ON JOURNALISTS AND POLITICAL DONATIONS
GETTING IT WRONG ABOUT JOURNALISTS AND POLITICS
By Chris Daly
I was disappointed by Bill Dedman’s recent and seriously flawed exercise in expose on MSNBC, which ran under the headline:
Journalists give campaign cash
[Note the ambiguously unmodified noun “journalists” – Does that mean all journalists? Most? Many? Some? Who knows?]
Then the sub-head:
News organizations diverge on handling of political activism by staff
[Boy, do they!]
What followed is the disclosure that a total of 144 newsroom employees have donated to federal political candidates or to a political party or movement. This summary is fleshed out with plenty of names and dollar amounts.
It has all the makings of a good story, right?
Not really.
I see two serious problems, one due to sloppy methods and one due to faulty logic.
PART ONE
First, the technical/professional issue. Dedman’s report violates one of the first rules about working with numbers in journalism: PROVIDE CONTEXT.
The details are moderately interesting, but they really vanish into air when you read the (literal) fine print. In a sidebar box, in a smaller type size, 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:
99.9% of U.S. journalists do not donate to politicians
[Note: There is another issue lurking throughout this piece: mixing of apples and oranges. A lot of the people he “exposes” in this piece are ridiculously peripheral to the coverage of partisan politics – gardening editors, rock critics and the like. It’s pretty slim pickings. More outrageously, Dedman decided to exclude “executives” from his investigation, without offering a convincing rationale. Where are Roger Ailes? Rupert Murdoch? Heck, where’s the ultimate boss of MSNBC, Jeffrey Immelt? The decisions that these executives make about staffing levels, budgets, and such have far more impact on the practice of journalism than someone like John Lahr, the estimable theater critic at the New Yorker.]
Back to math class:
The piece also fails to provide context in another way. It is a general rule of thumb (one I was taught working “the desk” at the AP) that if a piece presents sub-totals, you should add them up and provide the total. In the whole lengthy piece, I cannot find a grand total for the donations. I would love to see a total for all the donations given by these journalists to Democrats. Dedman reports that of the 144 donors, 125 gave to Democrats, while “only” 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.
Thirdly, the piece fails to put the numbers in context by not toting up the Grand Total of all political donations during the relevant period. I have a sense that such a figure would absolutely overwhelm the puny amounts donated by journalists. I suspect it would be half a drop in a very big bucket. But I can’t tell from reading the piece.
PART TWO
The piece rests on a questionable premise: that all U.S. journalists embrace the notion that no journalist should ever make political donations. Without that premise, the whole “gotcha” theme of the piece is meaningless.
But, in fact, not all journalists or the institutions that employ them (or buy their work free-lance) accept this idea. Some do, some don’t.
[Notice that there is no one on the list from the AP, for example.]
As several of the “out-ed” journalists told Dedman, they operate on the philosophy that it is more honest to let readers know where they stand politically than it is to try to create an inevitably false image of complete neutrality. That is an old issue in American journalism, and it is one that has never reached a consensus. Indeed, the original premise of American journalism was one of overt partisanship and vigorous advocacy. (See chapters 1 and 2 of my book.)
Enough. Bill Dedman should really know better.
The piece is so flawed that, in the end, I ended up sympathizing with Gideon Yago of MTV, whose reaction was: “I don’t understand. Things I do as a private citizen? … I mean, what the f---, man?”
--30--
By Chris Daly
I was disappointed by Bill Dedman’s recent and seriously flawed exercise in expose on MSNBC, which ran under the headline:
Journalists give campaign cash
[Note the ambiguously unmodified noun “journalists” – Does that mean all journalists? Most? Many? Some? Who knows?]
Then the sub-head:
News organizations diverge on handling of political activism by staff
[Boy, do they!]
What followed is the disclosure that a total of 144 newsroom employees have donated to federal political candidates or to a political party or movement. This summary is fleshed out with plenty of names and dollar amounts.
It has all the makings of a good story, right?
Not really.
I see two serious problems, one due to sloppy methods and one due to faulty logic.
PART ONE
First, the technical/professional issue. Dedman’s report violates one of the first rules about working with numbers in journalism: PROVIDE CONTEXT.
The details are moderately interesting, but they really vanish into air when you read the (literal) fine print. In a sidebar box, in a smaller type size, 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:
99.9% of U.S. journalists do not donate to politicians
[Note: There is another issue lurking throughout this piece: mixing of apples and oranges. A lot of the people he “exposes” in this piece are ridiculously peripheral to the coverage of partisan politics – gardening editors, rock critics and the like. It’s pretty slim pickings. More outrageously, Dedman decided to exclude “executives” from his investigation, without offering a convincing rationale. Where are Roger Ailes? Rupert Murdoch? Heck, where’s the ultimate boss of MSNBC, Jeffrey Immelt? The decisions that these executives make about staffing levels, budgets, and such have far more impact on the practice of journalism than someone like John Lahr, the estimable theater critic at the New Yorker.]
Back to math class:
The piece also fails to provide context in another way. It is a general rule of thumb (one I was taught working “the desk” at the AP) that if a piece presents sub-totals, you should add them up and provide the total. In the whole lengthy piece, I cannot find a grand total for the donations. I would love to see a total for all the donations given by these journalists to Democrats. Dedman reports that of the 144 donors, 125 gave to Democrats, while “only” 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.
Thirdly, the piece fails to put the numbers in context by not toting up the Grand Total of all political donations during the relevant period. I have a sense that such a figure would absolutely overwhelm the puny amounts donated by journalists. I suspect it would be half a drop in a very big bucket. But I can’t tell from reading the piece.
PART TWO
The piece rests on a questionable premise: that all U.S. journalists embrace the notion that no journalist should ever make political donations. Without that premise, the whole “gotcha” theme of the piece is meaningless.
But, in fact, not all journalists or the institutions that employ them (or buy their work free-lance) accept this idea. Some do, some don’t.
[Notice that there is no one on the list from the AP, for example.]
As several of the “out-ed” journalists told Dedman, they operate on the philosophy that it is more honest to let readers know where they stand politically than it is to try to create an inevitably false image of complete neutrality. That is an old issue in American journalism, and it is one that has never reached a consensus. Indeed, the original premise of American journalism was one of overt partisanship and vigorous advocacy. (See chapters 1 and 2 of my book.)
Enough. Bill Dedman should really know better.
The piece is so flawed that, in the end, I ended up sympathizing with Gideon Yago of MTV, whose reaction was: “I don’t understand. Things I do as a private citizen? … I mean, what the f---, man?”
--30--
posted by Chris Daly at 12:19 PM
30 Comments:
Why not, then, say, 99.9 percent of people did not kill someone today?
Your own logic is somewhat fuzzy and I suspect your post is a kneejerk reaction to the piece, which gives the context you're looking for and actually does talk about how the people are peripheral to the process, etc.
I don't think the story was well executed - it did to journalists what some would argue journalists do to others every day: Takes the most salient, most newsy point, shoves it up top and then explains the rest below.
I do think, though, that the piece gives a lot more explanation than I would have expected coming into it. What the piece lacks is historical context. It means nothing that 144 out of 100K journalists gave money; how is that different from previous years? What has changed in our system?
J prof writes:
I suspect that the totals given to the two parties are not that far off.
Well -- if this is what "j prof" considers precise reporting, his column isn't worth much
Dedman never investigated 100,000 journalists and he made that clear. That's a total of all newsroom staff nationwide.
He only looked into 1/7th of all newspapers, for example. He also did not look into state or local campaigns, and noted than donations under $200 are often not recorded.
Your proposed headline is thus wildly inaccurate.
You are also factually wrong when you say the 100,000 figure was in the sidebar. It's in the mainbar, in regular-sized type.
The investigation goes way beyond "rock critics" and "gardening editors" to, for example, the New Yorker writers covering Iraq and political figures.
You may not think it news that "journalists" at some of this nation's leading magazines and newspapers are departing from basic ethical principles, but many people do.
In fact, a whole helluva lot of people do, both inside and outside the industry, and we'd prefer MSNBC continue to provide this sort of useful information, even if Professor Chris Daly shrugs his shoulders.
Chris,
First of all, the context is there.
As we said, "The final list represents a tiny percentage of the working journalists in the nation. Daily newspapers alone employ about 60,000 full-time journalists. Approximately 30,000 work in television news jobs and 10,000 in radio news."
So you know the context because we provided it, but then you throw that context back at us to say, see, look what you're hiding?
Second, your math is off if you then calculate, as you do, that 99.9 percent of journalists don't contribute. You know the numerator -- how many we found -- but you don't know the denominator -- how many journalists could have been found.
As we said in the article, "Campaigns are spotty about reporting the occupation and employer of donors. The law requires only that campaigns make a good-faith effort to request the information from donors."
And this: "Smaller companies were not checked; for example, we checked only the company names of the 200 largest newspapers, out of more than 1,400 dailies in the nation."
Finally, you suggest that we add up the dollar amounts. Is that really the point? Does the amount of money that the journalist gives to the candidate really matter? Would you say that $1,000 an ethical violation, but $250 is not?
Bill Dedman
bill.dedman@msnbc.com
You are assuming that if a donation is not on the FEC website, there was no donation.
How wrong can you be?
First, I would love to know where other than the thin blue sky the number 100,000 journalists came from.
Second, donations to federal candidates are only reported if they break the $200 threshold. Meaning, a person can give say $150 and not be listed in the FEC records. THOUSANDS of reporters could have given to Federal candidates and we'd never know it. It is you that is making the unwarranted and baseless assumption that if there is no FEC record, there was no donation.
Third, it is highly probable that there are MORE journalists who contributed to Federal candidates above the $200 threshold. Read the methodology section of the survey: he searched for obvious words in the occupation (such as "reporter" or "anchor") or in the employer section under the name of the top 200 newspapers and major nes magazines.
That leaves a) almost all local newspapers b) all local TV networks c) all local radio news d) many news magazines. Big gaping hole there.
Finally, there is the matter of contribution to STATE candidates. These would never, ever show up in the FEC search and, sadly, most states are unable to search-by-contributor. If they are capable, again as with the FEC, they tend to have cut off points; donations by one person up to $XXX do not have to be itemized by the campaign and reported individually but can be lumped together.
To reiterate: simply because there is no FEC record of a particular person donating does NOT mean the person never donated to a political candidate. Moreover, the survey such as it was was by no means all inclusive and failed to search for either State candidate contributions or the donations of reporters and other news media in local or smaller market publications/airwaves/radiowaves.
This is not to say the report and survey are not flawed; they may very well be. Only that you have not identified or rather mis-identified "flaws" that simply do not exist.
Some of these points are well taken. But, I remain skeptical.
First, it seems to me that the nub of the story remains, in qualitative terms, this: a fairly small number of people give fairly small amounts of money.
Second, many people do not buy the premise that journalists must be non-partisan.
All of the previous comments critique the quantitative measures and figures that Prof Daly used in his column. The criticisms are generally that Chris's numbers might be slightly off or his interpretation of the original data is wrong. Two things I would have to say in response: 1)This is a blog post and not an investigative article. While i am not sure Mr. Daly (or the blogging community) would agree with me on this point, i believe that blog posts are generally qualitative opinion pieces, commenting on the news as reported (as this does) rather than thoroughly researched and edited original pieces. For that reason I think that readers should adress and critique the qualitative argument before the quantitative.
My second point echoes what Chris just said in response: that the bulk of his argument, that only a small number of journalists appear to donate, and should we even care if they do, remains intact and untouched.
I'm interested to see/ hear how Fox News decides to handle this news. Links?
Will
P.S. Gideon Yago as the closing quote? I think it's time to take the remote out of your kids' hands.
Chris, you're ignoring a salient counterpoint the story makes in regards to your disagreement with the non-partisan premise. The story notes that none of those journalists who donated ever disclosed that in their political stories. That's a pretty damning finding, even if it involves only a handful of political reporters.
I'm not certain how many people "do not buy the premise that journalists must be non-partisan," but there are at least 144 of them, and I'm glad Dedman told me their names.
If you have no probem with journalists being partisan, not disclosing their partisan donations, and writing for ostensibly non-partisan publications, _don't read the MSNBC story_ on this topic, by all means.
But don't light after MSNBC for publishing it, calling it "gotcha" and "meaningless" journalism," saying ""Bill Dedman should know better" and, worst of all, calling him "sloppy" when you don't have the facts to back up this criticism of his work.
Many of us care, many have a different vision of journalism, and different expectations of journalists.
--Ryan Tate (Blogger won't show my profile no matter what I do)
--
First, it seems to me that the nub of the story remains, in qualitative terms, this: a fairly small number of people give fairly small amounts of money.
Again, this was at best a superficial survey, one that did not as I noted include hundreds and hundreds of newspapers, magazines, local TV news, local radio news, etc.
The reason it appears a "small number of people gave" is because Mr. Dedmen looked for a small group of names. Only 200 out of 1,400 dailies? In order to get a "complete" assessment just of the 1,400 dailies (I hereby define "complete" as a survey at a 95% confidence level, with a 3% confidence interval) 606 of the dailys would have to be randomly selected AND the names of the reporters obtained AND THE NAMES (not the employer because a noted, not everyone puts their employer) run against BOTH the FEC and all STATE campaign finance databases. EVEN THEN we might never know because a person could give $100 to 50 candidates in one electio and never be reported (remember, both the FEC and the state require itemized reporting ONLY WHEN contributing over $XXX to the SAME candidate in the SAME election!)
And keep in mind this 606 newspapers survey would only give us statistically significant information for the newspaper world. It still would not lay a glove on local TV, local radio, etc.
Mr. Dedmen never claimed generalizability: that ALL or MOST reporters give to X or Y (and if he did and I missed it, shame on him). It was YOU Mr. Daly who suggested that this was a broader statement.
DISCLOSURE:
I may as well note here that over a two-year election period, I gave $1,125 to the campaign of DEMOCRAT Deval Patrick. I think he is a fine person (and I had a dear friend on his finance committee who kept putting the touch on me).
Let me add that I spent about 25 years in the news business, as a reporter for The AP and The Washington Post. During all those years, I adhered to their stated policies and made no political donations. I am now a full-time college professor, and I feel that I have every right to donate to anybody I like.
Maybe everyone who is posting on this subject would like to follow suit here?
--Chris Daly
Chris, Why didn't you tell us you were a Democratic donor to begin with!
Your comments are always well written, persuasive, and generally on the mark. But as I was reading this post, I was stopped cold - and left that way - by your use of the word "chicken-shit."
I understand 'blogging' allows greater freedom than the printed or broadcast script, but, Professor, couldn't you use something like palty, trifling, or petty? Call my comment nit-picking or trivial, but my humble opinion is that vulgar language lessens and demeans your (and anyone else's) commentary. I think you're better than that.
Dedman's story is just another hit piece on progressives, in itself proof that the mainstream press is right-wing, not liberal.
In his little report, Dedman ignores the overwhelming right-wing power of newspaper publishers, as J Prof points out.
Here in New York City, for instance, we have five daily papers -- the New York Post is a Republican propaganda sheet (and not a real newspaper at all), and the WSJ and the New York Sun are hardly better. The Daily News is also right wing, and stupid besides. The New York Times is ostensibly liberal, but somehow always manages to serve right-wing causes, whether it's by drumming up support for the Iraq war or through its regular posting of propaganda by David Brooks and his ilk.
Sorry to go on like this, but it seemed necessary, since the arguments here defining the press as "liberal" so go against the evidence.
Finally, it's only logical that most journalists should be liberal -- the liberals are on the right side of most issues. All you have to do is look back at history, when the conservatives fought giving the vote to women and to African-Americans. Surely you don't argue in favor of that? Oops, come to think of it, the Republicans still do!
I threw together a Perl script to answer your questions.
The 125 journalists identified by MSNBC with a (D) donated $263,964. The 16 journalists identified with an (R) donated $117,550.
The (R)s were helped along greatly by the $65,000 from Liz Peek of the NY Sun.
Note that since you wrote your original blog post, one "(R)" has dropped from MSNBC's list. Not sure who. Reload the main article (not the numbers/list page) to see this change.
Also, I have omitted the two people who donated to both parties.
The source code of my script is at
http://ryantate.com/donor_journos.pl.txt
The exact output was:
---
ryantate@li9-121 ~/bin [538] perl donor_journos.pl
Number of donors: 136 (120 Democrats, 16 Republicans)
Number of donations: 236
Total Democratic donations: 256164
Total Republican donations: 117550
ryantate@li9-121 ~/bin [539]
---
Note that this script misses the last five (D) journalists, the ones in the "Non-English" category, since those are formatted differently. I added their total contributions ($7800) by hand.
Also, Bill Dedman made a very good point: If you are concerned with the bias of the reporter, do the totals matter much?
I've read this whole discussion, and like others, it seems to adhere to (liberally oriented) talking points spread by people who don't believe the media is liberally biased, or seem convinced that to admit so would cause massive political fallout -- so deny, deny, deny (the Alterman Syndrome). To sum up, the contributions seem newsworthy, and the percentage of preference is similar to ASNE's 1997 report: 61% Democrat, 24% independent, 15% conservative/Republican.
MSNBC also looked at the one source where all federal contributuions have to be reported: FEC documents. Thus, it's possible to get almost all reportable contributions by reporter/editor media types.
How is this NOT news?
--Indiana U. journalism graduate
Oh, c'mon. Dedman's story is just another pimp job pushing the "liberal media" hoax.
Get it through your pin heads -- the media here is right wing. That's why Bush is in the White House and 3,500 Americans have been killed in Iraq.
You morons making excuses for the Republicans make me sick.
I've been in the business for 20 years and I liked the piece.
I thought it was well thought out, well researched and I loved being able to read the lame excuses from all these people on the periphery of journalism, who thought they were somehow exempt from rules that for the most part have been in place for decades.
If you can't put a bumper sticker on your car, what makes you think you can give cash to politicians?
Keep up the good work Dedman. Those who can, do. Those who can't, blog.
There's an insinuation in the article, that because a journalist donated to a political party that they're skewing their work in favor of that party.
But Dedman never even looks for any examples of bias in actual reporting.
If Dedman wanted to prove something, he should've looked for instances where some of the reporters he "outed" misstated facts, or buried facts, or omitted facts in their work, in such a pattern that it benefitted the causes to which they donated.
He declares journalists are biased, but doesn't prove in the one place he would need to, in their work.
The whole issue is a non-starter. So long as journalists report the facts, as opposed to their opinions, it really doesn't matter who they support. I've given money to the Democrats in the past, for example, but that doesn't mean I don't criticize them ... same w/specific candidates.
The piece also failed to list all of the people who RETURNED their donations, large or small, when they learned they might be in violation of their organizations' policies. That information was available only if you clicked through on the details. I have not tallied the number but it is substantial, further eroding the significance of the "data." Some examples were referred to (and dismissed) in the story but the complete list should have been part of the original item. Hey, it's online. Not like they had to trim to fit.
Many of the journalists' explanations were that the money actually was donated by spouses, and there was no discussion on whether the spouses of journalists have an obligation not to participate in the political process.
For the record, my wife donates money and I'm a journalist. I don't give money. In fact, to show the fact I don't have a horse in politics, I don't vote.
Maybe the reason MSNBC didn't include me, is because I told all my readers this last year.
The same people who demanded complete "neutrality," called me "lazy" for not voting.
As long as we're talking neutrality, why do we stop at the checkbook? Why is that the indicator of neutrality (I NEVER use the term objectivity, fyi).
Why not suggest journalists not vote too? I mean, if we're really interested in complete neutrality, wouldn't that be logical?
Your headline should be:
J-prof who gives to Democrats critiques study on journalists giving to Democrats
Using Mr. Daly's logic, all news organizations should use the following headline for their reports about Iraq: "99.9% of US troops weren't killed today in Iraq"
It's hard to imagine that anyone has spent much time on this site and did not figure out that I generally support Democrats.
I wasn't being coy, I just thought it was obvious.
One more point:
A number of comments have pointed mockingly to the headline I proposed (with tongue in cheek): 99.9% of Journalists do NOT donate.
They say it is as spurious as headlines saying 99.9% of doctors did not kill their patients today and the like.
These comparisons are, I believe, inapt. To see why, you need to read my initial post all the way to Part 2. There I point out that some number of journalists do not accept the premise that they must not donate. So, the ideal is not 100% compliance (as it would be in surgery) but some number well short of 100%.
In my view, that's just common sense.
With all due respect, when was the last time you were actually in a newsroom?
Presenting a complaint about a headline as if the reporter made the call? Editors and copy editors do that.
Do you ever read readership studies? Do you know that a larger percentage of readers will have noted the information in the sidebar you complain about than would read through the entire article? And here again, you make a complaint about the font size as if it is Dedman's call. Did you look at other fact boxes from other MSNBC stories to see if this is, in fact, a STYLE employed by the site? Did you provide CONTEXT?
Do you seriously think that editors and journalists who cover beats other than politics have no sway over the way a paper is laid out and what stories receive prominence? At my paper, I've never written a single political story but whenever I am in a story budget meeting, my executive editor asks me what I think. We may cover fluff but that doesn't mean we are not trained journalists, that we don't read our own publications, that we don't offer opinions as to what makes the best news lede or what story idea should be scrapped. Most news departments I am aware of DON'T keep the features people in a glass bubble or lock the sports departments in a dungeon. Just because we may have selected beats away from politics does not mean we are not part of the process to decide the play of a given story. We still have the training, we still have news judgment.
In his article, Dedman POINTS OUT that many journalists and news organizations differ on where to draw the ethical line about giving. Did you even read the article you are slamming?
Whether the donations are ethical are not at core, to me, is not the issue. It is about the perception. The public perceives a liberal slant and yes, this list confirms it. I don't need to see total contributions, and I find it laughable you do. One journalist with a $90,000 check is somehow more dangerous than 20 with a few thousand dollars each? Are you JOKING?
On what basis do you seriously think we need to see a grand total of all contributions in the same given period? I don't expect my vet to give me unbiased coverage of the presidential debates. I expect him to deworm my dog. I don't expect my accountant to investigate a campaign's phone jamming tactic on Election Day. I expect him to do my taxes. But do I expect a level of propriety from the journalists I work with and the ones I am receiving news from.
Then you close your critique by quoting Gideon Yago, who, for many young people may be the ONLY source of coverage they GET of major candidates?? Are you JOKING?
Something IS seriously flawed here. It's your ridiculously incoherent critique of a legitimately interesting piece of journalism.
For the record:
I got my first job in a newsroom in 1974. Then, except for two years in graduate school studying history, I was a full-time reporter or editor until 1997. (Most of my work was at the AP and the Washington Post, both of which have explicit tough bans on donations, which I agreed with and abided by. For five years, I covered politics full-time as AP's Statehouse bureau chief in Boston, including presidential campaigns.) For the past 10 years, I have been a full-time professor. From time to time, I publish essays, opinion pieces, and book reviews. I no longer report on politics.
Your critique of the MSNBC journalists-contributions piece is dead on: zero context, weak targets, no background on the old "objectivity" argument. I'm making it required reading for all my annoying neo-con friends who sent the MSNBC story to me last week. (That said, I'm glad no AP reporters were on the list.)
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