I dunno if this is a Swampland or a Tuned In topic, but I’ll take it: MSNBC (link via Romenesko) just posted an extensive study of reporters–TV, radio and print–who have contributed to political campaigns, with or without the blessing of their company policies. (The donations are a matter of public record.) You probably won’t be surprised to learn that most of the donations were to Democrats, or that the fewer Republican donations tended to come from the likes of Forbes magazine and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough. (See the full list here.)
Should reporters donate? The easy answer is no, because we need to hang on to every dime we can. But seriously, I’ve never seen the point of creating the illusion of impartiality. A reporter who covers public affairs is going to have opinions about those public issues unless he or she is a moron. As a private citizen, he or she should have every right to be politically active. You can ban those acts, but that’s just window dressing; you can’t ban the beliefs that underlie them.
What should not be allowed is for a news reporter to make his or her work into a political donation. Reporters (as opposed to opinion writers) need to cover stories without regard to whose side the truth will benefit, and even opinion columnists and pundits have an obligation to be intellectually fair. Sure, there’s the issue of “the appearance of bias,” but a big problem with the media nowadays is that we’re overly concerned with the appearance, as opposed to the actuality, of everything. Produce actual fair, worthwhile news and you can let the appearances take care of themselves.
Having said that, I haven’t myself made any political donations since I’ve been with Time, as far as I remember, owing mostly to being a cheap bastard. (Time’s policy allows political donations, although according to MSNBC’s list, only one staffer has taken advantage of that, so I’m guessing most of my co-workers are as tightfisted as I am.) Scratch that: I did attend a fundraiser for John Kerry in 2004, which I believe Mrs. Tuned In paid for, that consisted of a $20-a-ticket concert in a friend’s backyard by children’s folk-rock musician Dan Zanes. There is probably no more yuppie-Brooklyn phenomenon than a Toddlers Against Bush concert.
Of course, I’m an opinion writer to begin with, and I don’t think I’m especially coy about my political leanings, which are more or less on the libertarian side of liberal. (I once took an online test that graphs your political beliefs compared with historical figures; it placed me directly between Thomas Jefferson and the Unabomber. You can find a similar test here.)
For news reporters it’s a tougher balancing act, but I don’t think we do the audience any favors by pretending the balancing act doesn’t exist. Given most journalists’ salaries, our work is more valuable than our paystubs, and how fairly we write our stories is in the end far more important than whether (or to whom) we write checks.