Jimmy Fallon Hyped his Bored Ape NFTs on ‘The Tonight Show.’ Conflict of Interest?
When Jimmy Fallon went on his prime-time network television show and showed the audience his newly-purchased NFT, was he following good ethical and moral standards?
Don Heider, executive director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University and a former television journalist, said that people with as much “power and influence” as Fallon “need to be thoughtful about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it” when they blur the lines between commercial versus editorial content.
Financial reporters at the Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg, for instance, “follow a fairly strict code of ethics in terms of not owning stocks that they cover,” Heider added. “Is it a good idea, is it ethical, is it in the public interest, to be endorsing something on air — whether you’re a reporter, whether you’re an entertainer, anything else — that you have an investment in?”
Don Heider, executive director, quoted in the Los Angeles Times.
Kevin Wolf/AP Photo