America’s journalists have reinforced the perception of bias by handing Clinton nearly $400,000 in donations so far, according to an explosive new report.
The watchdog Center for Public Integrity said that journalists favored Clinton 27-1 over Trump, who got a tiny $14,000.
Some 430 in the media business donated to Clinton compared to 50 to Trump.
Journalists from the ESPN, Vogue, Elle, the New Republic, Facebook, and many others coughed up cash for Clinton in record form. Even the Pulitzer Prize winning media critic for the New Yorker wrote a check for the Democrat.
“New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum, a newly minted Pulitzer Prize winner, spent the Republican National Convention pen-pricking presidential nominee Donald Trump as a misogynist shyster running an ‘ugly and xenophobic campaign,'” reported the Center’s David Levinthal and Michael Beckel.
“What Nussbaum didn’t disclose in her dispatches: she contributed $250 to Democrat Hillary Clinton in April,” added the investigators who themselves are prohibited by their employer from making political donations. They found that many other news organizations also bar donations.
That journalists support Democrats like Clinton is no surprise, as several polls have showed their political bent. But the donations put on an added layer of bias.
In all, people identified in federal campaign finance filings as journalists, reporters, news editors or television news anchors — as well as other donors known to be working in journalism — have combined to give more than $396,000 to the presidential campaigns of Clinton and Trump, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis.
Nearly all of that money — more than 96 percent — has benefited Clinton: About 430 people who work in journalism have, through August, combined to give about $382,000 to the Democratic nominee, the Center for Public Integrity’s analysis indicates.
Generally, the law obligates federal candidates only to disclose the names of people making contributions of more than $200 during a single election cycle, along with their addresses and employer and occupation. That means it’s likely that many more journalists have given the Clinton or Trump campaigns cash, but in amounts too small to trigger reporting requirements.
Major news organizations often restrict, if not prohibit, their journalists (and occasionally non-journalist employees) from making political campaign contributions.
The news organizations’ overriding concern: Such contributions will compromise journalists’ impartiality or seed the perception that journalists are biased toward certain politicians or political parties.