An Ethics Problem? A Shopping Tip? Or Something Else....?

This shopping tip from wonderful "Regret the Error."

Ethics students: You don't have to comment on this. But you might want to.

The Case of the Purloined Parking Permits

About ten years ago a student in my advanced reporting class was faced with this situation: Since parking is tight on our campus, daily parking passes are at a premium. At the time, our office of Public Safety apparently had a box of passes -- signed by a public safety officer but otherwise blank and therefore "negotiable" -- to which student employees had access. My student observed a classmate, who was also a casual acquaintance, selling and sometimes giving away these blank passes to which he, a student employee in Public Safety, had helped himself. The student reporter wanted to turn this into a story for the Foghorn but was not sure how to proceed because even though this activity was taking place in front of him in another class -- there was nothing clandestine about it -- the student selling, and sometimes giving away, the passes knew and trusted my student and apparently did not think of him as a student journalist. To test the waters, my student bought one of the passes for a dollar.

The questions at the time were: Should he go forward with the story? If so, how? If not, why not?

Yeah, Well I Don't Trust Pollsters

This from a 2005 Gallup poll. The numbers indicate the percentage of those polled who give these groups a high or very high rating when it comes to ethics.

Nurses 82
Druggists/Pharmacists 67
Medical doctors 65
High school teachers 64
Policemen 61
Clergy 54
Funeral directors 44
Bankers 41
Accountants 39
Journalists 28
Real estate agents 20
Building contractors 20
Lawyers 18
Labor union leaders 16
Senators 16
Business executives 16
Stockbrokers 16
Congressmen 14
Advertising practitioners 11
Car salesmen 8
Telemarketers 7
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