Americans See Liberal Media Bias on TV News
rasmussenreports.com
Friday, July 13, 2007
By a 39% to 20% margin, American adults believe that the three major
broadcast networks deliver news with a bias in favor of liberals. A
Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 25%
believe that ABC, CBS, and NBC deliver the news without any bias.
Similar results are found for CNN and National Public Radio (NPR). By
a margin of 33% to 16%, Americans say that CNN has a liberal bias. The
nation's adults say the same about NPR by a 27% to 14% margin.
There is one major exception to the belief that media outlets have a
liberal bias—Fox News. Thirty-one percent (31%) of Americans say it
has a bias that favors conservatives while 15% say it has a liberal bias.
When it comes to delivering news without bias, 37% believe NPR
accomplishes that goal. Thirty-six percent (36%) say the same for Fox
and 32% believe it's true of CNN. As noted earlier, just 25% believe
the major broadcast networks deliver news in an unbiased manner.
Results for other media outlets will be released over the next week.
Media fairness has emerged as a debate on Capitol Hill following the
recent debate on immigration when public opinion overwhelmed the will
of the Senate. Some lawmakers have called for a re-introduction of the
"Fairness Doctrine" requiring stations to air competing points of
view. Rasmussen Reports will release data on public attitudes towards
that concept over the weekend.
Not surprisingly, there are huge partisan and ideological differences
in the data. For example, among self-identified liberals, all of the
media outlets are believed to have some net bias in favor of
conservatives. However, 50% of liberals say that NPR is unbiased.
Forty-three percent (43%) say the same about CNN. As for the major
television networks, 49% of liberals believe they have a conservative
bias. Just 10% of liberals see a liberal bias at ABC, CBS, and NBC.
Conservatives throughout the nation see things entirely differently.
Sixty-two percent (62%) see a liberal bias at the major broadcast
networks and 55% say the same about CNN. Forty-five percent (45%) of
conservatives see Fox as unbiased and the rest are evenly divided.
Eighteen percent (18%) of conservatives see Fox News as having a
liberal bias while 21% say the opposite.
Younger adults are less likely than their elders to see a liberal bias
across all of the media outlets.
On a partisan basis, Democrats see the major television networks and
Fox as biased in favor of conservatives. Solid pluralities of
Democrats believe CNN and NPR deliver news without bias. Those
Democrats who see bias at CNN and NPR are fairly evenly divided, but
are a bit more likely to detect conservative bias.
Republicans see a strong liberal bias on all the outlets except Fox.
Forty-nine percent (49%) of the GOP faithful see Fox as fair and balanced.
Those not affiliated with either major party tend to see a liberal
bias everywhere except Fox. Thirty-eight percent (38%) of
unaffiliateds see a liberal bias at the major television networks
while only 19% see a conservative bias.
During Election 2004, 38% of voters thought CBS News anchorman Dan
Rather was actively trying to help John Kerry win the election. Other
data showed that voters tended to select news sources based upon their
political preferences.
Rasmussen Reports is pleased that our online audience includes roughly
equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats.
Crosstabs are available for Premium Members only.
Rasmussen Reports is an electronic publishing firm specializing in the
collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling
information.
The Rasmussen Reports ElectionEdge™ Premium Service for Election 2008
offers the most comprehensive public opinion coverage ever provided
for a Presidential election.
Rasmussen Reports' Election 2006 coverage has been praised for its
accuracy and reliability. Michael Barone, Senior Writer for U.S. News
& World Report and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics,
mentions, "One clear lesson from the Republican victory of 2004 and
the Democratic victory of 2006 is that the best place to look for
polls that are spot on is RasmussenReports.com." And University of
Virginia Professor Larry Sabato states, "In election campaigns, I've
learned to look for the Rasmussen results. In my experience, they are
right on the money. There is no question Rasmussen produces some of
the most accurate and reliable polls in the country today."
Rasmussen Reports was also the nation's most accurate polling firm
during the 2004 Presidential election and the only one to project both
Bush and Kerry's vote total within half a percentage point of the
actual outcome.
During both Election 2004 and Election 2006, RasmussenReports.com was
the top-ranked public opinion research site on the web. We had twice
as many visitors as our nearest competitor and nearly as many as all
competitors combined.
Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, has been an
independent pollster for more than a decade.
Journalists dole out cash to politicians (quietly)
News organizations diverge on handling of political activism by staff
By Bill Dedman
Investigative reporter
MSNBC
MSNBC.com investigative reporter Bill Dedman
Bill Dedman
Investigative reporter
BOSTON - 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.
The donors include CNN's Guy Raz, now covering the Pentagon for NPR,
who gave to Kerry the same month he was embedded with U.S. troops in
Iraq; New Yorker war correspondent George Packer; a producer for Bill
O'Reilly at Fox; MSNBC TV host Joe Scarborough; political writers at
Vanity Fair; the editor of The Wall Street Journal's weekend section;
local TV anchors in Washington, Minneapolis, Memphis and Wichita; the
ethics columnist at The New York Times; and even MTV's former
presidential campaign correspondent.
`If someone had murdered Hitler ...'
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. 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."
But with polls showing the public losing faith in the ability of
journalists to give the news straight up, some major newspapers and TV
networks are clamping down. They now prohibit all political activity —
aside from voting — no matter whether the journalist covers baseball
or proofreads the obituaries. The Times in 2003 banned all donations,
with editors scouring the FEC records regularly to watch for in-house
donors. In 2005, The Chicago Tribune made its policy absolute. CBS did
the same last fall. And The Atlantic Monthly, where a senior editor
gave $500 to the Democratic Party in 2004, says it is considering
banning all donations. After MSNBC.com contacted Salon.com about
donations by a reporter and a former executive editor, this week Salon
banned donations for all its staff.
What changed? First came the conservative outcry labeling the
mainstream media as carrying a liberal bias. The growth of talk radio
and cable slugfests gave voice to that claim. The Iraq war fueled
distrust of the press from both sides. Finally, it became easier for
the blogging public to look up the donors.
As the policy at the Times puts it: "Given the ease of Internet access
to public records of campaign contributors, any political giving by a
Times staff member would carry a great risk of feeding a false
impression that the paper is taking sides."
But news organizations don't agree on where to draw the ethical line.
Giving to candidates is allowed at Fox, Forbes, Time, The New Yorker,
Reuters — and at Bloomberg News, whose editor in chief, Matthew
Winkler, set the tone by giving to Al Gore in 2000. Bloomberg has nine
campaign donors on the list; they're allowed to donate unless they
cover politics directly.
Donations and other political activity are strictly forbidden at The
Washington Post, ABC, CBS, CNN and NPR.
Politicking is discouraged, but there is some wiggle room, at Dow
Jones, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report. (Compare policies here.)
NBC, MSNBC and MSNBC.com say they don't discourage or encourage
campaign contributions, but they require employees to report any
potential conflicts of interest in advance and receive permission of
the senior editor. (MSNBC.com is a joint venture of NBC Universal and
Microsoft; its employees are required to adhere to NBC News policies
regarding political contributions.)
Many of the donating journalists cover topics far from politics: food,
fashion, sports. Some touch on politics from time to time: Even a film
critic has to review Gore's documentary on global warming. And some
donors wield quiet influence behind the scenes, such as the wire
editors at newspapers in Honolulu and Riverside, Calif., who decide
which state, national and international news to publish.
The pattern of donations, with nearly nine out of 10 giving to
Democratic candidates and causes, appears to confirm a leftward tilt
in newsrooms — at least among the donors, who are a tiny fraction of
the roughly 100,000 staffers in newsrooms across the nation.
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.
"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."
The openness didn't extend, however, to telling the public about the
donations. Apparently none of the journalists disclosed the donations
to readers, viewers or listeners. Few told their bosses, either.
Several of the donating journalists said they had no regrets, whatever
the ethical concerns.
"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."
Conservative-leaning journalists tended to greater generosity. Ann
Stewart Banker, a producer for Bill O'Reilly at Fox News Channel, gave
$5,000 to Republicans. Financial columnist Liz Peek at The New York
Sun gave $90,000 to the Grand Old Party.
A few journalists let their enthusiasm extend beyond the checkbook. A
Fox TV reporter in Omaha, Calvert Collins, posted a photo on
Facebook.com with her cozying up to a Democratic candidate for
Congress. She urged her friends, "Vote for him Tuesday, Nov. 7!" She
also gave him $500. She said she was just trying to build rapport with
the candidates. (And what builds rapport more effectively than $500
and a strapless gown?)
'You call that a campaign contribution?'
Sometimes a donation isn't a donation, at least in the eye of the donor.
"I don't make campaign contributions," said Jean A. Briggs, who gave a
total of $2,000 to the Republican Party and Republican candidates,
most recently this March. "I'm the assistant managing editor of Forbes
magazine."
When asked about the Republican National Committee donations, she
replied, "You call that a campaign contribution? It's not putting
money into anyone's campaign."
(For the record: The RNC gave $25 million to the Bush-Cheney campaign
in 2004.)
A spokeswoman for Forbes said the magazine allows contributions.
Briggs also is listed as a board member of the Property and
Environment Research Center, which advocates "market solutions to
environmental problems." PERC has received funding from ExxonMobil,
and tries to get the industry's views into textbooks and the media.
The organization's Web site says, "She exposes fellow New York
journalists to PERC ideas and also brings a journalistic perspective
to PERC's board. As a board member, she seeks to help spread the word
about PERC's thorough research and fresh ideas."
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.
`My readers know my views'
George Packer is The New Yorker's man in Iraq.
The war correspondent for the magazine since 2003 and author of the
acclaimed 2005 book "The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq," Packer
gave $750 to the Democratic National Committee in August 2004, and
then $250 in 2005 to Iraq war veteran Paul Hackett, an anti-war
Democrat who campaigned unsuccessfully for a seat in Congress from Ohio.
In addition to his reported pieces, Packer also writes commentary for
the magazine, such as his June 11 piece ruing Bush's "shallow,
unreflective character."
"My readers know my views on politics and politicians because I make
no secret of them in my comments for The New Yorker and elsewhere,"
Packer said. "If giving money to a politician prejudiced my ability to
think and write honestly, I wouldn't do it. Fortunately, it doesn't."
His colleague Judith Thurman wrote the New Yorker's sympathetic
profile of Teresa Heinz Kerry, published on Sept. 27, 2004. Ten days
later, the Democratic National Committee recorded Thurman's donation
of $1,000. She did not return phone calls.
Their editor, Remnick, said that the magazine's writers don't do
straight reporting. "Their opinions are out there," Remnick said.
"There's nothing hidden." So why not disclose campaign donations to
readers? "Should every newspaper reporter divulge who they vote for?"
Besides, there's the magazine's famously rigorous editing. The last
bulwark against bias slipping into The New Yorker is the copy
department, whose chief editor, Ann Goldstein, gave $500 in October to
MoveOn.org, which campaigns for Democrats and against President Bush.
"That's just me as a private citizen," she said. As for whether
donations are allowed, Goldstein said she hadn't considered it. "I've
never thought of myself as working for a news organization."
Embedded in Iraq, giving to Kerry
Guy Raz does work for a news organization.
As the Jerusalem correspondent for CNN, he was embedded with U.S.
troops in Iraq in June 2004, when he gave $500 to John Kerry.
He didn't supply his occupation or employer to the Kerry campaign, so
his donation is listed in federal records with only his name and
London address. Now he covers the Pentagon for NPR. Both CNN and NPR
forbid political activity.
"I covered international news and European Union stories. I did not
cover U.S. news or politics," Raz said in an e-mail to MSNBC.com. When
asked how one could define U.S. news so it excludes the U.S. war in
Iraq, Raz didn't reply.
Margot Patterson not only covered the war and gave money to stop it —
she also signed a petition against it.
Covering the war, opposing the war
Patterson has covered the Iraq war and anti-war movements for the
National Catholic Reporter, an independent weekly newspaper in Kansas
City.
She gave to anti-war Democrats: $2,100 to Sen. Claire McCaskill,
$1,000 to Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, $250 to Howard Dean and $800 to the
Democratic Party.
And she signed a petition and paid to have it published as "KC Metro
Citizens Oppose War On Iraq!"
Patterson said the danger isn't the journalist who reveals a bias by
making a campaign contribution, but journalists who quietly hold to
their biases.
"I feel my responsibility as a journalist is to be fair to the people
and issues involved and to be as accurate as possible," she said.
"When I see my country embark on a course of action that I think
disastrous to its future and fatal to its citizens, I think it my duty
to do my utmost to stop it."
She didn't disclose her political activities to her readers, or her
editor, Tom Roberts. He said he wasn't sure about campaign
contributions, but "a reporter signing a petition crosses the line to
activism."
'The Ethicist'
At this point, we need a journalism ethicist. How about Orville
Schell? He favorably reviewed Eric Alterman's book "What Liberal
Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News." And this Feb. 9, while he
was still dean of the journalism school at the University of
California, Berkeley, Schell gave $1,000 to Sen. Hillary Clinton.
Or we could ask Randy Cohen, who writes the syndicated column "The
Ethicist" for The New York Times. The former comedy writer gave $585
to MoveOn.org in 2004 when it was organizing get-out-the-vote efforts
to defeat Bush. Cohen said he understands the Times policy and won't
make donations again, but he had thought of MoveOn.org as no more out
of bounds than the Boy Scouts.
"We admire those colleagues who participate in their communities —
help out at the local school, work with Little League, donate to
charity," Cohen said in an e-mail. "But no such activity is or can be
non-ideological. Few papers would object to a journalist donating to
the Boy Scouts or joining the Catholic Church. But the former has an
official policy of discriminating against gay children; the latter has
views on reproductive rights far more restrictive than those of most
Americans. Should reporters be forbidden to support those groups? I'd
say not."
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."
Planet Journalism
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."
Rosenstiel said that even opinion journalists, such as columnists and
arts critics, should not make donations, because there's a difference
between having opinions and being captive of a particular party or
faction. Major newspapers, he said, have mostly gotten the message.
You won't find any journalists in the recent FEC records from The
Washington Post, where executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. is so
famously politically agnostic that he doesn't vote, though he doesn't
prohibit his reporters from doing so. At least, you'll find no Post
journalists other than Stephen Hunter, the Pulitzer Prize-winning film
critic, who gave to the Republican Party in 2004. (The film critic at
The New York Times, Manohla Dargis, gave to Democrats when she was at
the L.A. Times. She finds Michael Moore's new film "persuasive.")
Is it legal for companies to restrict donations? After all, the U.S.
Supreme Court has classified campaign contributions as a form of
speech. In the best-known case, in a state court, the News Tribune
newspaper in Tacoma, Wash., reassigned to the night copy desk its
education reporter, socialist and gay-rights activist Sandy Nelson,
after she helped launch a ballot initiative for a nondiscrimination
ordinance. In its 1997 decision (Nelson v. McClatchy Newspapers), the
Washington state Supreme Court said the newspaper can enforce
conflict-of-interest codes to preserve "the appearance of
objectivity." The reporter's right to free speech, the court wrote,
was trumped by the newspaper's right to freedom of the press, to
control its own news operations.
The San Francisco Chronicle transferred the editor who handled letters
to the editor, William Pates, after his donations to Kerry were
disclosed by a Web site in 2004. The Newspaper Guild objected, and
after a time on the sports copy desk, he's back in charge of deciding
which letters get published.
Networks of influence
Fox News Channel is alone among the four major TV networks in placing
no restrictions on campaign contributions. But there were surprises in
the records for those who think everyone at Fox is a Republican.
Researcher Codie Brooks, of Brit Hume's "Special Report," gave $2,600
last year to the Senate campaign of Harold Ford Jr., the Memphis
Democrat. She said she raised much of the money from friends. "A lot
of Fox employees have contributed to Democratic candidates," she said.
"I know I'm not the only one."
At the Fox station in Washington, WTTG, anchor Laura Evans gave $500
in August to Democrat John Sarbanes, who was elected to the House from
suburban Maryland. She initially told MSNBC.com that the donation was
made by her husband, lobbyist Mike Manatos.
But the records show that her husband had already given the legal
limit to Sarbanes. When asked about those records in a follow-up
interview, she said, "I hadn't talked to my husband. He reminded me
that he had actually talked to me about this, because he had maxed
out, could we write a check in my name. I said, sure. Now I remember
having this conversation. It's within Fox policy, it was OK for me to
do it."
Evans has also taken stands in line with Rep. Sarbanes' votes opposing
President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq. On her blog on WTTG's Web
site, she commented recently on the congressional debate: "Everyone's
trying to save face here ... all the while people are dying. Didn't
voters in November speak loud and clear, saying they're tired of the
fighting and want an end in sight?"
At ABC News, "Primetime" correspondent Mary Fulginiti gave $500 this
February to Bill Richardson, a Democratic presidential candidate. The
legal correspondent had been a white-collar defense attorney until she
joined ABC in November. She said the donation "is not a reflection of
my political views," although she had given regularly to Hillary
Clinton, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry. "Look, I've made a mistake here,"
she said. "I'm a legal analyst — this is all new to me. I have been
politically active in the past. This is when I was just starting out
at ABC. I was still thinking as a lawyer."
At NBC News, which says donations require approval of the senior
editor, "Dateline" correspondent Victoria Corderi gave $250 in 2005 to
Democratic Senate candidate Josh Rales in Maryland. "In a word,
yikes!" she said when asked about the donation. Her husband wrote the
check, she explained, when a friend threw a fundraising party. "I'd
not even thought to consider that since my name is on our checks that
I would appear in public records as a contributor."
MSNBC TV host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican member of Congress
from Florida, gave to a Republican congressional candidate from Oregon
last year. In addition to anchoring an evening newscast, "Scarborough
Country," and a morning talk show on MSNBC, he provides political
commentary for MSNBC, CNBC and NBC's "Today Show."
At CBS News, "Sunday Morning" correspondent Serena Altschul gave
$5,000 to the Democratic Party in 2004. And producer Edward Forgotson
gave $1,000 to Patrick Kennedy last June, two weeks after the Rhode
Island congressman pleaded guilty to driving under the influence.
Until September, the CBS policy discouraged, but allowed,
contributions; now it forbids them, a spokeswoman said.
An ABC anchor in Wichita, Susan Peters, gave $600 to America Coming
Together. At the CBS station in Memphis, anchor Markova Reed gave to a
Democratic House candidate. And in Boston, host and former anchor Liz
Walker gave $4,000 to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats; the station
said this was allowed, because at the time she was hosting a public
affairs show. Now that she's back doing news segments, she can't donate.
At the Fox TV station in Omaha, reporter Calvert Collins learned that
there's no such thing as a private, personal donation. And there's no
such thing as a personal page on Facebook, either.
`Vote for him Tuesday, Nov. 7!'
Collins, a 23-year-old reporter for Fox station KPTM in Omaha, said
that her father actually wrote the check for $500 to Jim Esch, the
Democrat who lost a House race last fall.
"I had told my dad that I was friends with this man. He said, 'Would
you like me to make a donation?' I said, 'That's up to you, but don't
do it in my name.'"
The reporter also posted a photo of herself with Esch on her Facebook
page, with the note, "Vote for him Tuesday, Nov. 7!" After the photo
was posted on a Nebraska political blog, she apologized but explained
that "it is part of my job to build rapport with candidates and
incumbents during election season."
"I foolishly wrote, in jest, to vote for him, and forgot completely
that that was on there," Collins told MSNBC.com. "When my boss heard
about it, I immediately removed it."
"In a way, I'm glad this happened to me at age 23, and not 33,"
Collins said, "and I will learn from it."
`I would never qualify what we do as journalism'
If you don't trust the mainstream media, perhaps you prefer to get
your news from, say, MTV.
The concept of staying off the field of battle was a completely new
one to MTV's "Choose or Lose" presidential campaign correspondent in
2000 and 2004. Gideon Yago, whose first appearance on MTV was on the
game show "Idiot Savants," gave $200 to Wesley Clark's 2004
presidential campaign, $500 to the Democratic Party, and $500 to
America Coming Together. MTV advertised his reports as unbiased.
"I don't understand. Things that I do as a private citizen?" Yago
asked. " I mean, what the f---, man?"
Yago said he always tried to be fair. "We're not a traditional news
network in the sense of NBC or Fox or CBS," he said. "I would never
qualify what we do as journalism. But we're sensitive about equal time
or fairness."
He said his reporting in Iraq for MTV prompted him to give $250 to
VoteVets, which is running ads criticizing President Bush's handling
of Iraq. "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," Yago said. "I was
never told by my boss or anyone that we couldn't give to a campaign."
`People I don't like'
Although donations are banned for journalists at Dow Jones — if they
would be considered newsworthy, the policy says — several staffers at
The Wall Street Journal made donations. Senior special writer Henny
Sender said she was just back from Asia and didn't know the Journal's
rules when she gave $300 to Kerry in 2004. The editor of the Weekend
Journal, Eben Shapiro, gave $1,000 to Democratic Victory 2004. He said
the donation was actually the purchase of art at a fundraiser, and
when he was reminded of the paper's policy, he got a refund. Credit
markets editor Billy Mallard at Dow Jones Newswires gave $200 to
MoveOn.org in October and said he "thought MoveOn.org was OK because
it wasn't the Republican Party or Democratic Party." Once MSNBC.com
called, Mallard said, he realized that it was a partisan group and
asked for a refund.
The tally of donors doesn't include a group that gave money to defeat
President Bush by paying to hear the Boss. In 2004, Bruce Springsteen
and other musicians raised money for MoveOn.org and America Coming
Together at a series of 34 concerts billed as "Vote for Change." The
ticket buyers included an MSNBC.com producer and more than 20 other
journalists. Although all of the purchase price went to the effort to
defeat Bush that fall, the intent may have been entirely musical, so
those donors are not on our list unless they made other contributions.
One of the Springsteen fans appears to be a blogging editor at Dow
Jones, Samuel J. Favate Jr., who gave $1,036 to America Coming
Together in 2004. He didn't return phone calls. Favate rewrites press
releases for Dow Jones Newswires in New Jersey, which may explain his
views that corporate America is "really in charge." On his personal
blog, Favate rails against the Iraq war, for gun control and for a tax
audit of Christian psychologist James Dobson. After MSNBC.com left him
a message asking about the blog and his donation, Favate's name
disappeared from the blog. A previous blog listed Favate's "people I
don't like," starting with George Bush. ("You can be sure that I will
be adding to this list from time to time, so try not to piss me off.")
That blog went dark the day after MSNBC.com called.
Dow Jones spokesman Howard Hoffman said it doesn't monitor employee
blogs, "and we're not overly concerned about what Sam did or didn't do
on his blog exercising his free-speech rights."
On the job at Newsday, which forbids donations, section designer and
artist Rita Hall tried to slip an anti-Bush line into a personal
column she wrote. Hall gave $210 to Hillary Clinton in March 2006.
"Dig deeper," she said. "I gave $2,000 to Kerry. I'm not allowed to do
this. I know it's against the rules. I'll probably get fired. They're
looking for any excuse to cut staff here."
Hall said she wrote a column about her son, who won the "Top Chef"
competition on the Bravo network. "In passing I mentioned that I was
interested in finding people who hated Bush as much as I did. They
took that out. My view is: You're still going to have an opinion
whether you admit to it or not. If you don't admit to it, you're being
dishonest. Let's be transparent."
Hall didn't disclose her donations to her editors — or the readers of
Newsday.
The new bumper sticker
Several of the journalists reasoned that their activism is acceptable
precisely because the public would not know — unless they go to the
trouble to search the FEC records.
"A lot of us want to be politically active. But marching in a war
protest isn't an option, being a recognizable person, so we give with
our checkbook," said Alix Kendall, the morning anchor for Fox station
KMSP in Minneapolis, who gave $250 in September to the Midwest Values
PAC, which passed the money on to Democratic candidates. "I don't
think that working for a news organization I give up my rights. I
interview plenty of people that I don't agree with, but I also ask
questions to get the other side."
Senior editors, who every day are accused of a bias one way or
another, may be more sensitive to appearances. Several editors said
they are thinking of tightening their policies, lest they keep handing
ammunition to critics.
At the Muskegon Chronicle, a daily newspaper in Michigan, reporter
Terry Judd gave $1,900 to the Democratic National Committee in six
contributions from 2004 through 2006; and $2,000 to Kerry in March
2004. "You caught me," Judd said. "I guess I was just doing it on the
side."
His editors said they're not sure there is an "on the side."
"This information makes us want to think farther and more deeply about
what we encourage and discourage in reporters," said the metropolitan
editor, John Stephenson. "We have always historically said, you guys
can have any political beliefs you want. Just don't wear your hearts
on your sleeve or your bumper.
"Truthfully, this sort of thing may be the new bumper."