2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. [View all]quaker bill
(8,224 posts)I have worked in a position that requires political neutrality and evenhandedness for close to 25 years. I have written well beyond 20,000 e-mails, and well beyond 20,000 letters, and prepared any number of other types of documents. There is nothing in my record like this.
How do I know? I settle environmental disputes and enforce environmental law for a living. A community group that did not get all the results it desired, contacted the media and accused me of bias and corruption. In response I had a small team of investigative journalists ask for access to all my records. The law here requires complete transparency and full access by the media. So they spent 2 weeks in a conference room down the hall going though 1000's of my e-mails and probably a cubic yard or so of paper files. Every so often they would ask me to come down and explain something they found, usually with technical questions.
They found nothing to publish, and after two weeks the editor pulled them out and reassigned them to other issues.
Professionally it really is pretty easy. First, if the position requires neutrality and evenhandedness, then you do that. Second, if you don't want a sentiment pubished, don't write it, and certainly never press the "send" button on anything you would not be comfortable seeing with your name on it, on page 1.
Stone cast