On Friday, Mr. Finighan asked Mr. Mohyeldin, who is Egyptian-born but educated in the United States, to "stop being impartial for a moment" and share his personal feelings about the turn of events.
I can't even pretend to be impartial—I'm pulling for Watson all the way here, and I, for one, welcome our new artificial intelligence overlords.
State media have a greater obligation to be impartial, since they are paid for by the public, Robert Ménard of Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based group, argued in Caracas this week.
"They claim to be impartial but their principal scientist for the past several years has made a name going around and raising questions about the safety of biotechnology without any supporting scientific data," said Val Giddings, a top official at the Biotechnology Industry Organization.
He was roundly attacked; the Sun demanded that he be sacked for failing to be impartial, given that he is a BBC host.
But Mr. Skopp, she said, acknowledged that because he and Mr. Zenel were friends from graduate school at Columbia University, it was hard for him to be impartial.
"Nobody objects to the government making its case in this referendum but most people expect the civil service to be impartial in carrying out its support for ministers," he said.
In Mr. Falk's case, it continued, his "vehement publications" made it "hard to square his appointment" with the council's own requirements, which call for envoys to be impartial and objective.
But they appear to be a diverse group of residents from the New York City area who, if nothing else, are hard to shock, having endured a selection process that asked whether the grisly and often sexually explicit testimony and images in the case would make it hard for them to be impartial.
It would be difficult for him to be impartial about issues such as telecommunication laws, a rival TV program or legislative decisions that may affect brands advertising on his program, if Trump continues his association with the show, they believe.
