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Go Home Innocent Until Even If Proven Guilty

THE PLANK DECEMBER 4, 2006

Innocent Until Even If Proven Guilty

BY TNR STAFF

Randy Cohen, the New York Times "Ethicist," laid a big egg yesterday in counseling an Internet technician who stumbled onto the company president's personal stash of child porn to keep his mouth shut. Cohen argues that, since it's not totally clear the boss is up to no good (really?), this doesn't justify imperiling the man's reputation:

[Y]ou have no legal obligation to contact the police, nor should you. The situation is too fraught with uncertainty. These photographs might depict--legally--not children but young-looking adults. The images could be digitally altered. Your boss may have acquired free (albeit illegal) images rather than bought them and provided a financial incentive to those who harm children. Someone other than your boss may have downloaded the pictures. ...
Since you have no reason to believe your boss has had improper contact with children, you should not subject him to such ferocious repercussions for looking at forbidden pictures.

If this is any guide, here's an early look at next week's ethicist:

I'm a janitor in a large company. When I was cleaning the president's office last week, I noticed the strangled body of a woman who appeared to be a hooker in the boss' closet. Should I call the police? J.M., Arkansas.
No. While strangling hookers is certainly wrong, there are too many questions here. How do you know the woman was a hooker? How do you know it was the boss who strangled her? Perhaps she hanged herself. If you call the police, your boss and your company could face extreme embarrassment and you could lose your job. Your best bet is to clean up the blood and stay out of it.

Actually, that's barely a parody.

--Adam B. Kushner

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16 comments

Was it parody, or an ethical question from a Capitol Hill janitor cleaning out the office of Rep Don Sherwood (R-PA)? http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20061002&s=fairbank s100206

- dubyadoubte

December 4, 2006 at 3:18pm

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a true pro would have have had the good sense to blame the existence of the kiddie porn on the guy who found it. NYT's owners--T Rowe Price, Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Vanguard Group, et al.--certainly won't cotton to such shabby performances from Cohen indefinitely. He needs to tighten up his act, or else start getting creative with his CV.

- williamyard

December 4, 2006 at 3:20pm

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...to get rid of that dead hooker's body. It's so hard finding good help these days. Adam, why Arkansas?

- mghogwild

December 4, 2006 at 3:29pm

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I truly don't know what to say. I've worked with people who prosecutor child pornography offenders, so I come to this issue with a bit more outrage than the average person. This is truly a low for the New York Times, I'm disgusted that I've defended them to conservative friends. As they're now delving into the lower levels of Hell, maybe they could get in on the OJ book?

- NKassotis

December 4, 2006 at 3:29pm

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That should have been been "prosecute."

- NKassotis

December 4, 2006 at 3:36pm

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In conclusion, Cohen advises: "Your best recourse? Alas, silence." Gee, depending on the president's portfolio, I'd think that blackmail might be an attractive option.

- dubyadoubte

December 4, 2006 at 3:41pm

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I don't know Cohen's background, but is there any chance he gave ethical advice to Nixon?

- NKassotis

December 4, 2006 at 3:42pm

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is as a comedy writer. He used to write for Letterman. No, really-- that's his qualification to stand as "The Ethicist." I haven't kept up with Cohen's column, but commented on its ludicrous advice some years ago. JTL

- jtlevy@uchica

December 4, 2006 at 4:35pm

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it reads like a sitcom script, and Cohen quickly figured out that he knew the accused and had to protect him at all costs.

- lafemina

December 4, 2006 at 5:01pm

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Thanks for the link to your piece in Reason. I enjoyed the broader discussion about ethical systems, as well as the more specifica criticisms of Cohen. And I had no idea that his resume was so thin.

- drdannyu

December 4, 2006 at 5:06pm

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Previous commenters seem to assume that this is a no-brainer, that the tech should call the cops. But why? The article does not indicate that the child-pornography-possession law includes a specific legal obligation to report apparent violations, and there's certainly no general legal obligation to report apparent violations of law. Do the commenters think there's a general _moral_ obligation to report law violations (and, if so, would they turn in a friend for smoking marijuana)? Do they think there's a specific moral obligation to turn in those who possess child pornography? If so, why? Just because they consider this particular offense a heinous one? What if one assumes, as the law professor quoted in the article says, that we don't really know whether punishing possessors is an effective way to stop purveyors? The article acknowledges that the tech has an obligation to the employer. If the culprit were a mid-level company official, the tech could report the violation to a higher official. But where it's the president, the only options are to tell the president him/herself that keeping the stuff on the company computer could bring trouble to the company, and to report it to the board of directors, and either of these steps could endanger the tech's job -- I would not want to blithely urge the tech to risk his job in that way. Of course, the tech could report this to his/her immediate supervisor, but that only displaces the dilemma one step up the organizational chain of command.

- tarfon

December 4, 2006 at 7:14pm

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I heard this on Randy's podcast a few days ago and was in shock. Glad to see I'm not alone. Randy's unethical advice is the gift that keeps on giving. For my thesis introduction I used an old Ethicist column in which Randy basically equated all people of faith with Eichmann because they are "just following directions." But I digress... On another note, why does TNR not have any podcasts? I would love to listen to TNR on the way to work in the mornings, but unlike the rest of the universe TNR has yet to get on the podwagon. Or is there something I have been missing?

- achester99

December 4, 2006 at 7:34pm

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Pinch's NY Times has an "ethicist"? It's a lifestyle guide. Where do they find space for ethics amid all the designer prefume profiles, gay art scene surveys, real estate market roundups, love letters to Steve Jobs and Google etc?

- teplukhin

December 4, 2006 at 7:36pm

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The New York Times Magazine has some great political articles. Your thinking of the Style magazine with the gay fashion and perfume. Both come with the Sunday Times.

- looniremich

December 4, 2006 at 11:39pm

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Tarfon makes a persuasive argument. Everybody else is just snarking or gossiping.

- tomhilliard

December 5, 2006 at 9:21am

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It's a shame that some people can look for so many reasons to not do the right thing.

- epackard

December 5, 2006 at 2:56pm

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