Mark Memmott
Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.
As the NPR Ethics Handbook states, the Standards & Practices editor is "charged with cultivating an ethical culture throughout our news operation." This means he or she coordinates discussion on how we apply our principles and monitors our decision-making practices to ensure we're living up to our standards."
Before becoming Standards & Practices editor, Memmott was one of the hosts of NPR's "The Two-Way" news blog, which he helped to launch when he came to NPR in 2009. It focused on breaking news, analysis, and the most compelling stories being reported by NPR News and other news media.
Prior to joining NPR, Memmott worked for nearly 25 years as a reporter and editor at USA Today. He focused on a range of coverage from politics, foreign affairs, economics, and the media. He reported from places across the United States and the world, including half a dozen trips to Afghanistan in 2002-2003.
During his time at USA Today, Memmott, helped launch and lead three USAToday.com news blogs: "On Deadline," "The Oval" and "On Politics," the site's 2008 presidential campaign blog.
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There is a "U.S. Border Patrol" within it and there are border patrol agents, but the name of the agency ends with "Protection," not "Patrol."
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As we've said before, we don't necessarily have to report about them "until we have more to say than that they exist."
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As an NPR public editor once observed, that's a "pejorative" birth label.
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We want to be seen as "rigorous and impartial pursuers of truth." That's why we work hard to challenge our own perspectives and to avoid doing things that raise questions about our impartiality.
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Hansi Lo Wang or Luis Clemens should be consulted on all stories that look at the debate.
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We can use the names, though as we have said before we do not need to say them often.
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We need to be precise, accurate and neutral.
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In particular, avoid the use of the terms "anti-vax" and "anti-vaxxer." It's important to stick to the science — and to use neutral language in describing peoples' positions.
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When reporting about this, frame it as "evidence," not proof, that the aides to the president were "asked to lie." And attribute the evidence to Mueller's investigation.
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We are not going to repeat on the air a quote attributed to President Trump in the Mueller report in which he dropped an F-bomb.