UNITY's Statement on Aguilar's Suspension

    MCLEAN, Va., Oct. 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- It has come to the
 attention of UNITY: Journalists of Color that a television reporter at
 KDFW-TV Fox 4 in Dallas was suspended last week after public outcry over
 her aggressive style of reporting.
     The story by Rebecca Aguilar focuses on her questioning of a junkyard
 dealer who had killed two alleged burglars in a span of three weeks.
     Upon reviewing the interview, it is apparent that while Aguilar used
 bold tactics to pursue the story, she did not violate any journalistic
 standards. It is puzzling why KDFW chose to run Aguilar's piece, and then
 suspended her only after the station received public pressure. Either her
 reporting was a violation of the station's standards from the beginning and
 should never have run, or the station should have -- out of fairness --
 also suspended the decision-makers who aired the piece.
     UNITY -- which represents nearly 10,000 journalists of color nationwide
 -- believes Aguilar was singled out for disciplinary action to appease a
 vocal sector of the public without regard to whether she violated
 journalistic standards.
     UNITY calls upon KDFW to reconsider its disciplinary action against
 Aguilar, an award-winning journalist with years of experience in television
 reporting. Let her right to pursue the truth, as well as the editors' right
 to initially air that piece, both be judged by the same standard.
 
 

SOURCE UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc.