There was a fascinating letter to the editor in the Orlando Sentinel on Tuesday, October 27, 2009.  Without discussing the particular subject matter (the Obama administration’s ongoing contentious relationship with Fox News) there was a major issue revealed about both our daily newspaper and what I fear might be a trend in journalism across the board.

The letter took columnist Charles Krauthammer to task for failing to reveal his close, ongoing working relationship with Fox News in a column he wrote lambasting the Obama administration’s view that Fox News is not a credible news operation, but simply a mouthpiece for the opposition party.  

Again, while I do have an opinion on this, I don’t want to focus on that as much as I do on the Orlando Sentinel’s brief “response.”  It appears that Krauthammer did, in an offhanded way, reveal that he works for Fox News by mentioning that his mother watches “even on the odd night that I’m not on.” Had those few words been left in the piece, the letter writer might not have had cause to complain. But the editor, in an italicized response (something that rarely appears), indicated that this particular reference was “edited from (the) column because of space.”  

Now, maybe this is mountain versus molehill stuff on my part, but that reference that Mr. Krauthammer did include in his column was absolutely and contextually relevant to the point he was attempting to make. He was taking the side of his employer against the current administration. He admitted to being in the employ of Fox News, but in the alleged interest of space, the Sentinel’s editor took that reference out.  

My point is simply this. If you need to edit for space, even in a well written editorial opinion piece as this was, go first for the “fat,” in the form of adverbs, adjectives and redundancies before cutting into “muscle” in the form of relevant context.  

This, I fear, was an editor “editorializing” by deleting relevant facts from an original piece of work. And I fear as well that space didn’t have anything to do with it.  Call me picky, but I don’t think the editor at my daily newspaper should be doing that sort of thing.