Reporters Donate Most Money To Democrats

Is this really news? Anyone with an ounce of common sense can see

that the vast majority of the mainstream media is liberal. That is

why Clinton stayed in office, and Bob Packwood was run out of town for

lesser sexual transgressions. The media have a double standard

because they favor Democrats. This story is just more hard evidence

of that. Democrats that deny this look ridiculous.

This is the key quote from the article if you are too lazy to read the

whole thing.

"Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists

gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 17 gave to Republicans. Two

gave to both parties."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19113485/

<quote>

Journalists give campaign cash

News organizations diverge on handling of political activism by staff

By Bill Dedman

BOSTON - A CNN reporter gave $500 to John Kerry's campaign the same

month he was embedded with the U.S. Army in Iraq. An assistant

managing editor at Forbes magazine not only sent $2,000 to

Republicans, but also volunteers as a director of an ExxonMobil-funded

group that questions global warming. A junior editor at Dow Jones

Newswires gave $1,036 to the liberal group MoveOn.org and keeps a blog

listing "people I don't like," starting with George Bush, Pat

Robertson, the Christian Coalition, the NRA and corporate America

("these are the people who are really in charge").

Whether you sample your news feed from ABC or CBS (or, yes, even NBC

and MSNBC), whether you prefer Fox News Channel or National Public

Radio, The Wall Street Journal or The New Yorker, some of the

journalists feeding you are also feeding cash to politicians, parties

or political action committees.

MSNBC.com identified 144 journalists who made political contributions

from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the

public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the

newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to

Democrats and liberal causes. Only 17 gave to Republicans. Two gave to

both parties.

The donors include CNN's Guy Raz, now covering the Pentagon for NPR,

who gave to Kerry the same month he was embedded with U.S. troops in

Iraq; New Yorker war correspondent George Packer; a producer for Bill

O'Reilly at Fox; MSNBC TV host Joe Scarborough; political writers at

Vanity Fair; the editor of The Wall Street Journal's weekend section;

local TV anchors in Washington, Minneapolis, Memphis and Wichita; the

ethics columnist at The New York Times; and even MTV's former

presidential campaign correspondent.

'If someone had murdered Hitler ...'

There's a longstanding tradition that journalists don't cheer in the

press box. They have opinions, like anyone else, but they are expected

to keep those opinions out of their work. Because appearing to be fair

is part of being fair, most mainstream news organizations discourage

marching for causes, displaying political bumper stickers or giving

cash to candidates.

Traditionally, many news organizations have applied the rules to only

political reporters and editors. The ethic was summed up by Abe

Rosenthal, the former New York Times editor, who is reported to have

said, "I don't care if you sleep with elephants as long as you don't

cover the circus."

But with polls showing the public losing faith in the ability of

journalists to give the news straight up, some major newspapers and TV

networks are clamping down. They now prohibit all political activity -

aside from voting - no matter whether the journalist covers baseball

or proofreads the obituaries. The Times in 2003 banned all donations,

with editors scouring the FEC records regularly to watch for in-house

donors. In 2005, The Chicago Tribune made its policy absolute. CBS did

the same last fall. And The Atlantic Monthly, where a senior editor

gave $500 to the Democratic Party in 2004, says it is considering

banning all donations. After MSNBC.com contacted Salon.com about

donations by a reporter and a former executive editor, this week Salon

banned donations for all its staff.

What changed? First came the conservative outcry labeling the

mainstream media as carrying a liberal bias. The growth of talk radio

and cable slugfests gave voice to that claim. The Iraq war fueled

distrust of the press from both sides. Finally, it became easier for

the blogging public to look up the donors.

As the policy at the Times puts it: "Given the ease of Internet access

to public records of campaign contributors, any political giving by a

Times staff member would carry a great risk of feeding a false

impression that the paper is taking sides."

But news organizations don't agree on where to draw the ethical line.

Giving to candidates is allowed at Fox, Forbes, Time, The New Yorker,

Reuters - and at Bloomberg News, whose editor in chief, Matthew

Winkler, set the tone by giving to Al Gore in 2000. Bloomberg has nine

campaign donors on the list; they're allowed to donate unless they

cover politics directly.

Donations and other political activity are strictly forbidden at The

Washington Post, ABC, CBS, CNN and NPR.

Politicking is discouraged, but there is some wiggle room, at Dow

Jones, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report. (Compare policies here.)

NBC, MSNBC and MSNBC.com say they don't discourage or encourage

campaign contributions, but they require employees to report any

potential conflicts of interest in advance and receive permission of

the senior editor. (MSNBC.com is a joint venture of NBC Universal and

Microsoft; its employees are required to adhere to NBC News policies

regarding political contributions.)

Many of the donating journalists cover topics far from politics: food,

fashion, sports. Some touch on politics from time to time: Even a film

critic has to review Gore's documentary on global warming. And some

donors wield quiet influence behind the scenes, such as the wire

editors at newspapers in Honolulu and Riverside, Calif., who decide

which state, national and international news to publish.

The pattern of donations, with nearly nine out of 10 giving to

Democratic candidates and causes, appears to confirm a leftward tilt

in newsrooms - at least among the donors, who are a tiny fraction of

the roughly 100,000 staffers in newsrooms across the nation.

The donors said they try to be fair in reporting and editing the news.

One of the recurring themes in the responses is that it's better for

journalists to be transparent about their beliefs, and that editors

who insist on manufacturing an appearance of impartiality are being

deceptive to a public that already knows journalists aren't without

biases.

"Our writers are citizens, and they're free to do what they want to

do," said New Yorker editor David Remnick, who has 10 political donors

at his magazine. "If what they write is fair, and they respond to

editing and counter-arguments with an open mind, that to me is the way

we work."

The openness didn't extend, however, to telling the public about the

donations. Apparently none of the journalists disclosed the donations

to readers, viewers or listeners. Few told their bosses, either.

Several of the donating journalists said they had no regrets, whatever

the ethical concerns.

"Probably there should be a rule against it," said New Yorker writer

Mark Singer, who wrote the magazine's profile of Howard Dean during

the 2004 campaign, then gave $250 to America Coming Together and its

get-out-the-vote campaign to defeat President Bush. "But there's a

rule against murder. If someone had murdered Hitler - a journalist

interviewing him had murdered him - the world would be a better place.

I only feel good, as a citizen, about getting rid of George Bush, who

has been the most destructive president in my lifetime. I certainly

don't regret it."

Conservative-leaning journalists tended to greater generosity. Ann

Stewart Banker, a producer for Bill O'Reilly at Fox News Channel, gave

$5,000 to Republicans. Financial columnist Liz Peek at The New York

Sun gave $90,000 to the Grand Old Party.

A few journalists let their enthusiasm extend beyond the checkbook. A

Fox TV reporter in Omaha, Calvert Collins, posted a photo on

Facebook.com with her cozying up to a Democratic candidate for

Congress. She urged her friends, "Vote for him Tuesday, Nov. 7!" She

also gave him $500. She said she was just trying to build rapport with

the candidates. (And what builds rapport more effectively than $500

and a strapless gown?)

'You call that a campaign contribution?'

Sometimes a donation isn't a donation, at least in the eye of the

donor.

"I don't make campaign contributions," said Jean A. Briggs, who gave a

total of $2,000 to the Republican Party and Republican candidates,

most recently this March. "I'm the assistant managing editor of Forbes

magazine."

When asked about the Republican National Committee donations, she

replied, "You call that a campaign contribution? It's not putting

money into anyone's campaign."

(For the record: The RNC gave $25 million to the Bush-Cheney campaign

in 2004.)

A spokeswoman for Forbes said the magazine allows contributions.

Briggs also is listed as a board member of the Property and

Environment Research Center, which advocates "market solutions to

environmental problems." PERC has received funding from ExxonMobil and

other oil companies, and tries to get the industry's views into

textbooks and the media. The organization's Web site says, "She

exposes fellow New York journalists to PERC ideas and also brings a

journalistic perspective to PERC's board. As a board member, she seeks

to help spread the word about PERC's thorough research and fresh

ideas."

Americans don't trust the news or newspeople as much as they used to.

The crisis of faith is traced by the surveys of the Pew Research

Center for the People & the Press. More than seven in 10 (72 percent)

say news organizations tend to favor one side, the highest level of

skepticism in the poll's 20-year history. Despite the popularity of

Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann, two-thirds of those polled say they

prefer to get news from sources without a particular point of view.

'My readers know my views'

George Packer is The New Yorker's man in Iraq.

The war correspondent for the magazine since 2003 and author of the

acclaimed 2005 book "The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq," Packer

gave $750 to the Democratic National Committee in August 2004, and

then $250 in 2005 to Iraq war veteran Paul Hackett, an anti-war

Democrat who campaigned unsuccessfully for a seat in Congress from

Ohio.

In addition to his reported pieces, Packer also writes commentary for

the magazine, such as his June 11 piece ruing Bush's "shallow,

unreflective character."

"My readers know my views on politics and politicians because I make

no secret of them in my comments for The New Yorker and elsewhere,"

Packer said. "If giving money to a politician prejudiced my ability to

think and write honestly, I wouldn't do it. Fortunately, it doesn't."

His colleague Judith Thurman wrote the New Yorker's sympathetic

profile of Teresa Heinz Kerry, published on Sept. 27, 2004. Ten days

later, the Democratic National Committee recorded Thurman's donation

of $1,000. She did not return phone calls.

Their editor, Remnick, said that the magazine's writers don't do

straight reporting. "Their opinions are out there," Remnick said.

"There's nothing hidden." So why not disclose campaign donations to

readers? "Should every newspaper reporter divulge who they vote for?"

Besides, there's the magazine's famously rigorous editing. The last

bulwark against bias's slipping into The New Yorker is the copy

department, whose chief editor, Ann Goldstein, gave $500 in October to

MoveOn.org, which campaigns for Democrats and against President Bush.

"That's just me as a private citizen," she said. As for whether

donations are allowed, Goldstein said she hadn't considered it. "I've

never thought of myself as working for a news organization."

Embedded in Iraq, giving to Kerry

Guy Raz does work for a news organization.

As the Jerusalem correspondent for CNN, he was embedded with U.S.

troops in Iraq in June 2004, when he gave $500 to John Kerry.

He didn't supply his occupation or employer to the Kerry campaign, so

his donation is listed in federal records with only his name and

London address. Now he covers the Pentagon for NPR. Both CNN and NPR

forbid political activity.

"I covered international news and European Union stories. I did not

cover U.S. news or politics," Raz said in an e-mail to MSNBC.com. When

asked how one could define U.S. news so it excludes the U.S. war in

Iraq, Raz didn't reply.

Margot Patterson not only covered the war and gave money to stop it -

she also signed a petition against it.

Covering the war, opposing the war

Patterson has covered the Iraq war and anti-war movements for the

National Catholic Reporter, an independent weekly newspaper in Kansas

City.

She gave to anti-war Democrats: $2,100 to Sen. Claire McCaskill,

$1,000 to Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, $250 to Howard Dean and $800 to the

Democratic Party.

And she signed a petition and paid to have it published as "KC Metro

Citizens Oppose War On Iraq!"

Patterson said the danger isn't the journalist who reveals a bias by

making a campaign contribution, but journalists who quietly hold to

their biases.

"I feel my responsibility as a journalist is to be fair to the people

and issues involved and to be as accurate as possible," she said.

"When I see my country embark on a course of action that I think

disastrous to its future and fatal to its citizens, I think it my duty

to do my utmost to stop it."

She didn't disclose her political activities to her readers, or her

editor, Tom Roberts. He said he wasn't sure about campaign

contributions, but "a reporter signing a petition crosses the line to

activism."

'The Ethicist'

At this point, we need a journalism ethicist. How about Orville

Schell? He favorably reviewed Eric Alterman's book "What Liberal

Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News." And this Feb. 9, while he

was still dean of the journalism school at the University of

California, Berkeley, Schell gave $1,000 to Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Or we could ask Randy Cohen, who writes the syndicated column "The

Ethicist" for The New York Times. The former comedy writer gave $585

to MoveOn.org in 2004 when it was organizing get-out-the-vote efforts

to defeat Bush. Cohen said he understands the Times policy and won't

make donations again, but he had thought of MoveOn.org as no more out

of bounds than the Boy Scouts.

"We admire those colleagues who participate in their communities -

help out at the local school, work with Little League, donate to

charity," Cohen said in an e-mail. "But no such activity is or can be

non-ideological. Few papers would object to a journalist donating to

the Boy Scouts or joining the Catholic Church. But the former has an

official policy of discriminating against gay children; the latter has

views on reproductive rights far more restrictive than those of most

Americans. Should reporters be forbidden to support those groups? I'd

say not."

Tom Rosenstiel hasn't given anyone a dime. The former media critic for

The Los Angeles Times and director of the Project for Excellence in

Journalism, he co-wrote the classic book "The Elements of Journalism:

What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect."

Journalists have sometimes gone too far, Rosenstiel said, in

withdrawing from civic life. "Is it a conflict of interest for the

food editor to be the president of the PTA? Probably not," he said.

"You don't want to make your journalists be zoo animals."

Planet Journalism

But giving money to a candidate or party, he said, goes a big step

beyond voting. "If you give money to a candidate, you are then rooting

for that candidate. You've made an investment in that candidate. It

can make it more difficult for someone to tell the news without fear

or favor.

"The second reason," Rosenstiel said, "it would create - even if you

thought you could make that intellectual leap and not let your

personal allegiance interfere with your professionalism - it creates

an appearance of a conflict of interest. For journalists, that's a

real conflict.

"Giving money, you're not doing the profession of journalism any good.

All of the ethics of journalism are about trust. They don't come from

Planet Journalism. They come from the street."

Rosenstiel said that even opinion journalists, such as columnists and

arts critics, should not make donations, because there's a difference

between having opinions and being captive of a particular party or

faction. Major newspapers, he said, have mostly gotten the message.

You won't find any journalists in the recent FEC records from The

Washington Post, where executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. is so

famously politically agnostic that he doesn't vote, though he doesn't

prohibit his reporters from doing so. At least, you'll find no Post

journalists other than Stephen Hunter, the Pulitzer Prize-winning film

critic, who gave to the Republican Party in 2004. (The film critic at

The New York Times, Manohla Dargis, gave to Democrats when she was at

the L.A. Times. She finds Michael Moore's new film "persuasive.")

Is it legal for companies to restrict donations? After all, the U.S.

Supreme Court has classified campaign contributions as a form of

speech. In the best-known case, in a state court, the News Tribune

newspaper in Tacoma, Wash., reassigned to the night copy desk its

education reporter, socialist and gay-rights activist Sandy Nelson,

after she helped launch a ballot initiative for a nondiscrimination

ordinance. In its 1997 decision (Nelson v. McClatchy Newspapers), the

Washington state Supreme Court said the newspaper can enforce conflict-

of-interest codes to preserve "the appearance of objectivity." The

reporter's right to free speech, the court wrote, was trumped by the

newspaper's right to freedom of the press, to control its own news

operations.

The San Francisco Chronicle transferred the editor who handled letters

to the editor, William Pates, after his donations to Kerry were

disclosed by a Web site in 2004. The Newspaper Guild objected, and

after a time on the sports copy desk, he's back in charge of deciding

which letters get published.

Networks of influence

Fox News Channel is alone among the four major TV networks in placing

no restrictions on campaign contributions. But there were surprises in

the records for those who think everyone at Fox is a Republican.

Researcher Codie Brooks, of Brit Hume's "Special Report," gave $2,600

last year to the Senate campaign of Harold Ford Jr., the Memphis

Democrat. She said she raised much of the money from friends. "A lot

of Fox employees have contributed to Democratic candidates," she said.

"I know I'm not the only one."

At the Fox station in Washington, WTTG, anchor Laura Evans gave $500

in August to Democrat John Sarbanes, who was elected to the House from

suburban Maryland. She initially told MSNBC.com that the donation was

made by her husband, lobbyist Mike Manatos.

But the records show that her husband had already given the legal

limit to Sarbanes. When asked about those records in a follow-up

interview, she said, "I hadn't talked to my husband. He reminded me

that he had actually talked to me about this, because he had maxed

out, could we write a check in my name. I said, sure. Now I remember

having this conversation. It's within Fox policy, it was OK for me to

do it."

Evans has also taken stands in line with Rep. Sarbanes' votes opposing

President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq. On her blog on WTTG's Web

site, she commented recently on the congressional debate: "Everyone's

trying to save face here ... all the while people are dying. Didn't

voters in November speak loud and clear, saying they're tired of the

fighting and want an end in sight?"

At ABC News, "Primetime" correspondent Mary Fulginiti gave $500 this

February to Bill Richardson, a Democratic presidential candidate. The

legal correspondent had been a white-collar defense attorney until she

joined ABC in November. She said the donation "is not a reflection of

my political views," although she had given regularly to Hillary

Clinton, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry. "Look, I've made a mistake here,"

she said. "I'm a legal analyst - this is all new to me. I have been

politically active in the past. This is when I was just starting out

at ABC. I was still thinking as a lawyer."

At NBC News, which says donations require approval of the senior

editor, "Dateline" correspondent Victoria Corderi gave $250 in 2005 to

Democratic Senate candidate Josh Rales in Maryland. "In a word,

yikes!" she said when asked about the donation. Her husband wrote the

check, she explained, when a friend threw a fundraising party. "I'd

not even thought to consider that since my name is on our checks that

I would appear in public records as a contributor."

MSNBC TV host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican member of Congress

from Florida, gave to a Republican congressional candidate from Oregon

last year. In addition to anchoring an evening newscast, "Scarborough

Country," and a morning talk show on MSNBC, he provides political

commentary for MSNBC, CNBC and NBC's "Today Show."

At CBS News, "Sunday Morning" correspondent Serena Altschul gave

$5,000 to the Democratic Party in 2004. And producer Edward Forgotson

gave $1,000 to Patrick Kennedy last June, two weeks after the Rhode

Island congressman pleaded guilty to driving under the influence.

Until September, the CBS policy discouraged, but allowed,

contributions; now it forbids them, a spokeswoman said.

An ABC anchor in Wichita, Susan Peters, gave $600 to America Coming

Together. At the CBS station in Memphis, anchor Markova Reed gave to a

Democratic House candidate. And in Boston, host and former anchor Liz

Walker gave $4,000 to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats; the station

said this was allowed, because at the time she was hosting a public

affairs show. Now that she's back doing news segments, she can't

donate.

At the Fox TV station in Omaha, reporter Calvert Collins learned that

there's no such thing as a private, personal donation. And there's no

such thing as a personal page on Facebook, either.

'Vote for him Tuesday, Nov. 7!'

Collins, a 23-year-old reporter for Fox station KPTM in Omaha, said

that her father actually wrote the check for $500 to Jim Esch, the

Democrat who lost a House race last fall.

"I had told my dad that I was friends with this man. He said, 'Would

you like me to make a donation?' I said, 'That's up to you, but don't

do it in my name.'"

The reporter also posted a photo of herself with Esch on her Facebook

page, with the note, "Vote for him Tuesday, Nov. 7!" After the photo

was posted on a Nebraska political blog, she apologized but explained

that "it is part of my job to build rapport with candidates and

incumbents during election season."

"I foolishly wrote, in jest, to vote for him, and forgot completely

that that was on there," Collins told MSNBC.com. "When my boss heard

about it, I immediately removed it."

"In a way, I'm glad this happened to me at age 23, and not 33,"

Collins said, "and I will learn from it."

'I would never qualify what we do as journalism'

If you don't trust the mainstream media, perhaps you prefer to get

your news from, say, MTV.

The concept of staying off the field of battle was a completely new

one to MTV's "Choose or Lose" presidential campaign correspondent in

2000 and 2004. Gideon Yago, whose first appearance on MTV was on the

game show "Idiot Savants," gave $200 to Wesley Clark's 2004

presidential campaign, $500 to the Democratic Party, and $500 to

America Coming Together. MTV advertised his reports as unbiased.

"I don't understand. Things that I do as a private citizen?" Yago

asked. " I mean, what the f---, man?"

Yago said he always tried to be fair. "We're not a traditional news

network in the sense of NBC or Fox or CBS," he said. "I would never

qualify what we do as journalism. But we're sensitive about equal time

or fairness."

He said his reporting in Iraq for MTV prompted him to give $250 to

VoteVets, which is running ads criticizing President Bush's handling

of Iraq. "After my second trip to Iraq in 2004, I felt the

conventional news media was not doing a good enough job of conveying

the horrors and the failures of the war in Iraq," Yago said. "I was

never told by my boss or anyone that we couldn't give to a campaign."

'People I don't like'

Although donations are banned for journalists at Dow Jones - if they

would be considered newsworthy, the policy says - several staffers at

The Wall Street Journal made donations. Senior special writer Henny

Sender said she was just back from Asia and didn't know the Journal's

rules when she gave $300 to Kerry in 2004. The editor of the Weekend

Journal, Eben Shapiro, gave $1,000 to Democratic Victory 2004. He said

the donation was actually the purchase of art at a fundraiser, and

when he was reminded of the paper's policy, he got a refund. Credit

markets editor Billy Mallard at Dow Jones Newswires gave $200 to

MoveOn.org in October and said he "thought MoveOn.org was OK because

it wasn't the Republican Party or Democratic Party." Once MSNBC.com

called, Mallard said, he realized that it was a partisan group and

asked for a refund.

The tally of donors doesn't include a group that gave money to defeat

President Bush by paying to hear the Boss. In 2004, Bruce Springsteen

and other musicians raised money for MoveOn.org and America Coming

Together at a series of 34 concerts billed as "Vote for Change." The

ticket buyers included an MSNBC.com producer and more than 20 other

journalists. Although all of the purchase price went to the effort to

defeat Bush that fall, the intent may have been entirely musical, so

those donors are not on our list unless they made other contributions.

One of the Springsteen fans appears to be a blogging editor at Dow

Jones, Samuel J. Favate Jr., who gave $1,036 to America Coming

Together in 2004. He didn't return phone calls. Favate rewrites press

releases for Dow Jones Newswires in New Jersey, which may explain his

views that corporate America is "really in charge." On his personal

blog, Favate rails against the Iraq war, for gun control and for a tax

audit of Christian psychologist James Dobson. After MSNBC.com left him

a message asking about the blog and his donation, Favate's name

disappeared from the blog. A previous blog listed Favate's "people I

don't like," starting with George Bush. ("You can be sure that I will

be adding to this list from time to time, so try not to piss me off.")

That blog went dark the day after MSNBC.com called.

Dow Jones spokesman Howard Hoffman said it doesn't monitor employee

blogs, "and we're not overly concerned about what Sam did or didn't do

on his blog exercising his free-speech rights."

On the job at Newsday, which forbids donations, section designer and

artist Rita Hall tried to slip an anti-Bush line into a personal

column she wrote. Hall gave $210 to Hillary Clinton in March 2006.

"Dig deeper," she said. "I gave $2,000 to Kerry. I'm not allowed to do

this. I know it's against the rules. I'll probably get fired. They're

looking for any excuse to cut staff here."

Hall said she wrote a column about her son, who won the "Top Chef"

competition on the Bravo network. "In passing I mentioned that I was

interested in finding people who hated Bush as much as I did. They

took that out. My view is: You're still going to have an opinion

whether you admit to it or not. If you don't admit to it, you're being

dishonest. Let's be transparent."

Hall didn't disclose her donations to her editors - or the readers of

Newsday.

The new bumper sticker

Several of the journalists reasoned that their activism is acceptable

precisely because the public would not know - unless they go to the

trouble to search the FEC records.

"A lot of us want to be politically active. But marching in a war

protest isn't an option, being a recognizable person, so we give with

our checkbook," said Alix Kendall, the morning anchor for Fox station

KMSP in Minneapolis, who gave $250 in September to the Midwest Values

PAC, which passed the money on to Democratic candidates. "I don't

think that working for a news organization I give up my rights. I

interview plenty of people that I don't agree with, but I also ask

questions to get the other side."

Senior editors, who every day are accused of a bias one way or

another, may be more sensitive to appearances. Several editors said

they are thinking of tightening their policies, lest they keep handing

ammunition to critics.

At the Muskegon Chronicle, a daily newspaper in Michigan, reporter

Terry Judd gave $1,900 to the Democratic National Committee in six

contributions from 2004 through 2006; and $2,000 to Kerry in March

2004. "You caught me," Judd said. "I guess I was just doing it on the

side."

His editors said they're not sure there is an "on the side."

"This information makes us want to think farther and more deeply about

what we encourage and discourage in reporters," said the metropolitan

editor, John Stephenson. "We have always historically said, you guys

can have any political beliefs you want. Just don't wear your hearts

on your sleeve or your bumper.

"Truthfully, this sort of thing may be the new bumper."

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