the Assad's hired a political PR firm based out of Washington. Maybe because our country is good at hiding the horrible, inhumane actions we commit by covering them up with puffed-up, wholesome (sometimes), unimportant bullshit to distract the public through media? I don't mean to get too off topic, but there should be concern as to why political figureheads around the world would need PR to be portrayed as "cool" first and formost when the horrors of their campaign are left unquestioned like the elephant in the room no one is talking about.
Define good work. If by good work you mean presenting clients in the most favorable and impressive light, than yes. But where is the line between supporting a client and our obligations to be ethical? In a sense P.R people can be seen as the lawyers who defend murders, I SUPPOSE. It happens. There needs to be someone for everyone. But I think there are two sides to the plate. Public Relations can be practiced ethically and not ethically. You have firms who stage people in parades smoking cigarettes and you have no those spreading information about the ban on fracking. People who are in Vouge generally tend not to be real and it’s not a surprise those representing them aren’t either. Good work can be measured in all different mediums though. And in this articles case its obviously good work in a sense. To be able to spin some murdering government officials is not an easy task. It’s a different pool then I would want to jump in but it’s still one none the less.
As defined by Holly Stocking, “good work” is technically impressive in quality, and fulfilling morally responsible standards. Based on the article, the PR professionals did not do good work on behalf of the Assads. The PR professionals did what they were supposed to do, which was to create a good image for Mr. and Mrs. Assad, but by doing so, they did not fulfill the morally responsible standards that constitute good work. This was violated by portraying the Assads as people who were progressive and had open minds, when in reality it was the opposite. The Assads are not who they are portrayed to be and lives are being harmed. This is a failure on the PR professional’s side because when they should have been focusing on what issues are at hand when it comes to the Assads, such as their political views and how they run their country, they instead focused on their clothes and image. I feel that if human lives weren’t being harmed, and their images were being portrayed differently then they actually are for a much less serious reason, that this would be more ethically sound. Since thousands of people are being murdered by how they run their government and the PR professionals are trying to make them look better in this situation, this is definitely not fulfilling good work, or any ethical values at all. It is simply a way the Assad’s are paying the professionals to make themselves look as good as possible to the rest of the world so they can continue what they are doing.
According to Holly Stocking, "Good work requires attention to both the technical aspects of one's job and to the moral implications of one's work." (p. 53)
The PR firm Brown Lloyd James took $5,000 a month to facilitate Asma’s glamorous portrayal in Vogue. Technically, the firm did an astounding job at getting attractive publicity for the first lady of Syria. But the moral implications of Brown Lloyd James’s actions, and those journalists who took the bait, are certainly questionable.
Most of the articles about Mrs. Assad were fluff pieces. In the world of fashion and celebrity news, should an individual with ties to a corrupt political leader automatically get blacklisted from media coverage, if it is not concerned with political issues?
Vogue contributor Joan Juliet Buck (who wrote a lengthy article lauding the first lady) said Mrs. Assad is “extremely thin and very well-dressed, and therefore qualified to be in Vogue.” Despite the interviews and comments she gave in the wake of this article which were intended to repair her reputation as a moral person, she technically succeeded at her job as a professional journalist specializing in fashion.
When Anna Wintour explained why Ms. Buck’s article was removed from the Vogue website she said, “…it became clear that its priorities and values were completely at odds with those of Vogue.” I am unclear as to what these “priorities and values” are — from Ms. Buck’s commentary, it would seem that Vogue’s first professional responsibility is to bring its readership women’s interest stories related to lithe, impeccably-dressed society women. Wintour condemns the recent actions of the Assad regime, however she doesn’t point to any specific instance leading to the removal of the article, only generalities. It seems as if the article was finally deemed “unfashionable” by the greater world of journalism, and therefore at odds with the Vogue code of ethics. This leads me to wonder, should there be a quantifiable amount of carnage and oppression that a political leader must commit in order to get his wife blacklisted from Vogue?
In defense of the fashion journalists who praised Ms. Assad, it is possible that they did not feel well-informed enough about the Assad regime to pass judgment on Mrs. Assad herself. As illustrated by Anna Wintour, it is difficult for a professional journalist to make specific claims about the atrocities committed by the Assad regime. We have learned, journalists shouldn’t make claims unless they are 100% percent positive of their accuracy, and there is not much accurate news available about the Assad regime. The article repeatedly illustrates how difficult it is for hard news reporters to get fair, accurate media coverage out of Syria — if they get out alive at all. Perhaps the reason that so much positive press ran about Mrs. Assad, was because journalists lacked the proper information (about the situation in Syria) to make ethical decisions.
In the text, Holly Stocking explains “good work” as work that is technically and morally right. I don’t believe the PR professionals or the journalists did good work as defined in Stocking’s words. It is extremely unethical to give so much praise to someone who does so much wrong. In the killing of over 10,000 people, focusing and zoning in on world leaders’ fashion and appearance is morally wrong. Technically, yes she is described as thin and well-dressed, which were the two qualities to qualify to be featured in Vogue, but focusing and zoning in on a world leaders fashion sense and appearance while thousands of people are being killed is morally wrong. The Assads were being admired rather than looked down upon for their actions. All of the reporters should have been objective rather than publish tainted or influenced work. Even though information was being relayed to the public, it was not the information that most needed to be shared.
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