Journalists and political donations

I'm not going to argue liberal bias, but I would say that the perception of liberal bias tends to swing back the opposite way. So reporters and columnists will go out of their way to take the opposite position so they can say, "look at me, look at what I wrote."
I've done that when I was writing sports columns, gone against the grain so I wouldn't be accused of being a homer. I'd imagine most of us have, whether we realized it at the time or not. I know I didn't.

The other thing worth noting about the MSNBC article is the that total amount of money donated is trivial when compared to the total amount donated by everyone.
And this could be used as an example of what I wrote above. Since the article doesn't give any kind of numbers for context, it looks like MSNBC is pointing out this vast liberal conspiracy, this gotcha of look at all the liberals, but it really doesn't.
It doesn't list the amount given or the names involved in the management and ownership of the media companies, and that is where the real money is. So by pointing out the piddling amounts given by the rank and file, it doesn't mention the bosses. That's just stupid.
For one, those people actually have the real money to give and ownership tends to skew to the right. And the publisher at virtually every daily in the U.S. has the ultimate say on the editorial pages, but then to say that doesn't matter and not include him or her, but the newsroom librarian, who might have the least amount of influence in any newsroom, we've got to list that.
Please.
And Gideon Yago did quit the business. The article doesn't say why. That article is a sloppy piece of work.

 

Giddyup! Hyah!

 

I'm more curious what $500 worth of Skittles would look like.

 

I'm even more curious what $500 worth of Skittles on fire would look like.

 

Sure, you can play the bosses-give-more and bosses-give-to-the-GOP card. But that's not the point here. Reporters and editors and everyone else who works in the newsroom are supposed to be neutral - that's not a really hard concept to grasp. If you want to pal around with politicos, quit and do something else.

The story's also a reminder that everyone here should dig out your employee handbook from the garage or attic or wherever you hid it and read the damned thing. The ethics part of it is usually good reading.

 

Exactly. There will be enough idiots who think we are biased. Don't open the door for them.

You cover anything related to politics, you keep your wallet closed.

 

From Buckweaver on the State of the Industry thread:

"Our core strengths are a) our ability to find/report the news; b) our ability to separate the news (a.k.a. news judgment).

Untrained private citizens will never be able to do those tasks as well as experienced, objective, professional journalists. Untrained (unpaid) private citizens -- some of whom (educators, historians, researchers, etc.) surely could learn to find and report the news as well as journalists -- have little incentive to separate the news.

Making critical judgments about news value is where user-submitted journalism will always fail. Unfortunately, many news organizations are failing to make smart critical judgments about news value in the rush to feed the beast that is the 24-hour news cycle, too ..."

 

Buckweaver loves when you quote him.
He decided to send down this autograph for you:

 

It's interesting reading some of the comments from the people they contacted (and it looks like they got most of them.

From Gideon Yago:

"I don't understand. Things that I do as a private citizen?
"We're not a traditional news network in the sense of NBC or Fox or CBS.
"We're sensitive about equal time or fairness. We're non-biased.
"I mean, what the f---, man?
"I came back from doing coverage in Iraq and was very moved by what I saw. I was never told by my boss or anyone that we couldn't give to a campaign.
"I'm not a journalist now. Writing fiction.
"I would never qualify what we do as journalism. Ninety percent of what we did was simple identification, after 9/11: Who is Rumsfeld? Who is Colin Powell? Who is Al Qaeda?
"I try to call it as you see it.
"After my second trip to Iraq in 2004, I felt the conventional news media was not doing a good enough job of conveying the horrors and the failures of the war in Iraq.
"At 18 I was a registered Republican. At 24, I was a registered Democrat.
"I tried very hard — our job was not an indoctrination process — I tried to be as professional as possible whenever possible.
"We were a non-traditional news outlet. We were nonpartisan.
""OK, I've been rebuked. Thank you for spanking me in public.
"Do you hand in all your rights as a public citizen when you do this?
"I mean — who's your editor? I'm going to call him right now."

 

I was once told: Do not donate any money, do not sign any petitions.

But - do vote.

The logic behind this, beyond maintaining a neutral persona, is that donations and petitions can be on the public record. Voting is a private matter.

 

How do y'all classify the DC punditocracy? Fred Barnes, Katrina Vandeheuvel, Kate O'Bierne, Margaret Carlson, Bill Sammon? Their politics are pretty evident and I think they all consider themselves "journalists."

 

Nice of Mark Singer to throw some jet fuel on the fire ...

"Probably there should be a rule against it," said New Yorker writer Mark Singer, who wrote the magazine's profile of Howard Dean during the 2004 campaign, then gave $250 to America Coming Together and its get-out-the-vote campaign to defeat President Bush. "But there's a rule against murder. If someone had murdered Hitler — a journalist interviewing him had murdered him — the world would be a better place. I only feel good, as a citizen, about getting rid of George Bush, who has been the most destructive president in my lifetime. I certainly don't regret it."