Should reporters participate in democracy?

It's weird that we even have to entertain this question.

On Monday, we talked about the sacred cow of newspaper endorsements and how it’s time to put them out to pasture.

Today, another one has moo-ed across the lawn: journalists giving money to politicians.

Business Insider has an in-depth piece on 39 journalists across a variety of publications giving money to Joe Biden or Donald Trump. In its TL;DR section at the top, it teases out that this is the first of three pieces that looks at “the ethics of journalists personally participating in political adversary.”

An old journalism saw is that reporters covering politics have to be apolitical, so there’s no indication of homer-ism.

In March, the New York Times laid out its policies on reporters participating in democracy.

Newsroom staff members may not participate in political advocacy, like volunteering for candidates’ campaigns or making contributions.

“And, by extension, we ask them to be very careful and mindful about other contributions and donations they make and volunteer work they do,” Philip B. Corbett, The Times’s standards editor, explains.

We should not wear campaign buttons or display any other insignia of partisan politics, such as bumper stickers or lawn signs. Nor may we serve on government boards or run for public office.

This goes for reporters, editors, photographers, artists, designers, researchers and other staff members in every news department of The Times, not just for those who cover politics.

Business Insider reports that New York Times writer Julie Weed has given $31,000 to politicians since 2019. That’s a lot of money.

But here’s the thing: this is misguided thinking that ultimately leads to a both-sidesism style of reporting, trying to maintain an air of objectivity that doesn’t exist in reality. It’s like how we never see right angles in nature.

There is a laundry list of ethical considerations of being a journalist—from accepting gifts to entering into relationships with sources, let alone any other kind of potential improprieties that could question the validity of the reporting. Participating in a foundational right shouldn’t be one of them. Put out your campaign signs and let your freak flags fly.

(Image via Sean Krajacic, Kenosha News)

Journalists, contrary to popular belief, are people, too. This means that journalists are members of society. Journalists (supposedly) pay their taxes. Journalists (supposedly) care about where their tax dollars go to. Why wouldn’t a journalist, then, want to participate in one of the very few rights we as a liberal society carved out: the ability to vote and financially support a candidate they believe in will help the greater good.

(Though I do agree with the NYT that working journalists shouldn’t serve on government boards or run for office; same as working journalists shouldn’t serve on corporate boards or, like The Verge’s former deputy editor pull double duty as both technology journalist and working for Apple.)

There’s a logic that goes: if a journalist gives money to a candidate, they will not approach their job “with neither fear nor favor.” That they will be in the tank for that candidate and not be able to be ‘objective.’

After four years of the erosion of norms and institutions (and peering into the crystal ball, this erosion will not stop if Trump loses, by the way), so who cares?

American journalism began as a party press. It’s as if newsrooms today have no understanding about the history of their profession nor the history of their nation.

As Antonio Garcia-Martinez Wired wrote last year:

if you were to magically teleport the architects of our democracy—men like Ben Franklin or Samuel Adams (newspapermen, both of them)—to today, they’d find our journalistic ecosystem, with its fact-checked both-sides-ism and claims to “objectivity,” completely unrecognizable. Franklin wrote under at least a dozen pseudonyms, including such gems as Silence Dogood and Alice Addertongue, and pioneered the placement of advertising next to content. Adams (aka Vindex the Avenger, Philo Patriae, et al.) was editor of the rabidly anti-British Boston Gazette and also helped organize the Boston Tea Party, when activists dumped tea into Boston Harbor rather than pay tax on it. Adams duly covered the big event the next day with absolute aplomb. They’d have no notion of journalistic “objectivity,” and would find the entire undertaking futile (and likely unprofitable, but more on that soon).

Rigidity in forcing reporters to abide by some nonexistent thing, like objectivity, diminishes the reporter: you are not allowed to be a member of American society.

Garcia-Martinez, last week:

The UK press is a hodgepodge of Guardians and Standards and Observers and Spectators, each very overtly representing the outlook and values of one sub-species within the national polity (and given it’s the UK, one stratum of class as well). Israel, in keeping with the old joke ‘two Jews, three opinions’, is a fractious shouting match, what with Ha’aretz, Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel Hayom, and all the rest of them going at it daily, some quite openly the mouthpiece of this or that political faction or religious sub-minority.

This business of a nominally objective, non-partisan news media is as exceptional as employee-based healthcare and a constitutional right to firearms: a practice only we really engage in so enthusiastically, and yet whose strangeness we take as normal. And unlike those two other practices which seem as immutable as the fixed stars, we are destined to abandon this century-long tradition in favor of an even older one.

If you’re a political reporter, wouldn’t you be serving your readers by appending a note at the top (or, more likely at the bottom) of your story that you gave money to such and such candidate?

You’re telling them: look, I did all this reporting about a topic that is instrumental to our way of life and I, like you, have looked at the information and made a decision. I’ve included various arguments, and you can see, through my transparent statement where I put money, but that doesn’t mean you should. What’s wrong with that?

Think about partisan outlets. We know their biases, their points of view (even if we don’t know who funds their outlets). We also know that much of what they sell is vapor. But that’s their right as citizens; and it’s up to us, as citizens, to be informed to make decisions. Would you be less informed if you knew a political reporter at the Washington Post or New York Times gave money to a candidate or political party?

There’s another subtle subtext here, floating as embers in the extinguishing flames of the media business: journalists are more likely than not to not be journalists in the future.

More than 11,000 journalists have been laid off since March; 7800 lost their jobs in 2019. The odds of them finding work as journalists again are slim. So imagine you’ve been a reporter for a decade, haven’t voted, haven’t participated in the democratic process that is a cornerstone of our society, all because you were told that by doing so would make your job impossible to do; you can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Would you feel cheated on not being able to be part of the American experiment?

One backlash to this can be seen in journalists leaving publications to start their own newsletters. Journalism doesn’t have to have that “view from nowhere” philosophy; it can, and arguably should, have a view from somewhere.

The point is this: our professions are just that, and do not define us. We are people first. Journalists participate in the social contract like everyone else and it is absurd that newsrooms place parameters on journalists, stifling their free speech. An irony that apparently is lost in an industry dedicated to promoting and enacting that very first of amendments.

Thank you for allowing me in your inbox, today and every day. If you have tips, thoughts on the newsletter, or think I’m destroying too many norms, send me an email. Or you can follow me on Twitter. If you appreciated this edition, please consider sharing across your social networks and get your colleagues to sign up. Thanks for reading!

Five Man Electrical Band, “Signs”

Some interesting links:

For media criticism:

• Can Trump bully the media into calling a winner on Election Night? (Press Run)

• Reviewing Ben Thompsons Stratechery (Tim Wu)

• The media’s Hunter Biden conundrum (NYT)

For platforms:

• Facebook approves Trump ads that violate its pre-election rules (Popular Info)

• Six Republican Secretaries of State tried to stop Facebook’s effort to register voters (BuzzFeed)

• We need policy, not Wrestle Mania (NYT)

• Section230 Senate hearing (CNN)

For publishers:

• Churn wars: getting a subscriber is one thing but keeping them is a different challenge (The Rebooting)

• Forbes is putting up a paywall (Kerry Flynn)

For in-conversation:

• Who is AOC? (Vanity Fair)

• Twitter’s Jack Dorsey: A hands-off CEO in a time of turmoil (WSJ)

For hackers:

• Trump’s campaign website hacked (TechCrunch)

For M&A and funding:

• RTL Group Sells Stake in BroadbandTV for $120 Million as BBTV Launches IPO (Variety)

• Double Verify gets $350 million investment (press release)

For palate cleanser:

• The house on Blue Lick Road (Waxy)