There’s no such thing as the “appearance” of conflict of interest

Since the 2016 election, media outlets have been reporting on the problem of conflict of interest, and there’s no surprise why: this president is riddled with them. However, almost without fail, the media misinterprets their nature. Worse yet, it’s as if they’re intentionally misinterpreting them in order to diminish their significance.

One prominent example is the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C. Located in the nationally landmarked historic site known as the “Old Post Office,” this hotel quickly became a destination for anyone who wanted to curry favor with the president. However, this led to two problems. First, money spent at this hotel goes into the hands of the president. Second, in addition to making money at the hotel, the president is also the head of the executive branch of government, and so he also happens to be the “landlord” from whom the Trump Organization is leasing the hotel.

The first problem is simpler to address because it has nothing to do with conflicts of interest—it’s a straightforward example of corruption. Corporations, wealthy individuals, and governments that are interested in currying favor with the president have all spent lavishly at this hotel. And this money goes into the pocket of the president. So, there’s no “conflict” here; the president is essentially taking bribes, if he’s doing so through the intermediary of his hotel.

However, the second problem is a classic example of conflict of interest. As the owner of the Trump Organization, Donald Trump wants to make as much money at the Trump Hotel as he can; however, as the President of the United State of America, he should want to make as much money from the lease of the Old Post Office as he can. And herein lies the conflict: on the one hand, as the tenant of the Old Post Office, he should want to pay his landlord as little as possible, while on the other hand, as the landlord of the Old Post Office, he should want his tenant to pay as much as possible. Hence the conflict.

The way that the media has often portrayed such conflicts of interest are not as conflicts in and of themselves, but rather as situations that have the “appearance” of a conflict of interest. They do this because stating that someone has a conflict of interest seems like a weighty accusation, whereas someone in the president’s position hasn’t exactly done anything wrong yet. After all, while his two competing positions are pushing in different directions—one in the direction of what’s good for the Trump Organization and one in the direction of what’s good for the country—he hasn’t necessarily made a decision in favor of his company at the expense of the country. Instead, he’s merely in a position where these competing interests exist. Consequently, the press feels more comfortable talking about how this situation might create the “appearance” of a conflict of interest—how it might “appear” like the president is doing something wrong—rather than making the more explicit accusation that an actual conflict of interest exists.

However, the media’s reticence has led to a misrepresentation of the nature of conflicts of interest. A conflict of interest does not exist when an individual places their own personal interests above those of their public responsibilities, as this is just straightforward corruption. And the president is certainly corrupt. Instead, a conflict of interest speaks to a situation in which an individual’s personal interest and their public responsibility conflict. This doesn’t mean that they will take the next step and actually commit corrupt acts; it only means that they exist in a situation in which their personal interest and their public responsibilities are pulling in different directions. Literally, they have a conflict of “interests.”

Herein lies the complexity. When it comes to corruption, it is comparatively easy to make an accusation, because it is possible to identify specific actions that are corrupt, such as the president’s acceptance of money through his hotel. However, when it comes to conflicts of interest, the individual within one hasn’t necessarily committed a specific corrupt action. That is, a conflict of interest describes a situation that an individual finds themselves within, and not a specific action that they have committed. And it is hard to accuse someone of a “crime” that they didn’t commit. However, when it comes to a conflict of interest, the “guilt” of the guilty party does not stem from what they have done, but from what they haven’t done. And what they haven’t done is remove themselves from the conflict.

For instance, most government institutions are created to avoid conflicts of interest. In the United States, elected officials are supposed to sell any businesses they own and then place their assets in a blind trust. In such a trust, the owners of the trust do not know where their money is invested so they can’t make decisions that benefit themselves at the expense of their public responsibilities. Blind trusts are hardly perfect solutions (which is a long conversation in itself), but they do obviate the more overt conflicts.

Moreover, when an unexpected conflict of interest emerges, political officials are expected to recuse themselves. For instance, judges recuse themselves from cases in which they know one of the parties involved. They do not do this because they’ve engaged in the more overt act of corruption—they haven’t actually made a decision that is influenced by their relationship with the parties involved—but only because they have a conflict of interest. That is, they’ve found themselves in a situation where their personal interests might pull them in a direction different than the direction of their public responsibilities. And so, they recuse themselves.

Therefore, part of what makes a conflict of interest so complicated is that it’s often the consequence of what we don’t do rather than what we do. A hotelier who wins an election hasn’t done anything wrong by being a hotelier or by winning an election, while a judge who finds themselves judging a case involving family members hasn’t done anything wrong by being a judge or by having family members. Instead, the conflict emerges almost “accidentally;” the hotelier happens to win an election and the judge happens to be faced with a case involving a family member. And so, rather than residing in an action that we did take, a conflict of interest often arises because of an action that we failed to take. And what we failed to do is take ourselves out of the conflict of interest—the president should have sold his businesses and placed the assets in a blind trust, while a judge should recuse themselves from any cases in which family members are involved.

Unfortunately, the media narrative has only served to downplay the problem of conflict of interest. Rather than making the more complicated claim that the president has a myriad of conflicts of interest because of actions he has failed to take, the media often refers to these situations as merely creating the “appearance” of conflicts. This lets the media claim that the president is in a situation that doesn’t “look” good, without taking the next step and actually accusing him of having done something wrong. After all, it’s hard to accuse someone of committing a crime through inaction—it’s hard to argue that someone is guilty for what they failed to do. But this is often the nature of conflicts of interest. If you find yourself in one, you have a responsibility to remove yourself from it. And if you don’t, you’re guilty.

As a result, rather than focusing on the more complex problem of conflicts of interest, the media has generally focused on more overt acts of corruption, because these are easier to understand. After all, you can point to the president’s specific illegal actions, such as accepting bribes or “emoluments” through his hotel or extorting foreign countries for their help in his reelection campaign. But what this misses are the moral and political subtleties that lie in conflicts of interest.

For instance, most of us will never commit more overt acts of corruption, because such actions are rare. But many of us will allow conflicts of interest to exist, telling ourselves that while our situation might “appear” bad, we are nonetheless committed to doing the right thing. However, the subtle insinuations of self-interest are hard to identify because they often cloak themselves under such moral rationalizations—we tell ourselves that we have acted morally even if our situation “looks” bad. Consequently, even when we allow our self-interest to coopt our decisions, we often lie to ourselves about what we are doing.

However, if we were aware of the way that we’re susceptible to the corrupting influence of self-interest, we might realize that perhaps the only way to avoid such corruption is by removing ourselves from conflicts of interest. As a practical matter, this might be all but impossible, because our self-interest is ever-present in our lives. But as a moral precept, we might remind ourselves of this standard so that we could remove ourselves from as many conflicts as possible, while remaining vigilant about the way that self-interest insinuates and then rationalizes itself in our moral life. But this is a high standard to follow.

As for the media’s reporting on conflicts of interest, one reason that they inadequately report on them is because of the way that conflicts of interest stretch far beyond the president, implicating each and every one of us in a larger moral failure. For instance, the very existence of the media is predicated on corporate advertising dollars. And while the media might claim that they still report on corporate malfeasance even though this conflict might “appear” bad, the reality is that they are insufficiently critical of their corporate masters. As with the president, they report on the overt acts of criminality, such as corporate negligence leading to an oil spill, because very few of us will ever be implicated in such serious cases of malfeasance; however, it’s less likely that they’ll report on conflicts of interest, because this might expose the subtle way that oil dollars have influenced their inadequate coverage of climate change. All told, reporting on the president’s many conflicts of interest hits a little close to home.

However, beyond the media, conflicts of interest speak to the way that many of us might be implicated in our society’s crimes. Whether it be the privilege we receive by being white in a white supremacist culture or the privileges of being middle class in a capitalist economy, our social position places many of us in a conflict of interest between our commitment to social justice and our desire to maintain the status quo. Consequently, it’s better to focus on the more overt acts of corruption than the corrupting nature of our society; it’s better to focus on police brutality than the nature of policing and better to focus on corporate crime than the nature of capitalism. Focusing on overt acts of corruption allows us to blame others for our problems, while focusing on conflicts of interest only serves to highlight our complicity with them.

In this way, the president actually does us all a service. By providing such an outlandish example of corruption it becomes easier to rationalize our own complicity—we’re not like him so we must be good. But exploring the ways that we are similar to him would be more morally and politically fruitful, because this would help expose the subtle ways that self-interest influences our own decisions, making us complicit in many of our society’s crimes. But these are questions that few of us—the media included—want to ask.