Expect to hear this statistic cropping up from some mass rally in the near future: People who identify as journalists on federal campaign finance reports overwhelmingly donated to the Clinton campaign over the Trump campaign. The margin is 430 journalists combining to give $382,000 to Clinton, as opposed to 50 journalists combining to give $14,000 to Trump, according to an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity.
That’s quite a skew, one that may well serve as a talking point for Trump, who has concluded that journalists are up to something sinister in campaign 2016.
If the donors highlighted in the Center for Public Integrity are “rigging” a national election, however, they are very able and unlikely conspiracists. For instance, Emily Nussbaum, TV critic for the New Yorker, occupies the lede of the Center for Public Integrity story for having given $250 to the Clinton campaign. Other Clinton journo-donors mentioned: Orange County Register restaurant critic Brad Johnson; Ryne Dittmer, who works as county and education editor at the Liberty Tribune of Liberty, Mo.; Julie Lane of the Shelter Island Reporter on Long Island. RT’s Larry King is the big name on the rolls, with $2,700 for Clinton.
Which is to say, there’s no Alexander Burns (New York Times); there’s no Julie Pace (Associated Press); there’s no Robert Costa (The Washington Post); there’s no Shep Smith, Chris Cuomo, Brooke Baldwin, Hallie Jackson (Fox News, CNN, CNN, MSNBC, respectively) showing up in the donor rolls. Those are the folks, among many others, who are actually covering the campaign. So the numbers present a victory for standards keepers at mainstream media organizations.
Big-name news organizations commonly prohibit donations to political causes and campaigns. It’s a sound policy. As we have written before, money changes everything, including allegiances and loyalties. Once someone gives money to a campaign or cause, that person becomes staked in it — such that reporting on it independently becomes more difficult.
A 2014 study cited in the report found that 28 percent of surveyed journalists identify as Democrats, as opposed to 7 percent as Republicans. That’s a 4-to-1 ratio. That Trump is getting drubbed by an even more extreme 8-to-1 ratio on donations from journalists should be no surprise. He has threatened to “open up” libel laws to facilitate the suing of news organizations; he has blacklisted various media outlets; his former campaign manager was known for bullying reporters; and his provocations have started to scare those who cover his rallies.
The whole scenario might justify Trump’s thanking mainstream outlets for prohibiting donations for the presidential race. What sane journalist, after all, would pony up for trashing the First Amendment?
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Erik Wemple
