Journalists are not automatons.

They are real people — some likable and some not — with friends and family who love them. They own pets, volunteer in schools, donate to charity and cling dearly to personal and professional value systems.

It is those values that drive most media organizations to hire journalists who reflect company values because frontline journalists represent media companies in the public eye.

So, when bloggers revealed this week that the conservative Maine Heritage Policy Center’s recent hire appears to support, at least through his personal writings, white supremacist statements, the MHPC promptly fired Leif Parsell from its themainewire.com staff.

In a prepared statement, the center affirmed that it is “a strong advocate for the liberty and prosperity of all Mainers, and we deplore the concept of race-based politics.”

In the years since the MHPC established itself in Maine, it has become a major political player. The announcement that it holds its staff accountable to its corporate value system is an important public statement.

The MHPC did the right thing in terminating Parsell’s employment based on that conflict in values, because continuing that relationship would have undermined the public trust in the organization.

The MHPC showed real grace, too, in thanking bloggers for bringing the racist comments to its attention, especially since some of the same bloggers have railed against MHPC politics and positions in the past, and there’s not a lot of shared camaraderie there.

It’s interesting to note that Parsell is a prolific blogger, writing about his personal views of Americanization, energy policy, tax policy and diversity in our schools outside his MHPC duties as recently as seven days ago. So, it’s unfortunate that the blogosphere and not themainewire.com editors uncovered Parsell’s objectionable musings, but there’s a hard lesson in that for any employer — media or not — interested in avoiding a similar chore of damage control.

The name of that lesson is Google.

Google is an automaton of supreme efficiency and scope, and human resource educators and managers are increasingly recommending that no hire be completed without checking — maybe not first, but certainly not last —with Google.

The Web is nowhere near 100 percent accurate, so whatever an employer may read about a potential employee should be verified before being believed, but Google is a pretty good sieve. And, at least in considering Parsell’s employment, it would have revealed his personal views with disturbing clarity.

More importantly, it’s legal.

In 2007, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit declared online background searches were not a violation of David Mullins’ “right to fundamental fairness” from his employer — which happened to be the federal government.

In that case, Mullins was suspected of misusing more than $6,000 in government property (including money), so his supervisor did a little online research and found that Mullins had been dismissed from two previous jobs for similar infractions. Mullins was swiftly fired.

He filed suit, claiming it wasn’t “fair” for his employer to check his background using Google, but the court disagreed, ruling that employers are permitted to use Google just like any other research tool. The reality is that Google is simply more thorough than most other tools.

So, if you’ve never Googled yourself, do it. Take a look at what others see and what others now use to judge us, in our jobs and our personal lives, whether we like it or not.

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The opinions expressed in this column reflect the views of the ownership and editorial board.