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When we created the honorable (dishonorable) Pence Outstanding Hypocrite Award (POHA), we looked for the best talent, those who displayed a special expertise in the art of hypocrisy.

When we created the honorable (dishonorable) Pence Outstanding Hypocrite Award (POHA), we looked for the best talent, those who displayed a special expertise in the art of hypocrisy.

We thought we had found the cream of the hypocrisy crop when we inducted the 16 so far.

Boy, were we wrong.  Our present POHA winners (losers) are amateurs compared to the latest two candidates whom we are inducting with much admiration (disgust).

They are former Republican Senator Richard Burr, of North Carolina, and former one-term Republican congressman from Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District, Peter Meijer.

First, let’s deal with Burr.

He plans to vote for Donald Trump in November despite having voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges for having incited the January 6th insurrection.  He was one of seven Republicans who joined Democrats voting for conviction, not enough though to find Trump guilty by virtue of the two-thirds vote required.

A conviction would have barred Trump for running again for president.  

In making his support for Trump public, Burr said in an interview that he finds nothing contradictory in his decision.  Now, that is the epitome of hypocrisy, the gold standard, a dyed-in-wool hypocrite.

Explaining his conviction vote, he said it was a response to Trump’s actions on January 6th rather than an attempt to disqualify him from the presidency.

That makes absolutely no sense.  He implies he did not want his vote to be among those finding Trump guilty and barring him from office.  If that’s true, why did he cast his vote?  He surely understood the process.

In addition to a POHA, we might bestow on Burr our newly minted hypocrisy-dishonesty award as well.

“Maybe someone will have a hard time squaring with [my decision to vote for him]. I don’t have a hard time squaring with it because I firmly understood why I voted for impeachment,” said Burr, adding, he thought Trump had made a “bad choice…one time.”

That “bad decision…one time” cost five people their lives and injured more than 150 police officers.  The rioters threatened to hang Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, sought out former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and ransacked the Capitol, costing more than $30 million in repairs and heightened security measures to prevent a recurrence.

Yes, “some people” might find his turnaround contradictory, beginning with his children and grandchildren.

Now, Meijer.

He lost his seat after voting to impeach Trump and then ran in the Senate GOP primaries this year, but dropped out because the Republicans had not forgotten his “disloyalty.”

He is trying to make amends with Republicans, saying he will endorse Trump because “President Biden …has done far greater things to bring disgrace to that office.”

This leads us to conclude that Meijer believes Biden is the one who was involved with Stormy Daniels, the Access Hollywood tape, was convicted of the 34 felony convictions, lied about the 2020 election for four years, and eight years of corruption and scandal.

Thus, the one-man POHA Board of Directors considers Burr and Meijer the hypocrites’ hypocrite.  We are thinking about changing the name of the award to the Burr-Meijer Outstanding Hypocrite Award but we don’t want to hurt Pence’s feelings.

Maybe, to properly honor (dishonor) the two, we will give each two POHA certificates or one gold-plated one.

I did an Internet search to find out how many of the 10 Republicans House members and seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump are supporting him.  

I did not find any with one possible exception, Louisiana Senator Bill Cassiday, a strong Trump critic. On “Meet the Press” in March, he would not rule out voting for Trump, adding that he would cast his ballot for a Republican.

Thus, our one-member board has decided to tear the POHA certificate in two, and give him one half.

There are numerous former Trump officials and supporters who are trying to rehabilitate their reputations by endlessly criticizing their former boss on TV political talk shows “political analysts,” and in Op-Ed articles.

Similarly, Burr and Meijer, apparently, are trying to regain their disreputable reputations with the Always-Trump contingent.  They are working diligently to reestablish unseemly credentials.

We commend (denounce) both for taking a major step toward rehabilitation.  After all, they were severely berated by party organizations in their areas.

Whether their endorsements of Trump are enough to receive forgiveness only time will tell.  The gutter standards in the Trump world are pretty low.  

They might try throwing in their belief that Nixon was innocent of any wrongdoing in Watergate.


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Berl Falbaum is a long-time political journalist and author of several books.

s a mediator and negotiation coach I am struck by how often parties and their lawyers fail to think through exactly what they wish to achieve in mediated settlement negotiations, much less how they plan to get there.

As a mediator and negotiation coach I am struck by how often parties and their lawyers fail to think through exactly what they wish to achieve in mediated settlement negotiations, much less how they plan to get there.
You will set your goals as a negotiator by carefully planning and analyzing the nature of your case, the parties involved, their strengths and weaknesses, and their interests and needs. But without a thoughtful concession strategy, you may never achieve your settlement goals.

You may get sidetracked by your emotional reactions to your opponent’s proposals, and they likely will do the same in response. The prospect of reacting emotionally to one another will be compounded by setting limits on your negotiation communications like insisting upon shuttle negotiations, relying on the mediator as a medium between you simply to exchange (often) raw numbers. A good concession strategy will maximize getting what you want and need. Jay Folberg and Jennifer Reynolds offer some helpful tips on developing a concession strategy in “Lawyer Negotiation: Theory, Practice, and Law,” 4th Edition, Aspen Publishing, 2021.

Concessions are the compromises necessary to make forward movement after the exchange of opening offers. Negotiation protocol usually dictates that one party make a concession in return for that of the other. The nature, timing, and amount of a concession sends important signals about your priorities and your bottom line, even where dollars dominate many commercial, position-based bargaining scenarios.

Your concession strategy will depend upon the nature of your case. You will move differently if continuing relationships are at stake or interests are many, rather than a one-shot distributive negotiation. Whether, when, what, and how to tie concessions will vary. You need to balance collaboration and competitiveness in light of your relationships with your adversary, your client, and your client’s goals, without giving up too much too soon. You also need to remain flexible as new information comes to light in the course of the negotiation. But you do need a plan.

In planning your concessions in a dispute involving multiple issues, determine what is most and least valuable to you and to your adversary. You will then be in a position to offer concessions of little value to you which may have great value to the other side. Prioritizing concessions ensures low cost to you for high value to your opponent. And sticking to your plan minimizes the possibility of reacting emotionally and giving up something you or your client should have held back.

Most negotiators try to get the other party to move first so as to safeguard their own bottom line or reservation point and to gather information. A sizeable gap between demand and first offer creates a dilemma over who moves next. You can ask your adversary to go first as a measure of good faith with the assurance you will respond accordingly. Or, you may make the first concession with an explanation of your rationale and with the expectation they will do likewise. In either event, you should set up a framework of reciprocal trades and exchanges. Reciprocity will generate movement, show the value of your concessions, and telegraph your resolve. In order to avoid “bargaining against yourself,” you should always expect a concession in return for one of yours.

Each concession is a form of communication and sends a message even where raw dollars are the medium. In “Making Money Talk: How to Mediate Insured Claims and Other Monetary Disputes,” ABA Publishing, 2007, mediator J. Anderson “Andy” Little suggests providing a narrative rationale or explanation for your concession to avoid miscommunication or ambiguity in your message. Words explaining the rationale for the offer can convey more information than the mere number in the proposal itself. The parties may convey information about their views concerning the negotiating range. By defining the range, the parties may avoid needless frustration, speed up the process and give the mediator more information with which to explore settlement. Timing is important too. Commentary is not likely to be useful until after a couple of rounds of negotiations, when negotiations have stalled, or when the parties express frustration over lack of movement.

The pattern of your concessions itself provides valuable communication. The pattern discloses how close you are to your reservation point or bottom line. Significant concessions likely indicate that more are on the way. Steadily diminishing returns mean you are close to your bottom line. Minimal or no concession says you are done negotiating—at least without some new information to support further movement.

The timing of your concessions can be as important as their pattern. Do not risk stalling the negotiation by giving up too much too soon. Rapid successive concessions may be mistaken as a signal you are desperate to settle or suffer from severe risk aversion. Moving slowly and thoughtfully, appearing to move reluctantly, avoids these dangers. It also enables you to keep further concessions in reserve should you need them and continues to safeguard your bottom line.

Not all negotiations focus just on money. Non-monetary issues add a layer of complexity and opportunity to the negotiation. Distributive or position-based bargaining is more limited than integrative or interest-based bargaining where there is a chance to “expand the pie” beyond or in combination with monetary concerns. The more issues you have, the more likely you are to engage in integrative bargaining, enabling you to package your concessions and trade them off with those of your adversary. There are simply more opportunities for low-cost trades from you for higher value trades from your opponent.

The increased number of issues in integrative bargaining presents more challenges in concession strategy than distributive bargaining, making preparation even more important. You will have to explore more deeply your adversary’s interests and determine what concessions to package together and which to leave for single offer in a later negotiating round. Folberg and Reynolds observe that some negotiators—once they have gotten what they want—offer a low-cost “sweetener” to end the negotiations positively. This makes adherence to the settlement more likely and lays the groundwork for continued good relations among the lawyers and parties.

Complicating the development of your concession strategy is the possibility that a competitive adversary who is familiar with these principles may find a way to turn them against you. This is more likely in a distributive negotiation than in an integrative one built upon trust. The signals may be used deceptively to hide a negotiator’s reservation point. This is another reason to couple a concession with a narrative rationale which invites your opponent to do likewise. In a distributive negotiation, your goal is to get as much information about your adversary’s positions and interests while keeping yours close to the vest if you can.

Regardless of the nature of your case, several tips will almost always apply:

• Develop a plan

• Prioritize and rank concessions

• Create high value from low cost

• Get the other party to move first

• Move slowly and reluctantly

• Offer a rationale

• Always get something in return for your concessions

If you follow these suggestions, you are most likely to stay on plan and remove emotion from the calculus, ensuring that you get the settlement your client wants.


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Joe Basta heads Basta Resolutions, PLLC, an Ann Arbor-based firm specializing in mediation and arbitration of commercial and family disputes.  He is a former chair of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Section of the State Bar of Michigan.  Joe was a trial lawyer for over 34 years at Dykema, litigating complex commercial matters.  He teaches negotiation at the Michigan State University of College of Law and is a member of Professional Resolution Experts of  Michigan, Inc.

In 2016, J.D. Vance, now Donald Trump’s running mate, made headlines with the publication of a book titled: “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.”

In 2016, J.D. Vance, now Donald Trump’s running mate, made headlines with the publication of a book titled: “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.”

I usually have little interest in reading memoirs, even those written by famous public figures because generally they are self-serving and can’t really be fact-checked. The authors work to put their best feet forward, try to rationalize crises in their lives and get even with enemies.

In addition, at the time, Vance was an unknown venture capitalist -- six years away from being elected a U.S. senator. So why should I bother?

But the brouhaha piqued my curiosity; I wanted to know what all the fanfare and fuss was all about. I wish I had not been so curious.

I found the book, in a word, disgusting. It was patronizing, condescending, mean-spirited, and ugly. Those were its good points.

First, a very brief summary of Vance’s life:

Vance was born in Middletown, Ohio. His mother, who had five husbands, struggled with drug addiction and alcoholism. He was raised by his grandparents, who moved to Middletown from Kentucky’s Appalachia. His childhood, which he describes in detail, was marked by poverty and abuse.

After graduating from Middletown High School in 2003, Vance enlisted in the Marine Corps and did a six-month stint in Iraq in 2005.

He then graduated from Ohio State University with a bachelor of arts degree and worked for a Republican state senator. After graduating, Vance attended Yale Law School on a scholarship. He was an editor of The Yale Law Journal, and graduated in 2013.

Now, back to the book. I understood that the book would win approval from some conservatives -- even though some of them, I thought, would find the book appalling -- but I could not fathom the embrace by liberals.

Basically, the major message is that Appalachians are lazy alcoholics who refuse to help themselves. If anyone is responsible for their poverty, they are.  

His not very subtle implication is that they need to work themselves out of poverty by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Forget that they might not even have any boots.

A typical example from the book: “People talk about hard work all the time in places like Middletown. You can walk through a town where 30 percent of the young men work fewer than 20 hours a week and find not a single person aware of his own laziness.”

Or consider the following: “There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherents by the day.”

He totally ignores outside forces which caused the poverty such as the rape of Appalachia by behemoth mining companies and other economic/political forces.  

Then there is discussion of his dysfunctional family. He describes in detail how his mother struggled with addition, alcohol and, besides her several marriages, had numerous sexual encounters in the family home.

What kind of man would write that? Why humiliate his mother so publicly? To what purpose? I would be hesitant to write in a book that my mother wasn’t a good cook.

His point seems to be: See what I had to put up with. This is where I came from but look what I have achieved. I noticed in my research that even book reviewers, while mentioning Vance’s mother’s drug addiction and alcohol problems, omitted her sexual history -- I suspect out of respect and finding it unnecessary.

“‘Elegy’ is little more than a list of myths about welfare queens repackaged as a primer on the white working class,” said a New Republic Magazine review at the time. “Vance’s central argument is that hillbillies themselves are to blame for their troubles.”

Neema Avashia, an “Appalachian expat” and writer recently said the following in an essay in The Guardian: “I barely read 30 pages before I saw the book…for what it was: a political platform masquerading as memoir. Before I saw J.D. Vance for what he was: an opportunist. One willing to double down on stereotypes, to paint the people of Appalachia with a culture of poverty brush, rather than be honest about the ways in which both electoral politics and industry have failed the region.”

Avashia continued: “My Appalachian friends and I are tired of being reduced to stereotypes. We are tired of the single-source, corporate-funded narrative that is propagated about us. Appalachia deserves a more complicated narrative, and better representation, that a Trump-Vance presidency offers us.”

Silas House, an Appalachian author and Appalachian Studies chair at Berea College in Kentucky, said in an interview with Politico, that “Hillbilly Elegy” is “not a memoir but a treatise that traffics in ugly stereotypes and tropes, less a way to explain the political rise of Trump than the actual start of the political rise of Vance.”

A.O. Scott, discussing “Hillbilly Elegy”in The New York Times, wrote: “…the idea that members of a marginal or disadvantaged group have caused their own misfortune is music to the ears of those in power.
If those people are just that way — lazy, uncooperative, sexually promiscuous — then any policy designed to help them is useless.”

Nationally, we don’t know much about Vance yet. But as we learn more, we can be confident compassion and empathy are not his strong points.

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Berl Falbaum is a long-time political journalist and author of several books.

In marking our firm’s 25th anniversary, we were provided a special opportunity to look back at some of the important contributions made by our clients who changed the law in a meaningful way. Their cases have been impactful.

JJ Conway
J.J. Conway Law

In marking our firm’s 25th anniversary, we were provided a special opportunity to look back at some of the important contributions made by our clients who changed the law in a meaningful way. Their cases have been impactful. From healthcare for children to pension security, the work of our clients is still making a difference in the lives of others to this day.

As we know, in law, we must always keep looking toward the horizon. And when we do, one of our clients who is working on improving the lives of others is Rachel Cuschieri-Murray.

Rachel has been at the forefront of passing a comprehensive mental health parity bill in Michigan. She and her husband became advocates in the children’s mental health community following a healthcare fight seeking mental health benefits for her son.

Rachel has organized advocacy groups, established a nationwide clearinghouse of information for parents seeking assistance with medical reimbursements, and is now working to bring a comprehensive mental health parity law to Michigan. Rachel’s thinking is ahead of the curve nationally and is needed in our state.

The federal Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act was a bipartisan legislative achievement. The MHPAEA was based on solid public policy reasons and sought to improve upon an aspirational parity law passed earlier that didn’t really do much.

The bill’s two chief sponsors, Paul Wellstone, a Democratic Senator from Minnesota and Pete Domenici, a Republican Senator from New Mexico worked together to secure its passage. It was signed into law by President George W. Bush. Both senators had personal family experiences with mental illness and mental health issues. They wisely recognized that mental illness and addiction is nonpartisan.

So, they crafted a law that sought to destigmatize mental illness and create a kind of “parity,” or equality, in the delivery of healthcare benefits. The law and its regulations targeted such things as artificial treatment limitations, unfair cost-sharing obligations, and other barriers to care like onerous preauthorization requirements.

Following the law’s passage, plans could be required to show that coverage for mental health related issues was no more restrictive than for claims seeking medical or surgical treatments. The law’s scope was again expanded in 2010 under the Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act which was signed into law by President Barack Obama.

While the law was a significant legislative achievement, health law and employee benefit practitioners quickly learned of its limits. For example, there is no private right of action to sue under the MHPAEA. There is no right to a jury trial. This is usually the product of lobbying efforts to water down a law’s strength.

Also, there is no real relief beyond a traditional breach of contract remedy, so there is occasionally a duplicative aspect to mental health parity claims.

Oddly, the MHPAEA works best in a class action setting since entire coverage groups can be scrutinized and the limitations of widely issued policies can be better examined statistically for their impact on mental health coverage.

So it was that Rachel, in recognizing the disparity of care particularly for teens and adolescents in crisis, set about to change the law. She heard the stories from others about difficulties in securing care. She knew that insurers continued to play to stereotypes in this area.

Realizing just how much was at stake (the lives of children with mental health challenges) and how inadequate the state’s regulatory system is — an ineffectual insurance commissioner, a broken external medical review system, Rachel thought bigger. She and a number of advocates began working to create a mental health parity act for Michigan that would mean something. If her vision becomes reality, the disparities of care will be eliminated. The enforcement rights of those with such claims will be enhanced.

This is no small feat, and it is a game changer. Rachel and those working towards the law’s passage almost succeeded last year during the state’s legislative session. News reports indicate that Michigan’s largest insurer set out to stop the legislation, and this last-minute push succeeded in blocking the bill.

To provide some cover, the state passed a duplicate mental health parity act which essentially mirrors the federal law. Passage of a more ambitious law awaits, but with Rachel Murray in the fight, the future looks bright for those who need it most.

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John Joseph (J.J.) Conway is an employee benefits and ERISA attorney and litigator and founder of J.J. Conway Law in Royal Oak.

With this column, we announce two more winners (losers) of our distinguished (despicable) Pence Outstanding Hypocrite Award (POHA), bringing the number who have received a POHA to 14.

With this column, we announce two more winners (losers) of our distinguished (despicable) Pence Outstanding Hypocrite Award (POHA), bringing the number who have received a POHA to 14.

We can say without equivocation that none of the previous losers was so deserving of this highly coveted (despised) honor. The latest two winners are the second and third two-time dis-honorees (Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was the first two-time winner).

The second two-time winner of our dis-honor role is Donald Trump’s choice for his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. He stands heads-and-shoulders above the rest (OK, not by much; they are all pretty much moral/ethical degenerates whose moral/ethical compass always points south.)  

Here are some of things Vance said about the Republican nominee for president:

--Vance said he was a “never-Trump guy,” adding “I never liked him,” and exclaimed, “My God, what an idiot.”

--“I can’t stomach Donald Trump. I think he’s noxious” and once called him “America’s Hitler.”

--In 2016, Vance described Trump as “a terrible candidate” and a “cynical asshole like Nixon.”

--Trump was “cultural heroin” and his “actual policy proposals, such as they are, range from immoral to absurd.”

--"He (Trump) makes people I care about afraid.  Immigrants, Muslims, etc.”

--He even expressed admiration for President Obama and, in 2016, said he might vote for Hillary Clinton or a third-party candidate.  

--In an article in Atlantic Magazine, headlined, “Opioid of the Masses,” Vance wrote: “In 2016, during this election season, it appears that many Americans have reached for a new pain reliever. It enters minds, not through lungs or veins, but through eyes and ears, and its name is Donald Trump.” Then he added Trump was not the solution.

Vance has deleted all his negative social media posts on Trump.

His plaque in our POHA Hall of Shame will be right next to a previous Trump vice president, Mike Pence, the first plaques visitors will see when entering the inner-sanctum.

Which brings us to our thrid two-time loser, Nikki Haley, a Trump challenger for the GOP nomination in the primaries.

She “won” her first POHA when she dropped out of the race but pledged to vote for Trump, whom she described in the primaries in terms similar to those of Vance.

Then she spoke at the GOP convention, and exclaimed that she is in full support of Trump’s nomination which, she said in the campaign, would be like committing suicide for the country. We can conclude she has a death wish.

“I’ll start by making one thing perfectly clear: Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period,” she “proudly” told the convention, adding, “For the sake of our nation, we have to go with Donald Trump.”  

Now to some of the things she said about him. They rival some of Vance’s descriptions of the GOP leader.

Trump, she said, at one point, is “unhinged,” “unsafe to be president,” and “unqualified to be president of the United States.”  

After January 6, she criticized Trump, saying, “He let us down.  We shouldn’t have followed him…and we should never have listened to him.”

She also has questioned his mental fitness, after Trump confused her with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“The concern I have is – I’m not saying anything derogatory,” she said while saying something derogatory, “but when you’re dealing with the pressures of a presidency, you can’t have someone else that we question whether they’re mentally fit to do this.”

Asked whether Trump would abide by the Constitution if elected, she said, “I don’t know, I don’t…I don’t know…I mean you always want to think someone will but I don’t know.”

When Trump mocked Haley’s husband, Michael, who serves in the South Carolina Army National Guard, and was on a year-long deployment in Africa with the 218th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade, Haley said:
“If you don’t respect our military, how should we think you’re going to respect them when it comes to times of war, and prevent war…If you don’t have respect for our military and our veterans, God help us all if that’s the case.

“He showed that with that kind of disrespect for the military, he’s not qualified to be the president of the United States, because I don’t trust him to protect them.”

With her total embrace of Trump, she apparently also doesn’t remember Trump’s racially-charged comments about her heritage.

Trump repeatedly referred to Haley, the daughter of immigrants from India, as “Niambra” and suggested, falsely, that disqualified her to run for president.

Haley was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, as Nimarata Nikki Randhawa.

She always used her middle name and took the surname “Haley” after her marriage in 1996.  In response at the time, Haley said:

“I’ll let people decide what he means by his attacks. What we know is, look, he’s clearly insecure if he goes and does these temper tantrums…”

Here is what she said about politicians who flipped-flopped on Trump (as she and Vance have done):

“Many of the same politicians who now publicly embrace Trump privately dread him. They know what a disaster he’s been and will continue to be for our party. They’re just too afraid to say it out loud. Well, I’m not afraid to say the hard truths out loud. I feel no need to kiss the ring.”  

During a presidential debate in the GOP primaries, she was one of six candidates who raised her hand when asked by the moderator if they would support Trump even if he were a convicted felon.  He has been convicted on 34 felony counts.

Vance and Haley give the word “hypocrisy” and entirely new meaning.

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Berl Falbaum is a longtime political writer and author of several books.

When, if ever, is it permissible for a news reporter to engage in unethical means to obtain a story?

When, if ever, is it permissible for a news reporter to engage in unethical means to obtain a story?

That is the bottom-line question raised by the controversy over one, Lauren Windsor, posing as a Catholica conservative while secretly recording Associate Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito at a gala recently sponsored by the Supreme Court Historical Society.

Windsor’s recording made headlines when she “caught” Alito, after being goaded by her, agreeing that the country needs to return to a “place of godliness.”

For this column, we’ll put aside the question whether that comment deserved the massive coverage it received because it lacks any context.

We really have no idea what Alito meant.  We’ll also skip the legality of the taping because that issue is very complex with various states dealing with it differently nor are we addressing Alito’s alleged unethical conduct in accepting gifts or his political conflicts of interest given his wife’s “political” activism.  We are only examining the issue of ethics in journalism.

The answer to the question posed at the top of this column is a resounding “no.”  I can’t be any stronger.  It is never permissible for reporters to misrepresent themselves or to record and/or photograph people without their permission. End of story.

I’ll skip the comments from those who agree with my position and just focus on those that defend Windsor, who is described as a “documentarian.” We’ll begin with the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ).

It stipulates that news people “should avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information unless traditional, open methods will not yield information vital to the public.”

I taught journalism ethics at Wayne State University for decades and always marveled at that “ethical” edict. I still can’t believe someone really wrote that and it’s been on the books for years. In effect, it says it’s wrong to steal unless you can’t get the money you need any other way.

Who decides what’s “vital to the public”?  A documentarian seeking publicity?  A publisher losing subscriptions?  A reporter pressing his editors for a raise or promotion?

Parker Molloy, in her newsletter The Present Age, summaries the Windsor defense cited by many, writing, “Ultimately, the public interest should be the guiding principles in journalism.  Regardless of how they are obtained, Lauren Windsor’s recordings shed light on the beliefs of a Supreme Court justice -- information that the public has a right to know.”

Regardless of how the information was obtained?  Would Molloy support Windsor breaking into Alito’s office and rummaging through his files?  Would she approve of wiretapping the justice’s office?  If not, what is the difference with wiretapping his office and secretly recording him at the dinner?

Indeed, two local reporters, in a book on investigative reporting published in the 1970s, recommended bugging the offices of public officials, of course, to serve the public interest.

I still remember their suggestion of dropping a small mic that looks like a cockroach on the rug while the reporter is in the mayor’s office.  I think that meets the SPJ code.

What are the limits -- are there any -- for Molloy, Windsor and the others who defend misrepresentation and secret recordings?

As a society, we don’t even permit law enforcement agencies to wiretap without having probable cause or approval from a court.

I think it would be more in the public interest to rid us of organized crime figures, murderers, rapists, arsonists, etc.  with secret recordings than garner a one-sentence quote from a Supreme court justice. Yet, we forbid it because of a commitment to protecting civil liberties, privacy and possible abuse.

Moreover, government agencies can be held accountable for unethical practices such as wiretapping while Windsor escapes any accountability as do all those who published her “exclusive.” They too compromised journalistic ethics and gave her the publicity she craved.

It is also vital to understand the First Amendment (freedom of the press) is not restricted to The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, NBC or other major media outlets.  It even protects someone who publishes a small newsletter in a residential subdivision.

Thus, under Windsor’s warped understanding of media ethics, in effect, anyone can wiretap public officials if they consider it in the public interest.

Other important factors to note:

--Windsor has not made the full recording public. Might there be something on it that gives us more information, that puts the conversation in context? Some skepticism is warranted given that Windsor already has engaged in unethical conduct.

--She admits she lied but “for the greater good.” I guess we should all feel indebted to her.  

--Alito did not actually say the country needs to return to a “place of godliness.” Windsor said it and he responded, “I agree with you.”  Might he just have been courteous?

--Another fair question: Is it really about the public interest or increasing traffic and the number of likes on websites?

Sadly, the media continues to lose the trust of the public which questions their accuracy, fairness and commitment to unbiased reporting.

Poll after poll reveals a growing lack of respect which is hardly healthy for a democracy that needs a vibrant press dedicated to the highest principles of truth and honesty.

Surreptitious and underhanded behavior on the part of the media does not help in restoring public confidence in the press. Defending unsavory behavior only adds to the public’s distrust.

Given this brouhaha, consider how Windsor and her defenders might instruct their children on ethics: Never lie or cheat unless you cannot get what you want any other way.

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Berl Falbaum is a longtime political writer and author of several books.