Political leanings of the media

MSNBC is running this look into political contributions journalists have made, begging the question of whether they should. It’s the most in-depth and comprehensive look at this subject I’ve seen. It deserves a good read, and public discussion, because the media has evolved – maybe morphed is a better word – into a political/social action force. Here they are admitting as much, and saying….why not? I’m glad that question is explored here.

A CNN reporter gave $500 to John Kerry’s campaign the same month he was embedded with the U.S. Army in Iraq. An assistant managing editor at Forbes magazine not only sent $2,000 to Republicans, but also volunteers as a director of an ExxonMobil-funded group that questions global warming. A junior editor at Dow Jones Newswires gave $1,036 to the liberal group MoveOn.org and keeps a blog listing “people I don’t like,” starting with George Bush, Pat Robertson, the Christian Coalition, the NRA and corporate America (“these are the people who are really in charge”).

Whether you sample your news feed from ABC or CBS (or, yes, even NBC and MSNBC), whether you prefer Fox News Channel or National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal or The New Yorker, some of the journalists feeding you are also feeding cash to politicians, parties or political action committees.

MSNBC.com identified 144 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 17 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.

So there you have evidence of what everyone already knows….but that’s not the point, in my opinion. Okay, we knew they lean hard left overall. Bernie Goldberg has written about this well, in both Bias and Arrogance, among other authors. I’ve written about the media a lot from so many years inside it, and there are more media analysis shows on cable news these days, like Fox News Watch with Eric Burns and a panel on which this subject comes up and gets discussed. The point, I think, is being open and honest about it, setting up new guidelines from the noble ones the media have already abandoned.

There’s a longstanding tradition that journalists don’t cheer in the press box. They have opinions, like anyone else, but they are expected to keep those opinions out of their work.

See what I mean? A bygone era. Opinions color reports now by more reporters than ever, that’s clear by watching most news shows these days. 

Because appearing to be fair is part of being fair, most mainstream news organizations discourage marching for causes, displaying political bumper stickers or giving cash to candidates.

Traditionally, many news organizations have applied the rules to only political reporters and editors. The ethic was summed up by Abe Rosenthal, the former New York Times editor, who is reported to have said, “I don’t care if you sleep with elephants as long as you don’t cover the circus.”

Good line. Short, pithy, says a lot.

So, media folks are giving money and support to political candidates or parties. What to make of that?

The donors said they try to be fair in reporting and editing the news. One of the recurring themes in the responses is that it’s better for journalists to be transparent about their beliefs, and that editors who insist on manufacturing an appearance of impartiality are being deceptive to a public that already knows journalists aren’t without biases.

Deceptive when one has to manufacture an appearance of impartiality.

“Our writers are citizens, and they’re free to do what they want to do,” said New Yorker editor David Remnick, who has 10 political donors at his magazine. “If what they write is fair, and they respond to editing and counter-arguments with an open mind, that to me is the way we work.”

That’s a big “If”. Because an awful lot of reporting is not fair. And, as the New York Times has amply proven, a lot of editors are not editing inaccurate or biased reporting when they find it. And when called on it, those editors often don’t respond with an open mind themselves.

Which gets to the point of openness about how news organizations view world events. If we can’t get back to professional ethics and journalistic standards of objectivity and fairness – and we can’t at this point – we would be better served with honesty about ideology. Then news consumers could – and should – gather information from opposite sides of an argument on immigration, the war, abortion, embryonic stem cells, gay activism, religion, and everything else that affects the culture and its people and families. And make informed decisions.

Americans don’t trust the news or newspeople as much as they used to. The crisis of faith is traced by the surveys of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. More than seven in 10 (72 percent) say news organizations tend to favor one side, the highest level of skepticism in the poll’s 20-year history. Despite the popularity of Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann, two-thirds of those polled say they prefer to get news from sources without a particular point of view.

So for now, get your news from sources you know to fall on both sides of the political divide. Listen carefully to the language they use, detect deceptive euphemisms intended to sway your thinking, and look for critical thinking skills in the criticism.

And take heart, because there are still some journalists out there who hold fast to traditional ethics.

Tom Rosenstiel hasn’t given anyone a dime. The former media critic for The Los Angeles Times and director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, he co-wrote the classic book “The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect.”

Journalists have sometimes gone too far, Rosenstiel said, in withdrawing from civic life. “Is it a conflict of interest for the food editor to be the president of the PTA? Probably not,” he said. “You don’t want to make your journalists be zoo animals.”

But giving money to a candidate or party, he said, goes a big step beyond voting. “If you give money to a candidate, you are then rooting for that candidate. You’ve made an investment in that candidate. It can make it more difficult for someone to tell the news without fear or favor.

“The second reason,” Rosenstiel said, “it would create — even if you thought you could make that intellectual leap and not let your personal allegiance interfere with your professionalism — it creates an appearance of a conflict of interest. For journalists, that’s a real conflict.

“Giving money, you’re not doing the profession of journalism any good. All of the ethics of journalism are about trust. They don’t come from Planet Journalism. They come from the street.”

Read this entire article, it’s worth it. MSNBC made it interactive, because they want to hear from you. People always wonder how to make their voices heard. Here’s one place that’s asking for it….so to speak.