The Ethics of Lies: The Case of Donald Trump and Bob Woodward

 If Bob Woodward is correct in his new book Rage, President Trump lied to the American public

regarding the threat of the coronavirus.  He did that to avert panic.   Similarly, for months Woodward apparently knew Trump was lying but said nothing.  Both got it wrong ethically. No matter how noble or well-meaning, it is never appropriate for government officials to lie in the name of the public interest. Similarly, it is ethically wrong for journalists to withhold from the public information for a story when revealing it could have saved lives.

Lying is considered wrong, even children know this.   Often withholding information is as bad as lying.  Yet culturally some think  lies to children, the ill, or vulnerable are deemed okay to protect them. At one time it was acceptable to lie to dying patients so as not discourage them, but that is no longer a permissible medical ethics practice.  Despite a general cultural admonition to tell the truth, we create many exceptions to that rule.

Do these exceptions extend to public officials and journalists?   Should elected officials be allowed to lie to the public during the Covid-19 pandemic to shield them from bad news, prevent panic, or encourage them and make them feel better?

“You can't handle the truth” is the most famous line from the 1992 movie A Few Good Men.  Lying for the public good is premised upon this notion. There are several problems with arguing that lying to the public is ethically permissible, even for  altruistic reasons.

One, the correctness of lying is justified is left up to public officials and not the people to decide.  How do we know they are making the right decisions about what the public can bear if the latter lacks the information to make a judgement on what is right or wrong?

Two, how do we know the public official is lying or withholding information for the right reasons or motives?  It is easy for an official to say that my motives are well-meaning, but is that always the case?  Might not the basis for withholding information be to hide mistakes, avoid accountability, or simply further one’s own electoral or political interests? This is possibly what Trump did.  Letting public officials decide on the rectitude of their lies is a form of conflict of interest, letting them be the final judge of whether they are acting in the public good or abusing their position.

Three, once a public official has lied, they have lost all of their credibility.    In the future, how can we trust them? In part the erosion of public confidence and legitimacy of government stems from questionable veracity.

Four, lies might put more people at risk than telling the truth. People act in reliance on information they receive from public officials.  Giving false or misleading information may force people into making choices or assessing situations that put them at more risk than would telling the truth.

Five, in a free society the public is entitled to the truth and adults need and deserve correct information to hold the government accountable and make the appropriate decisions.  Lying for the public good treats adults like children, asserting they and not adults know what is in their own best interest. What Trump did was wrong–he lied to protect himself and used protecting the public as a pretext.  

But what about Woodward?  He did not lie but withheld critical information to produce a story and sell a book for personal profit.  That is just as bad as what Trump did.  Journalists are in the business of revealing not concealing information and Woodward violated that rule.  Moreover, journalists do not have a right to withhold information that could save lives. Medical doctors, including psychiatrists, often have a mandatory duty to break patient confidentiality if they have information that could protect the public.  Yes the First Amendment protects the press.  But when a journalist such as Bob Woodward gathers critical information such as he did and refuses to disclose so that he can sell a book for profit that is not about freedom of the press but personal profit at the expense of the public.  What he did in withholding information is as bad as what Trump did in lying.

But there is something more deeply wrong with Woodward’s Rage–it is a great journalist living on the afterburn.  By that, the last few exposes Woodward has written on presidents have been devoid of insight and perspective.  The 2018 book Fear, also on the Trump presidency, told us nothing we did not know about the Trump presidency then.  The same is mostly true of Rage.  It is just another what I call Trump porn book that is written to enrage audiences and make money.  Reading excerpts from Rage I walk away from it thinking that had a different journalist written it it would not get this attention, especially if this were an unknown one.  The book cuts corners, reports on facts, and fails to reveal things that raise questions about personal and journalistic ethics.  This is a Washington, D.C. insider book that appeals to other insiders but fails to do much to advance anything except to enlarge the criticisms about the media.

How the Associated Press Crossed the Journalism Ethics Line in Declaring Clinton had enough Delegates to Clinch the Democratic Nomination

AP ethically blew it on Monday.  It did that when after 5 PM and just hours before the critical California primary it declared that Hillary Clinton now had enough delegates to clinch the

Democratic nomination.  AP’s decision to run this story, along with the mainstream too repeating it, especially Rachel Maddow on MSNBC and the Washington Post, was an enormous breach of journalistic ethics in a year where traditional norms of media impartiality and objectivity seem already gone.
Factually it is simple.  AP on Monday night June 5,  filed a story declaring that Hillary Clinton now had enough delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination even before the remaining primaries, including that in California, would be held on Tuesday, June 6.  That estimate was based on its calculation of earned delegates plus super-delegates.  So what is the problem with that story?  There are several.
First, technically the super-delegates do not vote until the convention.  However they may say they are pledged, they can change their minds on how they will decide up until they actually vote at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in July.  While they may be pledging for Clinton, nothing says that events between now and the DNC could not lead them to change their mind.  While potentially unlikely, big wins by Sanders in California and other states, along with polling data suggesting him to be a stronger candidate, might be fodder for him arguing that he and not Clinton  should get the support of the super-delegates.  AP’s story is thus based upon their interpretation and the counting  of the stated intentions of super-delegates and not upon real earned delegates.  Thus, factually depending on how one cuts it, the AP story may not be true.
But the bigger problem is the timing.  The story ran simply hours before the last big primaries when there will be little if no ability by Sanders to counteract the report.  Sanders’ campaign was given effectively to opportunity to comment or to offer rebuttal that can reach voters and supporters in a way to challenge this AP declaration of the state of the campaign.  AP has not so much reported the news as it did create a story that potentially creates a self-fulfilling prophecy  that favors Clinton.
News reporting can produce what is known as the bandwagon effect.  Political scientists and  behavioral psychologists have described the bandwagon effect as a situation where when journalists declare a candidate to be a winner–based on polls–it impacts voting in several ways.  First, it depresses voter turnout for those who might have considered voting for the loser.  Second, it may convince independent voters to go with the winner and not necessarily with their choice whom they have heard as having been declared the winner.
There is empirical data supporting the bandwagon effect.  It supports political theories by the like of Alexis DeTocqueville, James Bryce, David Riesman, and Elizabeth  Noelle-Neumann, all great political scientists or sociologists, who described the powerful role that public opinion plays in swaying voters or individuals.  Why should I go with my preference when the majority says otherwise?  No one wants to go with a loser, we all want to support winners.  The best application of the bandwagon effect is how it is used with advertising.  The famous “three out of five doctors recommend” or polls describing customer preferences are more than efforts to describe factual situations, they are meant to sway opinions and get people to buy your product.  Another variation of this is called the Hawthorne effect where psychologists have noted how that when human subjects are being told they are being observed they change their behavior.
AP’s report on Clinton’s clinching of the nomination hits directly at the bandwagon effect.  It runs the risk of altering election turnout and results in several states and thereby crossing the line from reporting news to effecting the news.  It is like a journalism Hawthorne effect.  This type of reporting is unethical and crosses the line from impartiality and objectivity to being a newsmaker,  potentially favoring one candidate over another.
But this would not be the first time AP blew it.  Back in the 1980s William Brandon Shanley put together a documentary entitled “The Made for TV Election,” narrated by Martin Sheen.  It described overall how the mainstream television media reported the 1980 presidential election and slanted coverage to maintain ratings and market share.  But central to the documentary was how on election night AP called the race early for Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter on election night while  polls were still open on the west coast, including in California.  As a result, evidence suggested that when voter heard of the AP call as reported on television, voters walked away from polls or in some cases changed their voting preferences.  This documentary was a major indictment of the television  news media–and no mainstream television station or news service has ever chosen to show it or discuss it results.
What AP decided to do in 1980 was to say that not every vote counts.  It did the same with  its Monday story and the mainstream media echoed that message.  It declared the race over hours before a new round of voting would occur.  The AP could have waited 24 hours to issue the story but it choose–ethically wrong–to run the story for the purposes of getting a headline.  The rest of the media ran the story too for headlines and audience.  But this story is not the first instance of journalism ethics taking a backseat to profits.  Repeatedly this year one has seen the media slant headlines or hype stories to enhance ratings or readers which means to maximize profits. This is not reporting the news, it is marketing or selling it and that is not what journalism is supposed to be.