A Friendly Foray Into the Realm of Ethical Dilemmas

There were several good laughs during the “San Diego Forum on Ethics,” a panel discussion featuring 16 local community leaders that was hosted by KPBS Wednesday night. The audience roared when host Fred Friendly opened the evening by turning to San Diego Tribune Editor Neil Morgan. “Have you ever lied?” he shot at the editor. Then he turned to San Diego Union Editor (and ex-Richard Nixon aide) Gerald Warren and asked him the same question, to the delight of the audience.

Warren’s reply: “I was told not to tell the truth, but I never lied.”

When Friendly put county Supervisor Susan Golding in the hypothetical role of a politician leaking damaging information about an opponent to the press, the audience laughed again. Perhaps they were recalling the recent settlement of a libel case brought against Golding by former opponent Lynn Schenk.

Friendly, the former president of CBS News and a professor emeritus at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, developed these panel discussions to make people squirm, to make them think. He gleefully jumps into gray areas of ethical dilemmas, and forces the panelists to climb in with him.

This format was recently used in a stimulating Friendly-organized PBS series called “Constitution: That Delicate Balance.” Panelists ranged from former presidents to TV anchorman Dan Rather, each openly exploring vague questions, with no real answers, revealing much of themselves in the process.

Friendly is launching a 10-part series of panel shows, “Ethics in America,” which will begin airing Jan. 31 on KPBS-TV (Channel 15). The session Wednesday night at the Mandell Weiss Center for the Performing Arts on the UC San Diego campus was part of a national tour by Friendly to present local versions of his show’s format.

Instead of a Supreme Court justice and network correspondents, the San Diego panel featured Judge Patricia Benke, San Diego Urban League President Herb Cawthorne and 14 other locals. An estimated 350 people attended the program, which whetted the appetite for the series featuring the articulate national figures.

If nothing else, these forum panels often (but not always) force people to act like themselves. Wednesday night, Friendly was the challenging ringmaster, cutting panelists off whenever they fell into their natural rhythms of rhetoric. He often didn’t give them an opportunity to really develop complex answers to complex questions, producing responses that were often surprising.

Certainly some in the audience were surprised to hear Benke, a recent appointee to the 4th District Court of Appeal, say she would “do nothing” if she was a reporter given proof that a local college president, a vocal opponent of abortion, had gone through an abortion early in her life. Asked if he had ever stolen anything, San Diego city schools Supt. Tom Payzant replied, “Yes,” the honest answer for most people, but still a little startling to hear from a school superintendent in public.

Presidential candidates should be forced to do this type of panel discussion.

Prodded by Friendly’s genial barbs--”What, are you going to be like Wernher von Braun? ‘I just build the rockets?’ “--the panel was led through three case studies, including the story of a son who admits to his father that he cheated on his college entrance exams, a lawyer who learns that his client has committed other murders, and the takeover of a business essential to a local town. With San Diego Gas & Electric being merged with a larger utility, the last case in particular struck some chords in the audience, although Friendly steered the discussion away from the local issue.

These were the same case studies put to the panels for the 10-part series. Throughout the evening, 10-minute clips from the series were shown to the audience at UCSD. After hearing the local discussion, it was a little eerie to hear U. S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, informed that an innocent man would go to the gas chamber, joke, “Well, he probably did something wrong anyway.” Or to hear corporate raider T. Boone Pickens describe himself first as a “geologist,” then as “a large investor who sometimes gets active.”

Locally, the revelations and poignant moments were more subdued. Friendly consistently emphasized the overriding theme of all these panels: “Our purpose is not to make up anyone’s mind, but to open minds and make the agony of decision-making so intense you can only escape by thinking.”

Each question forced individuals to reach their own answer, given their own ideas of right and wrong.

Cawthorne said he would force his son to confess to cheating.

The cheating “doesn’t bother me,” said Michael Carella, a San Diego State University professor of philosophy, to boos from the audience. “Anybody who gives a test that can be cheated on deserves what they get.”

Attorneys Paul Pfingst and Ramon Castro said they would not take the case of a murder suspect for $200, but they would for $100,000.

“Where does justice begin when he won’t even talk to me unless I have $100,000?” real estate expert Sanford Goodkin countered.

Father Joe Carroll would give the murderer forgiveness, but not sanctuary. Warren believes it is an “outrage” that a defense lawyer defending the murderer would bring up the sex life of the victim, while others, such as Benke, pointed out that such talk would be entirely appropriate if it were relevant to the case.

Friendly was always there to remind the panelists what they were really talking about.

“Have we gone overboard to such a point that the victim is completely ignored?” he asked. He was the consummate devil’s advocate, constantly moving the discussion from one pitfall to the next. Whenever a panelist sounded self-serving or rehearsed, Friendly was there to bring him back down to earth.

“I’ve learned that our obligation is greater than ever to educate people,” Payzant said, striking a sanctimonious note near the end of the night.

“What are you going to do about it?” Friendly shot back.

Payzant chuckled. “Well,” he said. “I’m going to do more than I was before I came here.”