Ethical Responsibilities

The questioned asked was what are the speakers ethical responsibilities in the world of digital and audio files. It is clearly asking if it's OK for a speaker to alter files when they are preparing their speech. Right away, most people would say "No Way!". I say, most likely not, but, it all depends on the speakers motives. If the speakers intent is to manipulate a topic to convince the audience to think or feel a certain way because the alternative may not make his case because the original, unaltered file would not bring about the desired effect, than I would say no. This happens all too often. Now, an exception might be that of, lets say, late night TV shows. They often take public figures and current events and play with the pictures to make a joke. as long as it's obvious that it's a joke, then in my opinion, no harm, no foul. Some times they take a series of statements a person makes (usually a politician) and string them together to make them sound funny. Same thing, it's obvious that it's supposed to be entertainment so that's still OK. The problem would be if it's supposed to be inflammatory or create a controversy to a person or event. Another category where it might be OK, is if whatever image a person has to show, if that image is not real clear or the need to highlight a particular aspect of it is needed, than there should not be too much of a problem with that. If a speaker does anything to alter an original picture, audio file, song or taped conversation, then the ethical thing to do is to include that in their presentation somehow and explain why they made a change. Anything but full disclosure would be improper.