I haven’t heard anything on NPR today about this story yet (damn you, pledge drive!) so I’m not sure if it is more of a “the shit has hit the fan” story or more of an “eh, so what?” type of deal.
Personally, I’m in the “eh, so what” camp. As the title to this post points out, journalists have their own private lives and it’s my opinion that they should be free to donate to whichever causes they like, as long as they don’t editorialize their work so as to skew stories to their private
Oh wait. Does that sound batshit crazy to you? Oh, you watch anything on News? Geraldo? Anderson? All of their shows follow the “news” format of editorializing their reports or downright giving their own personal opinions on actual political stories (I can’t imagine even 1/4th of the reporters listed on MSNBC report actually cover political stories).
Here’s something that the MSNBC report doesn’t mention or suggest: maybe the reason why “Americans don’t trust the news or newspeople as much as they used to” and “more than seven in 10 (72 percent) say news organizations tend to favor one side” is because they’re so used to seeing pundits skewing stories to one side or the other (I don’t think I have to mention which side it is usually skewed towards). And I hate to break it to you, but if a news paper/channel/station publishes an opinion that differs from your own, that’s not called favoring – that’s called balanced reporting.