While I am cynical about the media, I still expect reporters covering the presidential candidates to dig for facts and fairly report their findings, so when I read Jon Swartz’s critical USA Today piece on Carly Fiorina, I was disappointed.

Disappointed primarily because Swartz was a Silicon Valley high tech reporter and I expected more from him. While he wrote that he “had a front-row press seat in the early 2000s, covering the corporate soap opera over Fiorina’s bid to merge HP with Compaq Computer Corp. in a $24 billion deal,” he revealed his business naïveté’ in his criticism of Fiorina’s record at HP.

Experienced business reporters and analysts know that layoffs are common during merger/acquisition actions and they often lead to sour grapes comments from those no longer required by the resulting company. And stockholders, too, often are displeased with what’s happening to their stock.

However, Swartz chose to cite the 30,000 resulting layoffs and the stockholder showdown as a negative qualification for the presidency; what you would expect from a less-experienced reporter.

When Fiorina challenged Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) for her Senate seat in 2010, it was Boxer who used the HP layoffs in her campaign to defeat Fiorina.

Boxer, who has been in politics for the last four decades, and average individuals are quick to blame big business when layoffs occur. They simply don’t understand the reasons mergers generally take place. Companies look to merge with another company to complement its product offering and anticipate growth possibilities with higher shareholder returns. In the process they look to improved finances through the elimination of duplicate services and staff.

Having survived two mergers, including one that saw a CEO forced out in a similar boardroom confrontation to the one Fiorina described, and with some familiarity with the HP/Compaq deal, I am inclined to side with her.

Fiorina doesn’t shy away from questions about being fired at HP. “I was fired in a boardroom brawl,” she freely concedes, adding “It is a leader’s job to challenge the status quo and when you do, you make enemies.”

Swartz did admit that Fiorina “inherited a tricky situation” at HP. The activity overlapped the dot.com bubble, when a lot of tech companies had similar dips in stock price.

“We went from lagging behind in every product category to leading in every product category,” she recently told NBC’s Chuck Todd, “Yes, I had to make tough calls in tough times … tough times that many technology companies didn’t survive at all.”

I hope CNN reconsiders its position on which candidates it invites to the September debate. Fiorina deserves the opportunity to show viewers not only how she came from a position with no name recognition to the top-10 tier. And, that the GOP has a female candidate, too.