Moral Dilemmas

The ad, not surprisingly, is for a music company. Their point is that whatever happens, they can write appropriate music for its presentation on television. In fact, it's their "responsibility" to do so. Now, I've done some business with this company, and they do terrific work, and I have a lot of respect for them. The message in the ad is completely honest -- no matter what's going on, when it comes to reporting it, they want a piece of the action.

But what bothers me is its "We're just hired hands!" subtext. Strange things are happening in this society as we approach the milennium, and those of us who work in the entertainment and information fields (remember when they were separate?) aren't just observers -- we have tremendous influence over the way people perceive what's going on. Whatever we do, whether it's records, commercials, soundtracks, broadcast, or video games, we don't work in a vacuum. Which leads to a very, very complicated question: Do we, as engineers, producers, editors, and musicians, have any responsibility for the effect on society of the work that we do?

When I was in high school, a history teacher taught us about "moral dilemmas": situations in which an individual is caught between two strong, opposing forces. His favorite example was a Southern farmer before the Civil War who hated slavery, but knew that without it, he and his family faced financial ruin. Today's audio professional often encounters the same kind of dilemma. I'm not just talking about putting up with clients you don't like, I mean dealing with people who you think are doing bad things with the services you are providing them. But with all of the pressures on us to be the best, the fastest, the coolest, and the most up-to-date, not to mention the fact that some of us would like to have personal lives, it's hard to turn down paying work, no matter how reviled by it we may be.

Here are some moral dilemmas we might face. Say you set up a production facility in an area of the country where there isn't much competition, as a friend of mine did. By being there, you've attracted talent and business to that area, raised standards for everyone, and built up an impressive staff. After a few years, you catch the attention of local hatemongers with more money than brains, who want to use your place to produce slick programs denouncing the international Zionist conspiracy and "proving" the genetic inferiority of non-white people. Do you tell them to go to hell? Or do you do your usual great job, but figure you can take advantage of them by charging full card rate, and snicker all the way to the bank?

Say you believe, as many intelligent people do, that tabloid television news shows have brought the practice of journalism to new lows, and that the resultant pressure on traditional news departments has made the nightly news so dependent on sensationalism and scandal that it's impossible to watch. Since "More Americans get their news from TV than any other source," as one network solemnly assures us, more Americans than ever are ignorant about issues of any real importance. You know this, and at parties you'll tell it to anyone who listens. So what happens when "Hard Copy" calls you up to produce a segment on yet another Washington bimbo eruption?

Say you believe, as a fiercely independent radio station I know once did, that the military is a hateful institution and an ultimately destructive career choice for minority youth. Suddenly, the Army's budget for recruiting advertising goes up. Do you shun them when they come knocking, or do you say, "Well, better their money should come to us than to someone else"?

Say you're a composer whose parents fled persecution in Yugoslavia a generation ago, and taught you all the songs of their childhood. A producer wants to use you to produce some stirring, heart-rending arrangements of those songs for an overseas client. What do you do when you find that the music you're making is being used to punctuate impassioned speeches on Serbian radio calling for the extermination of Moslems? Observers of the civil war in the Balkans say that "patriotic" music on the radio has been an important tool in getting the various sides to hate each other.

Say you've got a record label that you've been building for years, and some of your artists are finally catching on. But you're seeing new acts come along who are espousing violence, misogyny, and racism, who think that drive-by shootings are fun and a murder indictment is a badge of manhood. You know that their more venomous creations will create quite a stir, and maybe boost all of your roster. But you're also disgusted by them. Do you sign them up, tell the media you're championing free speech, and just pray that no one takes them seriously enough to actually put some of their preachings into practice?

I'm sure that something like this has happened to you at least once in your career. I've been there too. Some years ago, I was hired to score an in-house instructional film for a large defense contractor. At first I didn't like the idea, being a dyed-in-the-wool swords-into-ploughshares type, but the independent producer who hired me, a former network news producer with political leanings not far from my own, assured me the film would be strictly "civilian" -- it was to promote integrity and responsibility within the ranks of the workers, and would focus on products from non-defense-related divisions of the company. The company had just been caught by the government being a bit, shall we say, over-creative in their contract-procurement procedures, and this was one way they hoped to show that they were sincere in their efforts to reform. I took the gig.

Most of the film was innocuous enough, but when they sent me the final cut, the last minute or so had somehow become a glorious montage of military hardware, climaxing with a shot of a fighter jet roaring into a red-white-and-blue sunset. I finished the piece, and later groused to the producer that I resented his misrepresenting the content to me. He shrugged his shoulders, and promised the next assignment would be more to my liking. Despite my misgivings about the film, I enjoyed working with the producer and his team, and I was quite proud of the work I did. I even used that last minute, war technology and all, on my demo reel for a time.

Not long after, the producer called again. The client had conceived some major new hardware for the "Star Wars" initiative, and wanted to promote it to the Pentagon. Could I score the video? I replied that I could not. His response was, "Boy, I wish we could turn down work like that!" and he found someone else. In fact, since that time, he has always found someone else, and although we have remained friendly, I've never worked for him again.

Did I lose a lot of potential work because of a moral stance? Maybe. Would I make the same decision again? I would. But for me it wasn't such a hard decision -- I've got other ways to make a living, and I don't have a huge facility to maintain.

In the early '80s, I was doing sales and marketing for a startup music-technology company. We had a great product, and I loved selling it. But a lot of people were having trouble with it. In the best tradition (which actually wasn't a tradition yet) of high-tech customer support, I told everyone who called that a) it was their fault and b) it would be fixed real soon. But when customers' problems got worse, and it was obvious that they were our fault, and they were not getting fixed, I had to do something. Should I stick it out, continuing to draw a salary and increasing my stock position, and hope that I could influence the people responsible for the product to get their act together? Or should I bail, cutting myself off financially and pissing away many months of unpaid work? Was my responsbility to the company, to the customers, or to myself? And if I could figure that out, would I be more effective trying to change things from the inside or the outside?

Ultimately I jumped. But again, it wasn't such a hard decision -- I knew the big bucks I had originally thought would be mine just weren't going to come, and the company was headed for the toilet. And that's where it ended up, a victim of lawsuits brought on by its deceptive practices.

The choices are not always this clear cut. One client of mine is a charitable organization that finances major building projects overseas. My more politcally radical friends tell me they're displacing native populations, and I should not be working for them. My client tells me my friends are wrong. I choose to believe the client. I may be fooling myself, but on the other hand, I'm not losing any sleep over it.

For those of us who have mortgages/families/payrolls/loans/insurance (check all appropriate boxes), giving up a lucrative gig because you don't agree with the client or the product is very hard. Scruples, as a friend of mine likes to say, are expensive.

But what's the alternative? What happens if we don't exercise any judgement over what passes through our hands? Perhaps the people to whom we aim these messages are smart, and are able to sort out helpful messages from harmful ones based on their content, disregarding the slickness of the delivery media. Perhaps there is a bridge over the East River I could convince you to make a down payment on. The danger of having no moral compass anywhere in the creation of content is that as media get more pervasive and more persuasive, you can end up with an anarchic, valueless society where things are only prized for their glitz or shock value.

As a society, we face some momentous decisions, some of which we have been brought to by technology. As we have increased human life span, how are we going to take care of vast numbers of elderly people -- who, not too long from now, will include all of us? In the wired age, when infinite perfect copies can be made of anything by anyone, how do we protect the rights of people who create things, and thus keep rewarding them for creativity -- and avoid jeopardizing our entire industry? As large portions of the world newly accept the precepts of the free-market economy, how do we keep them from degenerating into medieval fiefdoms, where organized-crime-style brutality and intimidation move in to replace the vacuum created by the lack of centralized government? We as producers of the messages that persuade people have a tremendous opportunity -- and even a responsibility -- to help the right messages get across. We can help promote tolerance, cooperation, knowledge, and respect, and tell people whose messages are hate, ignorance, exploitation, and violence that we won't help them -- or we can simply stick with the "it-don't-matter-what-happens-to-you-long-as-I-got-mine" attitude of the '80s.

For some of us, because we are more flexible or have fewer financial obligations, making business choices based on personal morality is easier than for others. But even if you feel that it's your right, or your "responsbility", to take on all clients and treat them equally, it's important to keep in mind that all of your actions do have consequences. The better you are at what you do, the more effect you may have. If you don't care, or think the consequences are trivial, you're entitled to that. If you figure, like the song says, "If I don't do it, somebody else will," that's your decision too. But when it comes to doing something you know to be wrong, by saying "I don't have a choice," you've just made one.