Can Ethics Trump Law?
Six criteria to help you decide when it’s OK to break the law. Should journalists ever break the law to report a story? Is there a justification for putting ethical obligations above legal obedience? Those questions are at the heart of the debate about the ABC News report that tested security at American ports. ABC News producers shipped a container containing depleted uranium from Jakarta, Indonesia to the United States. ABC News said its “project involved a shipment to Los Angeles of just under 15 pounds of depleted uranium, a harmless substance that is legal to import into the United States.” ABC NEWS reported that U.S. Government screeners failed to detect the depleted uranium in that container. ABC News said this was the second year in a row that the government screeners failed this same test. The ABC News website quotes Tom Cochran, a nuclear physicist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, “which lent the material to ABC News for the project.” “If they can’t detect that, then
