22/06: Shocker: Media Bias as Revealed in Campaign Contributions
Category: Media and Politics
Posted by: A Waco Farmer
A few notes on this story from yesterday, which has been worked hard on the blogosphere and talk radio:
The MSNBC headline: "Journalists dole out cash to politicians (quietly);
News organizations diverge on handling of political activism by staff."
The text of the article here.
My quick reactions:
1. A misleading lead. Although the lead offers one CNN reporter who contributed $500.00 to John Kerry in 2004 and one Forbes editor who gave $2000.00 to Republicans and one more Dow Jones editor who gives money to MoveOn.org, we do not learn that Democratic giving outnumbers Republican 125 to 17 until the last sentence of the third graph. The lead and headline imply a sense of proportionality that the facts do not bear out.
2. Later on we learn that many of the great liberal-leaning news orgs (NYT and CBS, for example) absolutely ban political contributions. An obvious inference (although it is never stated explicitly): even with the liberals trying to tamp down the glaring disparity in political giving, THE DEMS STILL OUTNUMBER THE REPUBS 125 to 17.
3. Why have liberal-leaning news orgs soured on political giving? Not because there is anything wrong with supporting the candidates you really want to win. No. It is a matter of perception.
Quoting the article:
"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. Finally, it became easier for the blogging public to look up the donors."
Why? They've been caught.
And this sublimely revealing response from the Times (within the story):
"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."
The Times doesn't want to feed the false impression that a huge majority of their objective reporters are partisans. Priceless.
4. PR over substance. The simple answer for the knotty public relations problem confronting left-leaning news orgs seems to be concealing their biases by outlawing personal contributions to candidates. However, with all due respect to the Orwellian logic of the New York Times, this self-imposed ban will in no way reduce the prevalence of liberal reporters spinning the facts through the prism of their core beliefs and political agendas; it will merely give us one less tool with which to hold them up to critical evaluation.
5. After a decade of close scrutiny, I am surprised the liberal-leaning media did not shut down this embarrassing window into their inner workings long ago. I guess they just could not help themselves.
Note: Thanks to Tocqueville for pointing me to this story early on yesterday morning. My delay in weighing-in is my own fault. And, frankly, I have not followed all the blogging and commentary on this, but I can imagine that many observers have had similar reactions.
Previous Bosque Boys conversations concerning politics and media:
What Liberal Bias? (here)
and
The Genius and Humor of Fair and Balanced (I'll opine, you decide) (here).
The MSNBC headline: "Journalists dole out cash to politicians (quietly);
News organizations diverge on handling of political activism by staff."
The text of the article here.
My quick reactions:
1. A misleading lead. Although the lead offers one CNN reporter who contributed $500.00 to John Kerry in 2004 and one Forbes editor who gave $2000.00 to Republicans and one more Dow Jones editor who gives money to MoveOn.org, we do not learn that Democratic giving outnumbers Republican 125 to 17 until the last sentence of the third graph. The lead and headline imply a sense of proportionality that the facts do not bear out.
2. Later on we learn that many of the great liberal-leaning news orgs (NYT and CBS, for example) absolutely ban political contributions. An obvious inference (although it is never stated explicitly): even with the liberals trying to tamp down the glaring disparity in political giving, THE DEMS STILL OUTNUMBER THE REPUBS 125 to 17.
3. Why have liberal-leaning news orgs soured on political giving? Not because there is anything wrong with supporting the candidates you really want to win. No. It is a matter of perception.
Quoting the article:
"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. Finally, it became easier for the blogging public to look up the donors."
Why? They've been caught.
And this sublimely revealing response from the Times (within the story):
"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."
The Times doesn't want to feed the false impression that a huge majority of their objective reporters are partisans. Priceless.
4. PR over substance. The simple answer for the knotty public relations problem confronting left-leaning news orgs seems to be concealing their biases by outlawing personal contributions to candidates. However, with all due respect to the Orwellian logic of the New York Times, this self-imposed ban will in no way reduce the prevalence of liberal reporters spinning the facts through the prism of their core beliefs and political agendas; it will merely give us one less tool with which to hold them up to critical evaluation.
5. After a decade of close scrutiny, I am surprised the liberal-leaning media did not shut down this embarrassing window into their inner workings long ago. I guess they just could not help themselves.
Note: Thanks to Tocqueville for pointing me to this story early on yesterday morning. My delay in weighing-in is my own fault. And, frankly, I have not followed all the blogging and commentary on this, but I can imagine that many observers have had similar reactions.
Previous Bosque Boys conversations concerning politics and media:
What Liberal Bias? (here)
and
The Genius and Humor of Fair and Balanced (I'll opine, you decide) (here).
