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January 20, 2004 POLITICS IN THE NEWSROOM....On Sunday Howard Kurtz wrote an article for the Washington Post with this lead:
On Monday, Slate's Jack Shafer says Kurtz blew it: the real story is that most of the contributions were to Democrats. Today, Atrios says they both blew it: Kurtz's list isn't exhaustive, and the examples he chooses for his story are thus cherry picked from an already cherry picked list. It doesn't mean a thing, and both Kurtz and Shafer are hacks. Can I play too? As near as I can tell, the real story is that there's no story at all. Ponder this paragraph from Kurtz's story if you will:
Since Kurtz identified 100 contributors over five years, that means there were about 20 contributors per year from 12 large news organizations. That's about one or two per year from organizations that employ hundreds of people. In other words, nada. And even then, the worst he could come up with were reporters who cover politics "occasionally or indirectly." Presumably Kurtz picked the best examples he could find from his list of 100, and they included such gems as sportswriters, food writers, arts writers, consumer reporters, travel writers, opinion writers, a couple of people who donated to their brothers, and spouses who mistakenly contributed under the wrong name. Once you work through all that, there's really not much left. And how does it all add up? Of the contributions Kurtz specifically mentions in his article, $43,050 went to Republicans and $24,083 went to Democrats. It may well be true that a majority of news reporters are Democrats or Democratic leaners, but the actual evidence here is that media employees contribute virtually nothing to political campaigns, and the remaining wisp of a secondary story is that among the few who do, donations to Republicans are nearly twice the donations to Democrats. That's a pretty meager hook for a front page story. Shafer got it wrong: we didn't need rewrite for this article. We needed a sharper spike. POSTSCRIPT: It's worth adding that the headline for Kurtz's article may be one of the worst ever: "Journalists Not Loath to Donate To Politicians." Aside from just being a plain lousy headline, the evidence of the story is that journalists hardly ever contribute at all. But you can hardly blame the headline writer for not figuring that out from Kurtz's copy. Posted by Kevin Drum at January 20, 2004 10:51 AM | TrackBackComments
What we really need is some editors with some common sense and someone else to write Howie's column. He's a complete hack. Posted by: four legs good at January 20, 2004 10:56 AM | PERMALINK"Not counting double-donor Wright, just nine of the media employees earning a Kurtz reprimand gave to Republicans. Of those nine, four are company executives, one an editorial writer (the Wall Street Journal's Melanie Kirkpatrick), and four are news-side journalists, including a food writer at the Los Angeles Times. Of the 19 Democratic donors, only one hails from management, one works as a food writer, and one as an opinion journalist (CNN's Paul Begala). The rest cover business, sports, politics, the arts, medicine, legal issues, technology, travel, publishing, etc." For some reason, Jack Shafer seems to think that partisan executives are A-OK while partisan sports, arts, medicine, travel, and publishing reporters are a problem? It's not clear from this quote really, but the thrust of the article is that the Democratic donations mentioned are much more worrisome. Posted by: Anno-nymous at January 20, 2004 11:04 AM | PERMALINKWhat's more, my guess is that Shafer's 28 are all there are. The others that Kurtz doesn't mention specifically are probably business side or production folks. So worst case, you've got maybe 20 genuine newsroom donations over the course of five years. This is a story? Posted by: Kevin Drum at January 20, 2004 11:08 AM | PERMALINKWhy would the hoors pay their masters? Controlling their press monopoly is worth more than any measly donation. Posted by: Troy at January 20, 2004 11:09 AM | PERMALINKWhat's the big deal? The contributions from journalists that bother me are the in kind contributions, not the ones that show up in FEC reports. And they're protected by the 1st amendment. Posted by: Brett Bellmore at January 20, 2004 11:26 AM | PERMALINKHey man, get off of my cloud! Posted by: Bob Somerby's Doppleganger at January 20, 2004 11:31 AM | PERMALINKNo, it's "Hey! You! Get off of my cloud!". Or else it's "Hey man, oh leave me alone!" One or the other. I hate it when people get the words wrong! "And they're protected by the 1st amendment." I doubt it. Just read the Supreme Court's opinion on McCain-Feingold. Anyway, it seems to me that BOTH Kurtz AND Kevin are overstating their cases. The inherent limitations at looking at the FEC data makes any "survey" done this way automatically suspect. For one thing, the FEC data only tracks $200+ donations. And for another, sorting by employer is flawed since many people don't put down their employer or put it down differently than might show up at first glance. Kevin tried the same trick as Kurtz did a couple of weeks ago, when he stated that FEC data showed that university professors are not overwhelmingly leftwing. The flaws inherent in his argument then are similarly inherent to Kevin's and Kurtz's argument now. Posted by: Al at January 20, 2004 11:43 AM | PERMALINKI said they were protected by the 1st Amendment, not the Supreme court. I'm rather more of a 1st Amendment absolutist than anyone on that court is. ;) Posted by: Brett Bellmore at January 20, 2004 11:47 AM | PERMALINKFrankly I don't see a problem with donations. Whether or not Rush Limbaugh gives money to the Republicans, he's biased and so is his reporting. The real question is whether main stream reporting tends to be biased toward a particular party or point of view. I agree with Kevin that a survey of political donations is a poor way to try to answer this question. Posted by: David at January 20, 2004 11:50 AM | PERMALINKKevin tried the same trick Zzzzzzz.... Posted by: Demetrios at January 20, 2004 11:56 AM | PERMALINKI was watching the forum on CSPAN the other night with Carlson, Ingraham, Franken and Alterman and there has always been something puzzling to me. When the right say that most reporters are liberal the immediate make the leap that their reporting will be liberal. Yet I have never heard such an accusation from them about reporters that are conservative. Why do they think conservatives can be objective and liberals cannot? Posted by: Jon at January 20, 2004 11:59 AM | PERMALINKNo, it's "Hey! You! Get off of my cloud!". Or else it's "Hey man, oh leave me alone!" One or the other. Hello? I'm Bob Somerby's Doppleganger, not Rick Jagger's. ;) Posted by: Bob Somerby's Doppleganger at January 20, 2004 12:02 PM | PERMALINKdo you ever work, al? or sleep? This is my job. We can't all be oh so high and mighty lib-commie bloggers, now can we? Posted by: Al at January 20, 2004 12:02 PM | PERMALINKWell, the real important story is that the Scott Peterson trial was just moved to San Mateo County, which means our pampered punditocracy can now purvey their puerile pontifications from within minutes of a major international airport, not to mention a few decent hotels and eateries. No more slumming in Modesto for gawdsake! Posted by: TomF at January 20, 2004 12:09 PM | PERMALINKOh great, my stalker is back. Stalker, you are supposed to avoid caps, so folks can tell us apart. In answer to your question: I'm bored - Kevin's posts are MUCH more interesting than the things on my to-do list. All I was trying to say is that Kevin should have stuck to his original thought: "there's no story at all". In that, he's correct. His later attempt to actually use the FEC data is futile. Posted by: Al at January 20, 2004 12:16 PM | PERMALINKFEC data is futile Thank goodness! The world remains safe for the propagation of your precious canards. Posted by: Demetrios at January 20, 2004 12:44 PM | PERMALINKDespite the fact that the story has been debunked it will still be held up as "proof" that "The Media" is "liberally biased" by all the conservative bloggers. Posted by: Dr. Morpheus at January 20, 2004 01:41 PM | PERMALINKWithout wading into the (non)issue itself, ...I just have to point out what a stinking turd that Shafer article is! Talk about "phoning it in." Are there no editors over at Slate any more? (Uh, besides Shafer, editor at large.) He seems to be saying that Kurtz just isn't lazy enough: he was too busy reporting hum-drum facts, when he could have been spinning a pleasing yarn about the old chestnut the "liberal media." Regurgitate some conventional wisdom, dump the stuff that doesn't fit the standard script (more $$$ to Republicans? Nah, ambiguity don't sell papers!), call the usual suspects for comment, and presto, you're done by noon. I'm really wondering what's going on over at Slate, what with that weird pseudo-parody on Clark's "misstatements" a week or two ago, and now this. Are they all just throwing inside jokes at each other, or is Slate going down the journalistic tube? Posted by: David H at January 20, 2004 02:22 PM | PERMALINKI'd like to give props to Kevin for mentioning, once again, that
headlines are almost always written by different people than the
articles. All too often I've seen people get disproportionately upset at
the writer of a bad article because of its even worse headline. We needed a sharper spike...and Howie should have been made to sit on it. Posted by: stein at January 20, 2004 02:35 PM | PERMALINKHey that was unique, "Rush" and "reporting" in the same sentence." i'm an editor / reporter. I have never donated to ewirther party, though I do lean one way over the other. This story is the lamest thing ever. And you say, the front page? ? ?. Maybe an E & P story, buried on page 59 in he classifieds. Posted by: Andrew | BYTE BACK at January 20, 2004 03:30 PM | PERMALINKHowie donates to Howie. Hell, W donates to Howie too. Then Howie wipes it off his lips. Posted by: CallEmAsISeeEm at January 20, 2004 05:47 PM | PERMALINKI see this kind of "sampling error" in the media all the time. 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