Journalists and campaign contributions

Keith Olbermann is MSNBC’s most prominent host and gets paid for expressing his opinions on his show “Countdown with Keith Olbermann”.  His suspension from the show for making political campaign contributions raises several questions within journalism. 

The first one I would like to explore it’s the most direct one: should journalist be allowed to make campaign contributions?

If today’s journalism was the ideal journalism which complies with the rules of objectivity, the answer would be a flat NO.   An article from Politico.com emphasizes NBC ‘s stand on the subject, stating that they consider it a breach of journalistic independence to contribute to the candidates they cover. It is reasonable to believe that engaging in political activities such as making campaign contributions can distract the reporter and cause him/her to be biased.  It would be an appropriate rule, although inhumane.  And I say inhumane because I think that journalists, more than anyone else, stimulate their ideology and feel drawn to whatever party they identify themselves with.   Journalists are privileged with access to information that every other citizen does not get, and I think that the more informed you are the more you like or dislike a political party.

However, today’s journalism is becoming more and more partisan.  You don’t have to be a journalist to notice that Fox News broadcasts its news from a conservative point of view and that MSNBC does the same for the liberal ideology.  Both are very popular and reach millions of people across the country.  What does this say about us?  That we are becoming narrow-minded and sticking to the ideas that we already have.  I think this has contributed to the divisiveness of the country.  The conservatives are only turning more conservative and the liberals more liberals.  Why? In part because we have a respected and prominent anchor reinforcing our ideas and encouraging the rejection of everything else. 

If news channels clearly represent an ideology, and thus are biased, why do they have a problem with their employees making campaign contributions?  At least the folks from Fox News are not pretending to be objective, for their employees are free to make political campaign contributions, and their employees include politicians themselves, for example Sarah Palin.   I find it absurd for MSNBC to prohibit their opinion journalists to make campaign contributions.  What’s worse is that permission to do so can be granted upon approval from superiors.   Really?  So based upon what?  This just makes the whole thing more suspicious.

 This matter was covered by PBS Newshour and some interesting points came out.  One was the idea that perhaps there are new ethics in journalism.  One of the guests in the show, Geneva Overholser, director of the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, said: “Is only when he puts his money where his mouth is when he is misbehaved.”  It is certainly how it seems.