About The “Everybody Does it” Argument

One constant critique I’ve been getting (and one that has been showing regularly in online debates about MTV and racism) is a variation of this comment:

To everyone above who support boycotting MTV, please don’t forget to boycott every relative and friend of yours who has a maid at home […] When you do that, i’ll be glad to boycott MTV, till then, please when your write comments start it with :”As a hypocrite..”

On the face of it, this makes perfect sense and rings true to many people. We all know individuals who are living embodiments of the Ktir Salbe caricatures portrayed by MTV. How come, the argument goes, we are choosing to single out MTV for our moral indignation?

The answer is simple, and it has two parts:

First, the standards that apply to mass media are different than the standards that apply to normal people. Normal people should be shamed in their private circles because this is the extent of their damage. Public media outlets on the other hand need a public response, because they are (whether they mean it or not) promoting a casual and cavalier attitude towards an important delicate issue.

Second, the “everybody does it” argument is a known moral fallacy that is referred to as the “golden rationalization”:

It is based on the flawed assumption that the ethical nature of an act is somehow improved by the number of people who do it, and if “everybody does it,” then it is implicitly all right for you to do it as well. […] when more people engage in an action that is admittedly unethical, more harm results. An individual is still responsible for his or her part of the harm.

America is full of racists, and so is France and many other countries. This doesn’t mean that racist attitudes on TV in these countries will go unnoticed. To the contrary, they are severely punished and the stations immediately wash their hands of the anchors/actors who make mistakes.