The value of moral obligations.

• Author: Gearino, G.D.
• Position: FINEPRINT

Let's do this Jeopardy!-style: I'll give you the answer, and you craft your response in the form of a question. Ready? The category is "Things in Common," and the answer is, "They recently offered a vivid demonstration of the difference between what's legal and what's right." (Let's spend 30 seconds humming the Final Jeopardy! theme--which, by the way, was composed by the late television talk-show host Merv Griffin as a lullaby for his son.) Done? Let's see how you fared. The correct response: "Who are Mary Easley and The McClatchy Co.?"

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Easley, of course, is North Carolina's former first lady; McClatchy owns the two largest newspapers in the state. Of the two, she provided the highest-profile example of the gulf between legality and rightness. She was hired, while her husband was governor, to work for N.C. State University and eventually wound up with a $170,000 annual salary written into her five-year contract. The controversy led to the resignations of the chairman of the university's board of trustees, its chancellor and its provost. A contract is a contract, of course, as any lawyer (like Easley and hubby Mike) can surely tell you. So let's acknowledge that her contract was a legal obligation between the taxpaying citizens of North Carolina and their former first lady.

Problem is, both Easleys utterly failed in their moral obligation not to use their positions to dip shamelessly into the public trough. She never should have solicited a job with the state university system--because when the boss's wire asks for work:, only the bravest, or dumbest, middle manager is going to say no. Even after Easley's hiring erupted into controversy, she tried to hang on to the job, declaring (through her lawyer) she would not resign and certainly not limp away in shame. On June 8, N.C. State decided to terminate Easley's contract--thus setting up the possibility that she may file a lawsuit in the hope that one last grab of our tax dollars would ease the pain of having her sweetheart deal yanked away. It would all be legal, of course--and thoroughly wrong.

Then there's McClatchy, the troubled and heavily indebted Sacramento, Calif.-based newspaper chain that decided a couple of months ago that the people who should bear the burden for management failure and economic misfortune are not its top executives, McClatchy family members or stockholders (the first two categories being heavily represented in the third). No, the people who...