More Inky “Glass Half Empty” Time

Last week, in response to the MSNBC story I cited here about journalists making campaign contributions, I wondered what the policy of The Philadelphia Inquirer was on this subject.

Well, the paper answered that question today in their own editorial on the subject (and the paper was in full harrumph, nanny-time-finger-shaking mode over the matter)…

Critics who claim a liberal bias in the "mainstream" media won't be surprised at the partisan divide among the campaign contributors: they overwhelmingly favored Democrats and liberal organizations.

The percentage of journalists who crossed this line is small, considering there are more than 50,000 newsroom employees working for daily newspapers alone in the United States.

Still, these findings are as troubling as the revelation that some among the "new" online media were paid by political candidates whom they were promoting. (Such financial arrangements often were not disclosed to the audience.)

…

...readers and viewers have no special reason to expect journalistic neutrality; the proof for them must be borne out in fair news coverage, day in and day out. The MSNBC investigation shows journalists must try harder to give audiences that assurance.

Don’t you love the innuendo of guilt here? Journalists who are allowed by their news organizations to exercise their rights as citizens are perceived by the Inky as “crossing a line,” presumably because they supported traditionally Democratic causes (and how funny is it for the Inky to point out “financial arrangements often not disclosed to an audience” when they perpetrate a monstrosity such as this?).

And to answer my original question about the Inky's policy, here is editor Bill Marimow…

"…newsroom policy "prohibits making contributions of money or time to political candidates. That's an ironclad rule."

Fair enough. But here once more is New Yorker editor David Remnick on this subject…

"Our writers are citizens, and they're free to do what they want to do," said (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."

That’s good enough for me.