America may not have a SARS epidemic, but we are having an ethical crisis of epidemic proportions. I've written about this before, but decided to keep mentioning it as new stories unfold. This week we have MCI paying a huge settlement because they overstated their earnings by $11 billion. Not a close call, there. Once again, greed has triumphed over honesty in American corporate life. Next, we have the New York Times scandal, as a reporter has faked many of his stories. Even more shameful, employees tried to bring this to the attention of the managment and were ignored and rebuffed. The NYT is no longer the paper of record. How can you possible trust it? When you add this to the horror of CNN in Iraq knowingly repressing the truth, even to the point of letting people suffer torture to preserve the network's access, the mainstream media has shown itself to be immoral and compromised. My father used to say, just because you read it in the paper, don't mean it's so. He was never more right.

Can anything be done about this? Not unless and until people want to accept absolute values again. As long as we teach that each person sets his own values, society has none. And society will pay the price.