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 p_lukasiak 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 4200 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. Finally, the number 100,000 p_lukasiak has provided has no founding or support other than his (her?) conjecture.

This is not to say the report and survey are not flawed; they may very well be. Only that p_lukasiak has not identified or rather mis-identified "flaws" that simply do not exist.

Actually, I agree with Malkin insofar as that goes. I believe that the journalists who were doing straight-news stories on the elections--and those were very few--should have disclosed if they had donated to candidates in the same election they were writing about. But a theater critic? A sports statistician? That's looking pretty hard for things to be outraged over. And do we need Hendrik Hertzberg's disclosure to know where he stands politically? The guy writes a column in the New Yorker where he outlines his political beliefs specifically.

"The question isn’t, as Poniewozik frames it, whether he should be allowed to donate–but whether he properly discloses it and any relevant conflicts of interest to readers in a timely manner. None of the journalist donors spotlighted in Dedman’s report did that. It’s a point the Sunlight Brigade keeps glossing over."

Don't you dare! Time Warner needs the free labor!

I have no problem acknowledging that the personal views of most professional journalists tend toward the liberal/democratic side. After all, "reality is biased toward liberalism", as they say. Professional journalists are better educated (because they have to be) and better informed (because its their job) than the average american -- and both factors make one more likely to be liberal.

Plus, there is the nature of journalism itself -- "bad news" is more newsworthy than "good news", and "bad news" always carries with it the implication that there is a problem to be solved that the individual news consumer cannot solve themselves -- and the natural tendency is to look toward government for a solution. That in itself tends to make journalists more "liberal", at least in terms of the role of government. Finally, there are "environmental" factors -- professional journalists tend to herd in large cities... an enivironment that is conducive to "liberal" perspectives because urban environments are far more heterogenous than suburban/rural environments, and tolerance -- a liberal value -- is necessary.

So there are all these factors that contribute to professional journalists having "liberal" views. But it that same liberal mindset that requires them to present the news fairly and as impartially as possible --- a liberal typically is aware of their own biases, and strives to ensure that those biases do not supercede their rationality. Liberals question their own beliefs and positions on a regular basis, and are open to new information and ideas -- that is why liberals make the best reporters.

But the demands of the news business qua business turn perfectly good reporters into journalistic disaster areas -- and this is especially true in the dominant news media -- television. While a GOOD picture may be worth a thousand words, pictures are no substitute for substantive information that only words can convey --- yet television news is all about the visuals, and the pictures and sound bites that accompany them have almost nothing to do with the information that people need to make informed decisions.

(geez, I haven't even gotten to my point yet! Well here goes.)

I don't know if Dedman is a liberal or a conservative. What I do know is that the article in question is a piece of crap, and he's responsible for it. The real headline should have been "Almost No Journalists Contribute to Political Campaigns", and that is what the story should have been about-- the apolitical nature of 99% of professional journalists. Maybe, toward the end of the piece, he could have mentioned something about the 9 to 1 ratio among the insignificant minority of journalists who do contribute to campaigns...but that is about it.

Instead, he wrote an expose about nothing of significance (a very small number of journalists appear to have broken the rules of their employers concerning political contributions) and presented it as "confirming" the falsehood that there is "liberal bias" in the media. And, of course, the right-wing is eating it up, never bothering to realize that his "investigative report" involved less than 0.15% of "professional journalists"....and an infintesimal percentage of journalists whose "beats" make the question of impartiality relevant.

That's crap journalism, pure and simple -- and its crap journalism with a "conservative bias". Not because Dedman is a conservative -- but because he's a crappy reporter who hyped a meaningless story that fit precisely into the conservative narrative.

(its times like this I wish I actually blogged)

You gotta be kidding? This is twisted.

I'm afraid not, because the you have no information on the 99,856 journalists who don't rent bondage porn, only the very small minority of those who do rent it. When you are talking about a miniscule subset of a large population, you cannot extrapolate based on the data from that subset, because it is de facto non-representative of the whole.

I mean, if I'd said that 75% of the bondage porn had been straight, would that mean that only 75% of all journalists were heterosexual? Of course not.

Another way of looking at it is voting. You have an election where there are 100,000 voters. In one precinct of 144 people, 125 are white, 17 are black, and two are hispanic..and the Democratic candidate won 55% of the vote. You can't use that data to extrapolate EITHER the result of the election citywide, nor the demographics for the rest of the city. You simply don't have enough information-- the precinct may be typical, but there is no way to know that.