Media Campaign Contributions

You may have heard the big liberal brouhaha about Fox News’ parent corporation giving one million dollars to the Republican Governors Association. Total outrage, right? Proof of right-wing bias at Fox, right? But then the outrage suddenly disappeared. In fact, the story vanished. Any guesses why? How about this. . .

When word hit the street that News Corp. had donated one million dollars to the RGA, everyone pounced. All the networks ran with the story, as did liberal bastions like the New York Times and every other liberal slag heap with journalistic pretensions. The Democrats pounced on this as well. Nathan Daschle, the executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, even called on Fox News to put a disclaimer on its coverage of gubernatorial campaigns.

Daschle, by the way, is the son of rich lobbyist and former Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who couldn’t get into the Obama Administration because he hadn’t paid his taxes and because he earned five million dollars from lobbying for health care groups. Despite this, Daschle eventually ended up being hired for behind the scenes work for the Democrats on the health care issue. And now his son is in the business. . . I guess the rotten apple doesn't roll far from the barrel.

In any event, this story didn’t last. Why? Because something went wrong on the way to Outrage Avenue. Indeed, the parade took a wrong turn and found itself on Hypocrite Street instead. See, it turns out that 88% of the contributions of the employees of ABC, CBS and NBC were made to the Democratic Party. Indeed 1,160 network employees -- executives, on-air personalities, producers, reporters, editors, etc. -- gave a total of $1,020,816 to Democratic campaigns in the 2008 election cycle. By comparison, only 193 of their employees gave to Republicans ($142,863)

Hypocritical Democratic journalists? Wow, I never saw that one coming!

Also, it turns out that News Corp. gives to both parties.

So there's no story after all? Actually, there is, but it's not one they want to talk about. The real scandal here is that ANY journalist would donate to either political party. They call themselves the Fourth Estate and they claim a nearly official role as the watchdog of our government. They even have special protections under the law to allow them to perform that role, i.e. protections against slander and liable laws and the right to protect their sources. Yet, if they truly are to hold such a role, then they should be non-partisan. That means no political contributions. . . no journalists married to politicians or campaign directors for politicians (and recusals if you are). . . and no more revolving door where journalists move back and forth between the profession and Democratic campaigns and administrations.

The real story here is the scandal of the entire profession having interwoven itself with the political establishment.

And if they won’t unweave themselves, then maybe Daschle actually has a good idea (a first for his family). Maybe journalists should be required to put up a disclaimer that identifies how much money they, their producer, their writers, their editors, and anyone else who worked on the story gave to each side any time they do a political story. Journalists pushed to get such rules forced on corporations, and corporations don’t even claim to be unbiased. So if this is good for corporations, then I would say it’s more than good for journalist. In fact, I would call it necessary.

And that’s the way it is this August 30, 2010.