{"id":480,"date":"2007-06-22T12:26:56","date_gmt":"2007-06-22T19:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=480"},"modified":"2007-06-22T12:26:56","modified_gmt":"2007-06-22T19:26:56","slug":"journalists-and-political-donations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=480","title":{"rendered":"Journalists And Political Donations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was going to write a piece on Bill Dedman&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/19113485\/\" target=\"_blank\">investigation<\/a>&#8221; for MSNBC of donations to politicians or political organizations, but journalism professor <a href=\"http:\/\/www.journalismprofessor.com\/2007\/06\/on-journalists-and-political-donations.html\" target=\"_blank\">Chris Day<\/a> did it for me. Thanks, Chris.<\/p>\n<p>The MSNBC article failed on so many journalistic grounds. It rested heavily on the notion that there was an overweighting of donations by liberal or progressive reporters as compared to conservatives. But Chris puts the matter into perspective:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dedman&#8217;s report violates one of the first rules about working with numbers in journalism: PROVIDE CONTEXT [&#8230;] Dedman notes that there are approximately 100,000 newsroom employees nationwide. By my calculations, then, the number of donors comes to 0.1% In other words, the headline could have been: <strong>99.9% of U.S. journalists do not donate to politicians.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>A lot of the people he &#8220;exposes&#8221; in this piece are ridiculously peripheral to the coverage of partisan politics &#8211; gardening editors, rock critics and the like.<\/li>\n<li>Dedman decided to exclude &#8220;executives&#8221; from his investigation, without offering a convincing rationale. Where are Roger Ailes? Rupert Murdoch?<\/li>\n<li>Dedman reports that of the 144 donors, 125 gave to Democrats, while &#8220;only&#8221; 17 gave to Republicans. (Two, like Exxon, gave to both parties.) But, I notice that most of the donations to Democrats are in chicken-shit amounts like $200 or $250, while one of the Republican donors gave $90,000. I suspect that the totals given to the two parties are not that far off.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is the kind of in-depth analysis that Dedman should have employed. Unfortunately, his version was released into the media wild and has been picked up by many other news organizations and even pretenders like Bill O&#8217;Reilly who led with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/story\/0,2933,286007,00.html\" target=\"_blank\">inflammatory and false<\/a> conclusion that liberals outnumber conservatives in the press by 9 to 1. It really doesn&#8217;t help to supply liars like O&#8217;Reilly with pseudo-news items like this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was going to write a piece on Bill Dedman&#8217;s &#8220;investigation&#8221; for MSNBC of donations to politicians or political organizations, but journalism professor Chris Day did it for me. Thanks, Chris. The MSNBC article failed on so many journalistic grounds. It rested heavily on the notion that there was an overweighting of donations by liberal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-propaganda"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-7K","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3137,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=3137","url_meta":{"origin":480,"position":0},"title":"Keith Olbermann Suspended For Acting Like Fox","author":"Mark NC","date":"11\/5\/2010","format":false,"excerpt":"MSNBC released this notice today regarding their primetime host, Keith Olbermann: \"Msnbc TV host Keith Olbermann was suspended indefinitely on Friday for making campaign donations to three Democratic congressional candidates, apparently in violation of NBC News ethics policy. \" Upon learning of Olbermann's contributions MSNBC took swift and decisive action\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3150,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=3150","url_meta":{"origin":480,"position":1},"title":"Rachel Maddow On Keith Olbermann: Here&#8217;s The Larger Point&#8230;","author":"Mark NC","date":"11\/6\/2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Keith Olbermann's suspension from MSNBC for making a couple of political donations without getting prior approval from the network bosses has set media tongues to wagging. However, the real story here is not what Olbermann did, but what other hosts and networks (i.e. Fox News) do regularly without shame or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4978,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=4978","url_meta":{"origin":480,"position":2},"title":"Is MSNBC Serious About Competing With Fox News?","author":"Mark NC","date":"7\/22\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"When Keith Olbermann abruptly departed from MSNBC the network's schedule was thrust into chaos. Lawrence O'Donnell was moved up two hours. Ed Schultz went from early evening to 10:00pm. Schultz's old slot was a menagerie that eventually settled on Cenk Uygur for nearly six months. All of this turmoil occurred\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":40634,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=40634","url_meta":{"origin":480,"position":3},"title":"Trump is Silent About a Real Domestic Terrorist&#8217;s Plot to Kill Democrats and Journalists","author":"Mark NC","date":"2\/20\/2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Early Wednesday morning Donald Trump posted another tweetstorm that ranted incoherently about the media being \"the enemy of the people\" and wishing for them to \"go bust,\" putting thousands of Americans out of work and leaving only State TV outlets like Fox News to provide their lies to the nation.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"Trump Charlotsville","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/charlotsville-march-trump.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/charlotsville-march-trump.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/charlotsville-march-trump.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":702,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=702","url_meta":{"origin":480,"position":4},"title":"Chris Wallace Is A Damn Fool","author":"Mark NC","date":"12\/11\/2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Chris Wallace, host of Fox News Sunday, is still smarting from the Democrats' refusal to submit themselves to the abuse that passes for debate on the Fox News Channel. Back in February, the Democratic Party pulled out of a debate that was scheduled to be broadcast by Fox News. It\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":30043,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=30043","url_meta":{"origin":480,"position":5},"title":"MSNBC&#8217;s Scarborough Has On-Air Mental Breakdown Over Liberal Media Myth","author":"Mark NC","date":"11\/2\/2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The resident Republican blowhard on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough, has staked out his post as the network's voice of rightist disinformation. He commands his three hour block of airtime like a junta leader, ordering the topics of discussion and interrupting his guests incessantly. This morning Scarborough appeared to have a severe\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"MSNBC Joe Scarborough","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/scarborough-conservative-anchor.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/scarborough-conservative-anchor.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/scarborough-conservative-anchor.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}