Duel standards - morality

Events of the last two weeks have demonstrated the extent of British Press hypocrisy, the “Gentlemen of the Press” have been gorging like vultures on a carcass and then with swollen bellies claiming they were vegetarians.

Firstly, there was the case of HMS Cornwall’s crew captured by the Iranians. To place a positive spin on the incident, the Ministry of Defence allowed the sailors to sell their stories to the press. Newspapers clamoured to sign them up. Within days, the unsuccessful newspapers were again clamouring this time for the scalp of the Defence Secretary, Des Browne, for allowing the sailors to sell their stories.

Last week a demented student at Virginia Tech massacred 32 students and members of staff. In a macabre act, after killing the first two students he took timeout to make a video to rant about US society's decadency and blaming his fellow students for his actions. The British newspapers and television news services gave wide coverage to the content of the video and documents sent to NBC. Again within days they were criticising their fellow news organisations for giving publicity to the murderer.

Unfortunately these actions are not untypical and illustrate the current standards of behaviour. This is particularly true of politicians. Conservative Party politicians demanded the resignation of Des Browne. While it was an error of judgement, it was not so grave that it warranted a Minister losing his post. But it was seen as an opportunity to claim a “scalp”.

Even in sport, football team managers will scream in outrage accusing the opposition of cheating, while their own players dive to try and con the referee to give a penalty.

In international politics the United Nations has no moral authority - countries cast their vote in order to gain economic advantage and political influence, with little consideration to the effects their actions will have on the citizens of the country under discussion.

Formerly, setting acceptable moral standards was seen as the function of religions. Even though in reality the actions of religious organisations often did not stand-up to scrutiny. But with the influence of Christianity waning in Europe, and an apparent dichotomy in America between those influenced by the Fundamentalist Christian movement and those opposed to the movement’s influence; it is questionable who now defines ethical standards. In the west the power of Islam is seen as sufficient threat to justify secular society moving even further away from religious influence.

Can society thrive without a moral code?