The asset of impartiality

Correspondents often need the help of the military in dangerous places around the world. We do our job and they do theirs, often with mutual respect. These are business relationships. For management to see them in any other way indicates a lack of understanding, or lack of interest in our editorial determination to side with nobody. In a world in which partiality is rife, the asset of impartiality is, now more than ever, not one to be trifled with.

Good to remember an incident that our then editor Manfred Pagel told us about during the war over the Falklands between Britain and Argentina. He recalled receiving a call from a senior British naval officer who complained about a Reuters story saying that British forces were assembling around Ascension Island. Where is your patriotism, said the caller. I am German actually, said Pagel.

What would the reply be now? ■