After several successful posts he was
finally made acting Chief of the General Bureau of Investigation in
1924. (Bardsley, Ch.2, pp.1-2)
Media coverage came quickly for Hoover as he was involved in several
high profile busts early in his career. In the early thirties a crime
wave was hitting the mid-west. This gangster era was marked by names
such as John Dillenger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly, and Ma
Barker.
This was a time of depression and prohibition, a time when
distrust of lawmen and the government was at an all time high.
Newspapers and magazines celebrated the crimes and the criminals.
(Bardsley, Ch.4, pp.1) Some of the criminals burned mortgages and loan
papers as they robbed the banks, this turned them into modern day Robin
Hoods and they were made into folk heroes.
vil·lain·y (vl-n)
n., pl. vil·lain·ies.
1.Baseness
of mind or character.
2.Viciousness
of conduct or action.
3.A treacherous
or vicious act.
crime (krm)
n.
1.An act
committed or omitted in violation of a
law forbidding or commanding it and for
which punishment is imposed upon conviction.
2.Unlawful
activity: statistics relating to violent crime.
Holier Than Thou? Employees Who Believe They Are 'Ethical' Or 'Moral' Might Not Be
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071030120552.htm
ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2007) ' Bad behavior seems rampant in business, and scholars are divided as to why people act ethically or unethically. Many have argued that ethical behavior is the result of simple judgments between right and wrong. Others suggest that the driving force behind ethical behavior is the individual's moral identity, or whether the individual thinks of him/herself as an ethical person.
New research from the University of Washington suggests that both of these forces are at play. In two separate studies, Scott Reynolds, an assistant professor in the Michael G. Foster School of Business, and Tara Ceranic, a doctoral student studying business, surveyed roughly 500 college students and managers about their ethical behaviors.
In the first study, researchers asked students if they would have cheated in college in order to score better on a test. Those who explicitly considered themselves to be moral people and considered cheating to be morally wrong were the least likely to cheat. In contrast, students who considered themselves to be moral but saw cheating as an ethically justifiable behavior were the worst cheaters.
"Our research suggests that a moral identity motivates behavior, but that accurate, ethical judgments are needed to set that behavior in the right direction," Reynolds says. "A person's moral identity can interact with his or her judgments and actually push ethical behaviors to extreme levels, as we saw with the students who decided that cheating was justifiable and OK."
According to the researchers, a moral identity specifically centers on a person's moral aspects and acts as a self-regulatory mechanism that sets parameters for individual behavior and motivates specific actions that are moral. Previous studies implied that moral identity is "good" when it is associated with and motivates individuals toward socially desirable outcomes such as volunteering and making charitable donations.
Reynolds and Ceranic found that this motivational force needs direction, and that without proper guidance a moral identity can conceivably push individuals toward socially undesirable behaviors.
"Moral identity seems to be more motivational in nature than 'moral' in nature," Reynolds says. "Managers and organizations should not just assume that a moral identity will necessarily translate into moral behaviors." In a second study designed to more fully illustrate the motivational power of a moral identity, Reynolds and Ceranic presented company mangers with a scenario that was morally ambiguous. In the scenario, a hard-working hourly employee completed her work and was prepared to go home early, but she needed the hours. Each manager was presented with different options for dealing with the situation.
These varied from being very accommodating (giving the employee the rest of the day off with pay) to very strict (keeping her at work and finding additional work for her to complete), with more moderate options in between. As expected, those who viewed themselves as moral people were most likely to take the most extreme alternatives, and chose either to be extremely accommodating to the employee or exceedingly strict about the rules in the workplace. This study proved that their moral identity motivated them to the most extreme behaviors.
As the first study demonstrated, sometimes these extreme behaviors may not be in the best interests of the organization. There are measures, though, that companies can take to help improve moral behavior.
First, Reynolds says, companies can focus on improving individual moral judgments. Moral development has been shown to improve with formal ethics training programs. Company leaders should provide both model moral judgment and delegate authority appropriately.
Organizations also can more effectively communicate social consensus from higher sources, such as state and federal law, and more firmly establish their own social consensus in areas such as gift-giving policies. Doing so would presumably reduce the need for individual moral judgment and remove some of the variance in individual behavior. Mechanisms for conveying social consensus would include codes of conduct and both formal (newsletters, e-mails) and informal (speeches, conversations) information channels.
Finally, companies can reward and encourage behaviors associated with the traits of a moral identity (fair, hardworking, compassionate), thereby encouraging development of moral identities within employees. Both formal and informal systems would have to be considered, and such efforts would have implications for the identity of the entire organization. Nevertheless, the research indicates that if an organization employs individuals with strong moral identities, moral behavior will follow.
The study appears in the November issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology.
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Roy Peter Clark: Here's Your Handy-Dandy Propaganda Detector
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=78&aid=149648
8.9.2
Journalists love slogans about journalism, and one of their
favorites is Hemingway's insistence that writers need to "develop a
built-in bullshit detector." The tools of skepticism are at the
center of the reporter's craft. To be used in the public interest,
these tools must be dusted off and sharpened, especially in this
season of overheated political advertising, spectacle and oratory.
Read on, and I will share with you seven of my favorite propaganda
detection tools. The cool thing is that, unlike my power drill or
lawnmower, these tools need not be returned. In fact, feel free to
pass them along to others. Used well, they will help you keep the
citizens you serve from being fooled, confused or dazzled.
No politician, Republican or Democrat, would admit he or she is in
the propaganda business. And no journalist I know would admit to
being an enabler of the propaganda efforts of a particular political
party. Like it or not, every scripted moment of every convention,
every syllable of every campaign speech, is an act of political
propaganda. It follows that to cover politics responsibly, reporters
must come equipped with a tuned-up, turbo-charged propaganda
detector.
In an anthology of essays on language, I stumbled upon a pamphlet
titled "How to Detect Propaganda," published in 1937 by a
short-lived organization called the Institute for Propaganda
Analysis.
As you can imagine, the years leading up to World War II frothed
with propaganda. The Institute, co-founded by Clyde R. Miller of
Columbia University, was an early advocate of what we now called
"critical literacy." The pamphlet begins, "If American citizens are
to have clear understanding of present-day conditions and what to do
about them, they must be able to recognize propaganda, to analyze
it, and to appraise it."