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No one on The Perre Needmo Newshour was Force-sensitive, but they all had finely tuned instincts, the clichéd “nose for news.” The joke was that no one had a better nose for news than Perre Needmo. And, far from being insulted by the comment, Needmo sometimes said it himself.

“We’ll get on it right away,” Jorm said. “Any of our regulars have any field experience?”

“Madhi Vaandt,” said the lighting director immediately. A chorus of positive murmuring went around the room. Madhi had been on a short while ago, with a segment on the atrocious living conditions in the Underlevels of Coruscant. She stubbornly remained a freelancer, but the same station that ran The Perre Needmo Newshour had hired her for various spots.

“Oh, perfect,” said Jorm. “That last segment she did with us got a lot of attention. Someone even started fund-raisers to help provide medicines and fosterage for some of the younglings in the underlevels. She’s got no whiff of scandal and the holocam loves her.”

Needmo’s snout wrinkled in hearty approval. “Hear that, beings?” he said, pleasure and pride warming his voice. “You bring injustice to the attention of the viewers, and they do something about it. I liked what I saw of Vaandt. Get in touch with her agent right away. We’ll want her on two, perhaps three different worlds. And one of them,” he paused and centered himself, “one of those worlds must be Vinsoth.”

The team exchanged glances. Vinsoth was Needmo’s own homeworld. For thousands of years, his people, the Chevin, had enslaved a humanoid race known as the Chev. Granted, their domination had not been a particularly violent or brutal one. Indeed, some might even call it civilized. The Chev culture, far from being quashed, was encouraged to flourish, and full support was given them if they chose to pursue the arts. Physical violence against them was discouraged and blatant violation of that law resulted in stiff fines and occasionally prison time for the offender.

Needmo looked from face to face, his eyes crinkling in a benevolent smile.

“Come now,” he said, his voice gentle. “How can we do otherwise? We cannot in good conscience report on slavery on other worlds without addressing the fact that the being for whom the show is named comes from such a world himself. We’d be hypocrites and lose the trust and faith the viewers have placed in us. And furthermore, it just wouldn’t be right.”

“Perre,” Jorm said, “you’ve made your reputation on who you are and what you’ve done, not where you come from.”

“As all beings should have the right to do,” Needmo said. “No being should be judged on his or her—or, frankly, its—species, or what world they were born on. It is who you are that matters. Trust me on this. I have striven to be neutral in reporting the news. But to omit Vinsoth would not be neutral. I will not be reporting, or personally commenting on the situation—although informally my views are well known. Madhi would be. She’s got no personal agenda. And I won’t have her censored,” he added, looking sharply at Sima. “The viewers will make their own conclusions, and it will be good for the show and good for our viewers. Isn’t that what we’ve always wanted to do?”

Needmo knew his team realized there was little point in arguing with him. His instincts had proven to be sound for several years. He’d bucked the trend of slick, fast-paced “journalism” in favor of calm reporting of actual facts, not possibly faked action scenes better depicted in a holodrama. Even bringing in Madhi was shaking up the format.

But Needmo knew he was absolutely right on this. Madhi Vaandt was already making her reputation by calling things as she saw them. Fit, impulsive, she went to the heart of the story to bring things out of the darkness into the light. She’d had no compunctions at all about traveling to the Underlevels with just a cam crew for “security.” And if she covered the situation on Vinsoth in that same way, on a show hosted by a Chev, there would be no question of biased