On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 4:02 PM, Phil Nash pn007a2145@blueyonder.co.ukwrote:
Judson Dunn wrote:
For your comedy pleasure :)
chaos! :)
It's actually a good point; when one looks at our articles on Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot, a neutral point of view is somewhat unlikely, because we have to report verifiable facts, and such articles cannot be rescued by stuff like "but he was good to his mother" on that point. Some people seem to think that NPOV means whitewashing, and that has to be nonsense. Maybe the examples I've given are extreme, but I do see it on a daily basis. I'll get me coat.
Neutrality doesn't mean "we don't report negative facts about people". It means that we don't call Hitler a mentally ill puppetmaster who murdered millions of women and children because of his inferiority complex.
The facts of the Holocaust and WW2 speak for themselves - we can present them in a neutral manner and let readers conclude that he was a dark, evil, sick bastard all on their own, without us spelling it out.
Neutrality has nothing to do with excluding verifyable negative facts.