Cases for Multi-Modal Analysis
Case 1 (from the 2004 National Ethics Bowl)
Photojournalists capture images that tell a story more powerfully than words. Some insist that photojournalists are necessarily observers rather than participants, removed from the subjects they photograph, documenting rather than intervening. Others accuse photojournalists of emotional manipulation and moral indifference. Controversy surrounding the picture that won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Photography demonstrates this tension.
Kevin Carter, a free-lance photographer, was among a group of passionate and idealistic young South African photojournalists. Nicknamed "the Bang-Bang Club" by a Johannesburg magazine for the perilous nature oftheir work, their mission was to make the world aware of issues of injustice. Despite imprisonment and death, they opened the eyes of the world to the appalling human suffering in Africa caused by the brutality of apartheid, war, deadly township violence, vigilante justice, and famine.
In the village of Ayod in Sudan, Carter photographed masses of starving people at a feeding station. Overwhelmed by the endless misery he saw, Carter wandered away from the feeding station into the bush. Following sounds of soft whimpering, he came upon a tiny Sudanese child, emaciated from starvation, crawling toward the feeding center. Carter decided to photograph the child. As he was doing so, a well-fed vulture landed a few feet away and began to stalk the child. Carter photographed the vulture stalking the child for several minutes, patiently hoping that the vulture would spread its wings, thereby enabling Carter to get a more dramatic shot.. It did not and Carter eventually shooed the bird away. He sat beneath a tree and cried, watching as the child continued to struggle toward the center. It is not known if the child survived.
Carter's powerful image became an immediate symbol of Africa's desperation, and won Carter the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Photography. Although acclaimed by many, much of the response was critical for publishing this photo and awarding it the Pulitzer Prize. Carter was angrily criticized because he took the picture but did not assist the child, although she was one among thousands of refugees crawling toward the center. Some, however, hailed Carter's photo as a powerful catalyst that triggered world response to the famine in the Sudan, resulting in raised awareness and substantial contributions for famine relief.
(photo)
Case 2 (from the 2003 National Ethics Bowl)
In July 2000, Kenneth Powell was awakened by a call from police in the middle of the night to pick up a friend, Michael Pringle, who had been arrested for drunk driving. Powell signed a release form stating that he would be responsible to take Pringle home. Instead of doing so, however, Powell returned Pringle to his car, which had been left at the arrest site. (Powell had been given directions to its location by a police officer.) Pringle resumed driving when he reached his car. Upon being released from arrest the police had returned his car keys to him. An hour later, he crossed the center line and collided with an on-coming car, killing himself and the other driver, John Elliott, and critically injuring Elliott's girlfriend.
Powell was charged with manslaughter and vehicular homicide, the first time in history someone with no direct involvement in a Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) crash was charged with a crime. Prosecutors said it was Powell's responsibility to keep his drunk friend off the road, and pointed to the release he had signed agreeing to take Pringle home. Defense attorneys argued that it was irresponsible of police to return his keys to Pringle, and then give Powell directions to Pringle's car; instead, they said, the police should have held Pringle until he was sober. Powell's lawyers contended that convicting Powell would allow prosecution of anyone who fails to stop a drunk driver.
In August of 2002, Powell was acquitted of manslaughter, but the judge declared a mistrial on lesser charges about which the jurors couldn't agree. Elliott's girlfriend and her family, as well as Elliott's family, have now brought charges against Powell for letting Pringle drive while intoxicated. Since these events, the New Jersey State legislature has passed a law requiring police to impound the vehicles of intoxicated motorists. The legislature has not, however, passed any legislation expanding or precluding criminal liability for the friends of drunk drivers.
Case 3 (from the 2007 National Ethics Bowl)
Computers fail for many reasons; most commonly, because of a hard drive crash. Computers may also be rendered unusable by fire, flood, mistreatment, sabotage, rust, viruses, overheating, static electric shock, and other mishaps. Users sometimes lose data by forgetting a password, deleting data accidentally, or making other mistakes. Even the savviest user will sometimes neglect to back up important data. When catastrophe occurs, the data stored on the hard drive, though often still there, cannot be retrieved by normal means.
Properly trained technicians often can recover data. The process can be painstaking and delicate, and only a few are qualified to recover data. Those who are qualified usually charge high prices for their service, which customers are willing to pay. Fred earns a comfortable living as president of his own small data recovery company, Recoupabyte Confidential, Inc. Starting five years ago from a one-person operation, he now employs a team of six: three technicians for the service side, and three staff members for the business side. The corporate website advertises comprehensive data recovery from most mishaps, free estimates, and complete confidentiality. Their tagline is “Your reputation is safe with us.” Fred had often thought about that line, thinking that, “Your data is safe with us” might be more accurate.
Fred assigned Arnie, a new technician, to the case of a new customer, Mr. Bowen. In a rage, Mr. Bowen had hurled his laptop through a window of his house. After calming down, he realized that all his tax records were on the computer and he had no backup. He gathered up the pieces of the laptop and brought them to Recoupabyte. During the interview, with Fred and Arnie both present, Bowen nervously inquired about the confidentiality promise. He wanted to make sure that Recoupabyte would treat all data in the strictest confidence, no matter what it might be. Fred assured him that anything on the computer, unless it involved plans for future criminal activity, would be completely safe with Recoupabyte. “We are all professionals here!” he said.
Since the hard drive had been damaged, Arnie had to extract and examine one file at a time. Many files were lost or hopelessly corrupted. In examining files, Arnie noticed some poor-quality photographs of what looked like a badly injured person. He continued the retrieval process and found a folder called “diary” that contained files named by month and year. He examined one of these files and found it to be a first-person account of daily activities. His curiosity getting the better of him, he found the diary file with the same date as one of the photographs. To his amazement, the diary contained a brief, perfunctory account of a murder.
Shocked by what he had seen, Arnie went home early. In the middle of the night, unable to sleep, he got on the Internet and started searching for information about a local murder committed about that time. He found nothing about a murder, but a month after the date on the file, there had been an unresolved missing person report. The following morning, Arnie went in early and read the entire diary. By his own account, Mr. Bowen was an extremely volatile person, who frequently flew into uncontrollable rages. His diary recounted numerous times he had destroyed property or ruined friendships in his rage, only to come to his senses later and indulge in bouts of self loathing and remorse. Remorse quickly passed until the next incident. According to the diary, Bowen had struck a drinking buddy during an argument, knocking him out. The sight of him lying unconscious on the floor had only enraged Bowen all the more. He continued hitting and kicking him until his fury was spent. When Bowen came to his senses and checked for a pulse, he realized his friend was dead. The diary went on to describe how he disposed of the body, but did not give a location. Arnie called Fred into the lab, showed him the files and poured out the whole story. “So what do we do?” he asked.
Fred replied, “We recover his data and give it back to him.”
“And then what?”
“Send him a bill.”
Arnie turned red and spluttered in disbelief, until Fred finally explained. “Look, kid. This company is built on confidentiality. People need to know that we will not turn them in, no matter who they are. Otherwise, if we start picking and choosing what dirt we turn over and what we sweep under the rug, we’ll lose all trust. We’re not a jury. We’re not even consultants or advisors, we’re just housecleaners. Not noticing anything in the house we’re cleaning is just good business practice. And what if it’s not a real diary, but notes for a novel? So, finish your work and stop snooping through Bowen’s files, O.K.?”
Case 4 (from the 2007 National Ethics Bowl)
In the last six years, Facebook.com has gone from being a relatively exclusive website for Ivy League students to the most popular social networking site on the web. With more than 400 million users and 25 billion items of content by its own count, 1 and a structure that allows people to choose their "friends," the website and the company running it can have dramatic effects on many lives.
Lately, though, some users have begun to wonder whether they have misjudged the company‘s dedication to user privacy. While Facebook has recently stated that it operates on a principle whereon ―People have control over how their information is shared,‖2 its recent actions can seem to be in conflict with this principle.
The key decision that first concerned privacy advocates was Facebook‘s decision to change users‘ default privacy settings to publishing users‘ posts and photographs automatically unless they specifically opted-out. If someone wasn‘t keeping up with Facebook‘s announcements, previously private pictures were in many cases made visible to everyone on the Internet and so-called "status updates" were broadcast to everyone as well.3 This prompted a warning from privacy advocates such as the Electronic Freedom Foundation not to use Facebook‘s default privacy settings4 until users had easier control over their own information.
Facebook is a privately held company that has not bothered to hide its interest in using its massive user base to make money from advertising and other forms of marketing. Facebook users‘ decision to invest large amounts of time in social networking on the site is a result of the experience Facebook has created so far. No one is forced to use Facebook or its services, and if users strongly disagree with the company‘s privacy policies they can cease to use the site, deactivate their accounts, or delete their accounts (though Facebook doesn‘t make this option easy to find).
Some point out, however, that Facebook has a duty to respect the privacy of the users who began using its service before privacy became a secondary concern. Users became accustomed to the idea that their data was private unless they specifically allowed it to become public. They point out that users‘ previous experience with the service amounts to an agreement that Facebook cannot break lightly. Since the option to make one‘s profile public was always available without many people making use of it, one could surmise that many users did not want to make their profiles available for everyone to see.
Case 5 (from the 2010 Regional Ethics Bowl)
Second Life is an online community where members interact with each other through their avatars—they can explore, chat, shop, and have sex. Cybersex is a popular activity in Second Life because members can design their avatars to cater to their particular, even peculiar, sexual desires. And generally no one minds. But in recent years, one form of online sexual role-playing—called "age play"—has drawn attention. Age play involves adult users who create child-like avatars and use them to engage in virtual sex, sometimes with other child-like avatars and sometimes with adult-like avatars.
This phenomenon is quite troubling, and some countries have taken steps to criminalize the creation, distribution, and possession of these types of images. In the United States, however, these images are not illegal.
In the United States, virtual sexualized depictions of children are not illegal as long as no actual children are involved. These images, referred to as "virtual child pornography", must be distinguished from "morphed" images or "pseudo-photographs," which are digital manipulations of photographs of actual children. These morphed images are illegal because they include actual children as a part of the sexualized image. And even entirely virtual images are illegal if they are considered obscene.The United States Supreme Court has drawn the distinction between virtual and actual (even morphed) sexualized images of children because children are not directly harmed by the virtual images. On the other hand, some argue that the morphed images are more like the virtual images because they are not the product of sexual abuse, as other child pornography necessarily is. Either way, as technology continues to develop, it may become increasingly difficult to distinguish between images that incorporate photographs of real children and images that are entirely virtual.
Many other countries have addressed this problem by criminalizing computer-generated, sexualized images of children. This approach resolves the issue of distinguishing between virtual and actual images, focusing instead on the possibility that these images—whether virtual or real—are detrimental to children.7 But this approach has also has been said to punish "thought crime," which may be problematic even where the thoughts being regulated are extremely and almost universally offensive.
Case 6 (from the 2009 Regional Ethics Bowl)
Roughly 10% of Americans, including 6% of American women, who have health insurance purchase that coverage as an individual, rather than through an employer 1 Premiums are generally higher than one would pay through one’s employer, but one need not worry about losing the insurance due to job loss.
According to a recent article in the New York Times, however, the deal may be more costly if you don’t happen to be male. Women pay between 20% and 50% higher premiums than men for the same insurance coverage 2 . (Employer-subsidized insurance plans offer all employees the same benefit plan, regardless of sex or gender.) Furthermore, women are charged more even if they decline maternity coverage. Only ten states have passed laws prohibiting this kind of discrimination in the individual insurance market, leaving the vast majority of women unprotected on the open market. 3
Insurance companies argue that the higher cost for women is justified. Women use more healthcare services than men, including a broad array of services associated with maternity and reproductive health, and are thus more expensive to insure. In this respect, the high premiums women pay are like the higher premiums associated with age, despite one’s inability to choose one’s sex or stop getting older. The higher premiums simply reflect the higher expenses to the insurance company. Men and women seeking insurance on the individual market can expect to pay more for a policy if they have a pre-existing condition or other factors that cause them to use more healthcare services. Women use more services in general, particularly regular checkups and screenings, and unfortunately happen to be the only demographic that can get pregnant.
Others claim that despite the business logic behind the higher premiums, they are discriminatory. A significant wage gap already exists between men and women who work similar jobs. To expect women to pay more on the individual insurance market increases the wage gap even more. Charging higher premiums based on racial or ethnic differences has been banned for some time, despite the potential for differences in healthcare consumption between races. These and other reasons fuel the contention that sex-based insurance premium differences should be outlawed.
Of course purchasing insurance on the individual market is already expensive for men, as well. Increasing their costs would introduce further disincentives to buy insurance, potentially leading to fewer insured people altogether. The concept of insurance implies that all of the people who pay premiums subsidize others who use more than their “share” of medical care, but the line between dispassionately pricing risk and sexism remains extremely controversial.