Money Talks

Got this article forwarded to me by a friend. Despite their protestations to the contrary, their financial contributions to liberal candidates puts the lie to media's claims that they have no liberal bias.

"[W]e need a journalism ethicist. How about Orville Schell? He favorably reviewed Eric Alterman's book "What Liberal Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News." And this Feb. 9, while he was still dean of the journalism school at the University of California, Berkeley, Schell gave $1,000 to Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Or we could ask Randy Cohen, who writes the syndicated column "The Ethicist" for The New York Times. The former comedy writer gave $585 to MoveOn.org in 2004 when it was organizing get-out-the-vote efforts to defeat Bush. Cohen said he understands the Times policy and won't make donations again, but he had thought of MoveOn.org as no more out of bounds than the Boy Scouts.

"We admire those colleagues who participate in their communities — help out at the local school, work with Little League, donate to charity," Cohen said in an e-mail. "But no such activity is or can be non-ideological. Few papers would object to a journalist donating to the Boy Scouts or joining the Catholic Church. But the former has an official policy of discriminating against gay children; the latter has views on reproductive rights far more restrictive than those of most Americans. Should reporters be forbidden to support those groups? I’d say not."

Read the whole article here.