Ethics in America

Fred Friendly with Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani on the set of Ethics in America

During the 1988-89 television season, PBS presented a ten-part series of seminars that proved to be one of the most thought-provoking, provocative programs ever shown on television. In doing so, the network provided a blueprint for how to engage viewers with stimulating ideas that, in turn, forced them to deal with tough, real-life questions that had no easy answers. 

Ethics in America was the brainchild of Fred Friendly, former president of CBS News and a leading critic of what he saw as the superficiality of news coverage on network and local television. After leaving network television for the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Friendly continued to concentrate on ways in which broadcast journalism could both serve the public interest and engage the public in the vital issues of the day. Beginning in 1974, Friendly inaugurated a series of seminars on media, law and public policy, involving professionals from disparate fields. Eventually, these evolved into the Fred Friendly Seminars, which debuted on PBS in 1981. Prior to Ethics in America, various series looked at questions ranging from the Constitution to medical care and personal choice.

The format for Ethics in America, like the other series, begain with a panel of professionals being presented with a hypothetical scenario, in this case revolving around the ethical implications raised during the course of the discussion. The scenarios themselves covered such issues as politics, the media, medicine, and the law. (Thanks, Wikipedia!) The scenario would appear quite simple at first, but as a number of factors and variables were introduced, the ethics involved became more and more complex, the questions more and more difficult to answer. That there wasn't always an obvious "right" or "wrong" answer, or that sometimes it was a case of the lesser of evils, made the situations doubly challenging. Frequently a panelist, challenged by the moderator to tell what he or she would do in a given situation, would sit silently for several seconds, visibly engaged in an internal struggle to answer the question. 

Lest you think the panels were comprised of obscure academics, most of the panelists were either well-known or soon-to-be so, including Peter Jennings, Mike Wallace, Warren Buffet, Antonin Scalia, Newt Gingrich (before he became Speaker of the House), Rudy Giulaini (before he became mayor of New York), former Vietnam commander William Westmoreland, columnist Ellen Goodman, and others. The thoughtfulness of their answers (and sometimes questions of other panelists) and the depth with which they immersed themselves in these hypothetical scenarios indicated how seriously they took the questions, and their own responsibilities as panelists.

What I want to do here is focus on two episodes in particular that I found—and I'm not exaggerating here, either—thrilling. Yes, you may be thinking, but you would be interested in something like this, being a nerd and a news junkie. And you'd be right about that, at least in part. But, watching this series again over the past few weeks, I can honestly say that it would never occur to me that a viewer wouldn't be interested in these questions. If they aren't, then they either have no curiosity, no desire to think, or no willingness to confront issues that might make them feel the teensiest bit uncomfortable. 

The two episodes are actually parts one and two of an extended discussion on ethics in the military, subtitled "Under Orders, Under Fire." The two hours present a vast array of uncomfortable questions covering a variety of situations, including whether the use of torture to extract information from prisoners is ever justified, how and when an unjust order from a superior must be disobeyed, whether journalists owe their first allegiance to their country or their profession, the morality of killing enemy soldiers who've surrendered when circumstances make it impossible to take them prisoner, the confidentiality of a soldier's confession to a chaplain, and more. 

If you think any of these questions are easily answered, you won't think so after the struggles of the participants. There are sharp disagreements among members of the panel, and probing questions pass between them. Peter Jennings changes his mind twice in trying to answer a question about whether or not he'd warn allied troops if he was imbedded in an enemy unit, and Mike Wallace admits he doesn't know what he'd do.

In one of the most powerful exchanges, a former army lieutenant says frankly that he'd torture a prisoner to get information that could save the lives of some of his men, and that he'd even kill the prisoner if he thought it would "send a message" to other prisoners; his statement is met with revulsion from clergymen and generals alike, who not only condemn the lieutenant, but stress that any such order to kill a prisoner must be disobeyed on moral and ethical grounds. 

General Westmoreland himself goes on to remind the panel that the United States is a signatore to the Geneva Convention, and that such violations make us no better than the enemy we fight. But, the moderator asks another officer, are you saying that you'd sacrifice some of your own men rather than torture an enemy prisoner. After an uncomfortable pause, he replies that he hopes he'd have the courage to do it, to make the right decision, but in the heat of the moment, who can be sure?

All this reminds me of a quote from Joyce Carol Oates in her novel The Assassins (a provocative book in its own right):

Does a demon beckon?

Do you follow?

Do you turn aside, mashing your fists into your eyes?

You won't know until it beckons. To you. So long as it temps others you can judge—can sneer—can express shock, disgust, outrage, and prim disdain—the usual emotions of punitive people. But you won't know. I didn't.

And that's it in a nutshell, not only regarding this particular question, but the questions posed by every scenario in the series. You may know what you'd like to do, but until you're faced with it, in the heat of the moment, you don't know.

That's what makes Ethics in America such a stimulating series: the confrontation that invariably goes on within each individual—both participants and viewers—not only about what should be done in a given situation, but whether or not they would be able to do it. What does "ethics" involve? Are ethics constant or situational? If it's hard for these panelists, all distinguished within their own professions, to answer these questions, imagine how difficult it is for the viewer. And yet life doesn't give you a free pass on these kinds of things; you might not be confronted with these issues, but, believe me, there will be others. As Leon Trotsky said, "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." You may not care about the affairs of the world, but the world doesn't much care whether you're interested or not.

If you read last week's article "To Think or Not to Think," you must have figured out by now why I'm focusing on this series. Ethics in America doesn't give the viewer a choice; it forces you to think. And while the intensity of this ten-hour series might be too much for some people, it doesn't have to take ten hours for viewers to be presented with a variety of Hobson's choices: the best one-hour dramas have been doing that for years. Such programs could be used to form the basis of ongoing discussion groups, much like book clubs have been doing for years. More on that next week. TV