This PR guy shares the blame

Public relations spokespeople who work for taxpayer-supported institutions have a sometimes difficult task - they obviously have individuals they are responsible to, but both their and their superiors' true responsibility is to the public who pays the bills for all of them. When the choice is between the truth and saving somebody's butt in the agency, the truth should win, no matter how temporarily - or even permanently, in the form of losing the job - painful it may be.

The Health Services department spokesman in this story from today's Los Angeles Times fails miserably in his duty to the public, and to the truth. He attempted to scapegoat a dead woman and her surviving boyfriend in order to save the skin of the people in the hospital who killed her. He should be fired along with the other heads that will roll in this horrifying story.

Even if this kind of whitewash and demonization of the victim succeeds - which it often does in the short term - in the long term, it comes back to haunt. Either the true horror is exposed, and those responsible, including the PR guy, pay a harsher penalty than if it had been handled right at first, or the anxiety of wondering if and when it will be found out takes its own toll. I'd way rather lose my job now for refusing to help with a coverup than be part of this kind of stink.

Tale of last 90 minutes of woman's life

Hours after her death, county Department of Health Services spokesman Michael Wilson sent a note informing county supervisors' offices about the incident but saying that that police had been called because Rodriguez's boyfriend became disruptive.

Health services Director Dr. Bruce Chernof said Friday that subsequent information showed Prado was not, in fact, disruptive. Chernof otherwise refused to comment, citing the open investigation, patient privacy and "other issues."

Amazon review policy allows unethical practice

I stumbled across a book review on Amazon.com which had been posted by the author's mother-in-law, using very amateurish half-anonymization. To begin with, she didn't identify their relationship in her review, which would have made it basically acceptable. I happened to have just seen the wedding announcement online, and recognized her town. Upon looking at the announcement again, I saw that the Amazon user name was a contraction of the mother-in-law's first and last names. The review, posted more than a year ago, is the only one she has ever posted there, so it was clearly an intentional effort to boost her relative's sales.

So I dropped a quick email to Amazon, thinking how happy they would be to remove such craven pap from their pages. Well boy, was I wrong. Following is some of the correspondence.
Sun May 13 21:56:24 UTC 2007

I just happened to run across this review after seeing the author's wedding announcement in the NY Times online and realized the reviewer is her mother-in-law. Not only that, she is a retired librarian and certainly knows it is unethical to write such a droolingly positive review of a relative's work. You should delete it immediately.

From: "Amazon.com Customer Service"
2007/05/14 Mon PM 03:05:03 EDT

We're sorry for any inconvenience you've experienced. I hope the following information is helpful:
We would be happy to look into this matter further. To help us find the comments in our archives, we will require more information. Please use the link below to send us the ASIN, subject line and date of the review as it appears on our web site. This will allow us to locate the review and take the appropriate action.

Tue May 15 11:47:56 UTC 2007

I provided everything you could possibly need to know to find the review - a link as generated by your system. I certainly can't help it if the URL is four lines long and certainly don't see why you can't copy and paste each of those four lines.

I was not inconvenienced by this, I was outraged that your site allows such egregious self-promotion.

From: "Amazon.com Customer Service"
2007/05/16 Wed PM 01:31:20 EDT

We understand your concern, but the review doesn't fall outside of our guidelines. In order to help customers make informed buying decisions, we are interested in cultivating a diversity of opinion in our reviews. Part and parcel of that is allowing our customers to air their honest thoughts about items.

You can read our review guidelines online at:
http://www.amazon.com/o/tg/browse/-/14279631/#reviewguidelines

I am sorry to hear that you consider one of these reviews to be harmful to the sales of this title. We do, by all means, encourage you to submit your own review for this title. You can do this on the detail page by clicking on the link to "Write an online review."

May 17 12:01:24 UTC 2007

I was reporting a review that needs to be removed because it was written by a family member of the author. The cut-and-paste reply I received had nothing to do with my message at all. (I certainly don't "consider one of these reviews to be harmful to the sales of this title.")

From: "Amazon.com Customer Service"
Date: 2007/05/17 Thu PM 01:40:34 EDT

Thank you for writing back to us at Amazon.com. I've reviewed our previous correspondence and your account. I sympathize with your frustration. However, please understand that the information provided in our last message correctly represents our policy at this time. As my colleague previously mentioned, the review doesn't fall outside of our guidelines and so we cannot remove it.

I'm sure many authors, and others who create work for sale to the public, will be relieved to learn that they no longer need to buy the false moustaches before shouting praise of their own work from the rooftops. You can just go right ahead and have all your friends and relatives put gloppy raves into all the online sites, and thus make them useless to those who might seek an honest assessment of the work.

Two Generals Provide A Contrast in Accountability

Washington Post
Any admiration I had for Secretary Gates evaporated when Gen. Kiley remained in uniform past lunchtime Monday. He should be court-martialed for absolute dereliction of duty and held out as an example to the promotion-hungry politic-ers for promotion at every level in every branch of the service.

And this unbelievable story-management continuing right under the committee's noses, with the patient turned away from empty seats in the hearing room .... the profession of military public affairs has been replaced by the company line. You work for the taxpayers first, the general second, in that profession - and the old axiom, 'Maximum information, minimum delay,' is the most important thing to know about what to tell the media and the public.