Sure, there's always going to be some of that. No MU is ever going to be bias-free. It's run by humans. Even if you get an AI to run a MU, we teach AI stupid amounts of bias all the time, because they learn from us, and the stuff we want them to focus on. There have been numerous studies about how bias actually gets magnified when you take the human element out of decision-making, like when used to grade essay answers.
I can see both sides of it. On the one hand, the 'friends of staff' argument can have some merit. On the other, those same 'friends of staff' are likely the ones that were considered in the creation of the game, gave their feedback on the theme, and helped shape the world -- so they're also probably the experts on the theme of the game itself, and the ones in the best position to try and help move things forward. There really isn't a way around that. Staff is always going to have a handful of people that they lean on, either because of expertise or quality, to move things along. A little mini sub-staff. Every game has it, and if a gamerunner tells you they don't, then they either don't realize that they're doing it, or they're lying.
But that's also why compartmentalized information sometimes has to be overlooked, even if you want to act on it. If I see a page where someone is bitching about me, or about a decision I made, I likely might be a touch annoyed, but I'm not going to make that actionable, unless there is some other reason to do so (control of misinformation, maybe -- I dunno, I can think of reasons, but if it's just spleen venting then fuck 'em.)
So there is something to be said for privacy via compartmentalization, but there's also something to be said for 'sometimes you just got to give someone the OOC lowdown on what you want and set them loose upon the world'. Every player gets this, in one way or another. That's the entire reason that you have theme and policy files.