Journalistic Ethics?

USA Today Reader Editor Brent Jones responded to questions, prompted by a FAIR Action Alert (1/23/08).

He wrote about the newspaper's failure to identify a white supremacist group as such.  The paper's editors argued that doing so would have been an illegitimate "judgment" on the part of the paper.  So, does this mean that people holding obvious racist or sexist beliefs who use such language will get a free pass from USA Today?  Imagine if we applied the same logic to terrorist groups?

It is important to note that USA Today had run two stories on the Nationalist Movement, a group that marched against civil rights in Jena, La. on Martin Luther King Day, that characterized the group only by its self-description of "pro-majority." 

Jones wrote:

Your question -- why don't we call the Nationalists racists? -- is one I'm sure many people would ask. The simple answer is that the term "racist" is a judgment, and judgments are open to interpretation. It's the newspaper's responsibility to report only the facts. That way, all sides on an issue can be confident that we're reporting the truth without bias. If we give readers a full, accurate, factual picture, they can form their own judgments.

Of course, newspapers make judgments all the time-- from what language to use to which stories to cover. For example, the paper made the judgment that a small demonstration by the Nationalist Movement merited coverage in a national newspaper; it's not as though all political gatherings involving a few dozen people are automatically reported.

These judgments routinely include choices about how to describe various groups. When USA Today refers to Al-Qaeda as a "terrorist group," it's not because that's how the organization identifies itself; it's because the paper believes that's a phrase that conveys the group's ideology and activities to its readers. In using or avoiding the word "terrorist," the outlet is making a journalistic judgment; in neither case is it reporting "only the facts."