No Bias Policy - Maguire's Firing

Today's NY Times reports on the firing of Paul Maguire from Reuters because his book about Ann Coulter was deemed to violate their trust principles. I don't know what went on behind closed doors, nor have I read the book. But I have looked at their trust principles. Actually, that's confusing too. The link actually goes to their editorial policy and that has a link to their trust principles. The editorial policy includes, "We are committed to reporting the facts and in all situations avoid the use of emotive terms." The title of the book is "Brainless:The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter." Perhaps they consider "Brainless" an emotive term. But this is not something Maguire did for Reuters.

It also says, "We do not take sides and attempt to reflect in our stories, pictures and video the views of all sides. We are not in the business of glorifying one side or another or of disseminating propaganda. Reuters journalists do not offer their own opinions or views." It would seem that their policy 'takes the side' of objectivity. But what happens when a reporter objectively analyzes someone's argument and finds it to be lies and lunacy? I understand the logic of the policy, but there comes a time when that sort of reasoning castrates the press To take everything at face value, to not question what people are saying, is to give standing and credence to lies and lunacy. . At the extreme, as appears to be the case here, reporters should treat logical falacies, lies, distortion of truth the same as truth and logic. To do otherwise, it would appear from this action, would entail bias. There used to be a fairness doctrine in broadcast media. While it is legally gone, a distorted version of it still exists - the idea that there are alwasy two or more sides to a story. Often there are. But sometimes, one side is clearly right and the other side is clearly wrong. (No you shouldn't make that judgment immediately, but in the case of writing a book about someone like Ann Coulter, we can assume Mr. Maguire has had time to reflect.) Being evenhanded by giving equal time to lunatics, or worse, to people consciously trying to distort the truth, is a perversion of the idea of even handedness. Like Fox's Orwellian claim to being Fair and Unbiased.

Furthermore, I find Maguire's firing to be part of the chilling affect on the media which has hampered good reporting that might have prevented many of the misguided policies of the Bush administration.