Should journalists vote is always a question that comes up. Here’s an article by a Politico journalist who votes, sometimes, and why he thinks it’s alright.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8470_Page3.html

My belief is that being a journalist for an ideologically neutral publication like Politico, or the Washington Post, where I used to work, does not mean having no opinions. It means exercising self-discipline in the public expression of those opinions so as not to give sources and readers cause to question someone’s commitment to fairness.

As to whether I and other reporters and editors really are fair, the only test of that is the work itself. Ben Bradlee, the legendary Post editor, described it in ways that always resonated with me. Whether true objectivity is attainable is a subject for philosophers. But even young children understand the concept of fairness and know intuitively what’s fair and what’s not.

A journalist can cast votes and have opinions, even strong ones, and still be fair. We do it by letting people have their say, by not putting our thumb on the scale with loaded language, and by having the modesty as reporters to admit that information is always fragmentary and it is our role to tell stories but not to pretend that we are society’s High Court of Truth.