Who would want to be labeled as: misleading, cajoling, bullying, stretching the truth and being undeniably shady?

No one in their right mind, which must not have described former ESPN freelancer, Sarah Phillips, who was terminated Tuesday after Deadspin identified her as the ringleader of a scheme that allegedly conned popular web producers out of rights to their content.

You can read the account published by Yahoo! Sports blogger Chris Chase.

No, I don’t have to remind anyone that being called “undeniably shady” isn’t good for one’s professional image. I thought this article was worth pointing you to because it can be a caution against the lure of quick gain.

Phillips aggressively accumulated the Twitter followers of others as part of her plan to build an artificially inflated following from which she hoped to benefit professionally. In the process, she tricked unwary individuals who signed over their accounts and associated followers on Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook in exchange for a stake in a non-existent sports comedy venture. They were hoping for quick monetary gain, she was banking on quick social media fame. All involved lost.

I’ve been well-served by this chestnut of advice that remains as true in the Intranet Age as it did in the Garden of Eden: “Something that seems too good to be true, probably is neither.”

The news broke this afternoon:

Weiner resigns in wake of sex photos scandal
By KAREN ZRAICK and ANDREW MIGA, Associated Press
NEW YORK – Seared by scandal, New York Rep. Anthony Weiner announced his resignation from Congress on Thursday, done in by lewd photos he took of himself, sent to women online and then adamantly lied about after being caught.

Weiner finally feels some of the professional consequences of the choices he made. My hope for him and others is that they learn the value of considering consequences before making decisions or taking action.

His scandal also highlights how social media has changed the world, by speeding the dissemination into the public eye of comments, thoughts and mistakes that, a couple of generations ago, could have been downplayed or contained.

I wish Weiner and his wife well. I wish he had learned from the mistakes of others before him. That just doesn’t seem to occur as frequently as one might wish.

    What consequences?

The condition is remorse over one’s behavior and decisions—without a corresponding acceptance that behavior and decisions carry consequences.

This condition is evident in children who, when caught doing something such as lying, stealing, cheating, or hurting another human being, demonstrate remorse—typically with tears and cries of, “I’m s-sorry!” They’re looking for a way out of the situation, but don’t consider that they might have to face consequences of their behavior and decisions. They don’t want a time-out, or spanking, or to ask forgiveness of the person from whom they stole, to whom they lied, or whom they hurt. Their immediate, typical response when told about consequences? “But I SAID I was SORRY!”

Weiner isn’t a child, but he isn’t much of an adult, either. An adult assumes responsibility for his or her actions and decisions, and when it’s clear that an apology, or restitution, or a change is necessary because of those actions and decisions, an adult makes good. A child thinks of how to save face, or “get out of trouble.” An adult thinks of others; a child thinks of himself or herself.

It isn’t just politicians who suffer from this condition. In the wake of the economic meltdown of recent years, while financial services firms were doling out huge bonuses to their executives and employees, the public screamed. How many of those executives and employees, many of whom expressed some form of remorse in public comments, stepped up to accept consequences of their decisions and actions which flamed the meltdown? I believe the answer is: none.

I have two close acquaintances who separately ended up being divorced because of marital indiscretions on their part. My church lost a pastor who, as it turned out, years before in a different congregation, had an affair with a church member and kept it hidden until the church member’s husband uncovered evidence of the affair and confronted them both.

In all of those cases, the original bad decision/action didn’t have to cause the death of a marriage or pastoral ministry. But the offender would have had to see the wrong, admit to it, and then agree to whatever consequences that the offended party would see as a way to restore the relationship. To my knowledge, that never occurred in any of the above situations.

Representative Weiner’s forceful refusal to consider resignation indicates to me that he doesn’t think that his decisions and actions require him to face consequences. Sadly, his innocent wife has been subjected to media hounding as people wonder why she hasn’t either stood by her husband’s side, or left him. She is reaping consequences of Weiner’s acts. Why can’t he see that?

Finally, I don’t know that I’m seeing more of this condition in the work world, but I certainly see daily evidence that people think a simple, “I’m sorry” should excuse their every decision and action—without consideration of how those decisions and actions have impacted the people around them. These people don’t seem to think that they might have consequences that are a natural outcome of those decisions and actions.

Someone might say that these people just don’t think. I disagree. They think a lot…but not about consequences.

Perhaps in a reaction to the tragic sights and sounds related to the Japan earthquake that I’ve seen during the past 24 hours, I made a conscious decision today to NOT be a “citizen journalist” when disaster struck in front of me.

I was driving along a busy back-road, heading home from an appointment, when a black SUV ahead of me spun into the oncoming traffic lane to our left, and struck a vehicle coming the other way. The SUV flipped over on impact and both vehicles skidded to a halt near the shoulder of the road.

I pulled over to the side of the road and immediately dialed 9-1-1. I watched other people scramble to each of the damaged vehicles, checking on the occupants. After providing the location and other details to the 9-1-1- operator, I got out of my Jetta TDI and started to head toward the SUV.

Right then, I noticed another person starting to hold up traffic on the other side of the accident. I decided to do the same on my side of the accident. We took turns alternating between holding up our lane of cars to allow the other person to signal their line of cars to move along the one open lane of traffic.

In a few minutes, I heard the sirens of approaching emergency vehicles and police cars. Once they arrived, I checked that they didn’t need my help, and then left.

As I was walking back to my car, I scanned the accident scene, focusing on the accident victims who were receiving medical treatment. For a brief moment, I thought about taking out my mobile phone and capturing some of the action.

That’s what a “citizen journalist” probably would have done. The images could be sent to the local media, or used on a blog post like this one. I would have received a photo credit, and maybe someone who knows me would tell me that they saw the photo. It’s happened before.

But like I said at the beginning of this post, two things kept me from taking those photos. The first was knowing that the Internet currently is overflowing with images and videos taken by witnesses to the largest earthquake to hit Japan in recorded history. We’ve seen enough death and destruction today, haven’t we?

The second was the momentary eye contact that I made with the middle-aged woman who sat next to the SUV, holding a bandage to her bleeding scalp, as a paramedic worked on her other injuries. She was dazed, and I felt that her expression as our eyes met was communicating something like, “Help, am I going to be okay”?

My journalism training taught me to disassociate myself from an event, so that I could view it with a lessened (I’ll never say complete lack of) personal bias. That would have helped me to snap a photo of the injured woman, even as she looked at me.

I didn’t do that this time. Instead, as I was driving home, I said a prayer for the people involved in the accident.

I think I helped them more that way, and the blogosphere won’t miss those photos very much.

A few times in recent weeks, I’ve been unable to watch video news items promoted on Yahoo!. I click the link to watch…

…and get a “not available” message:

Has anyone else had this experience? Is the video source pulling the videos because of a surge in traffic, is this a conspiracy to make Yahoo! look bad, or something else?