"Journalists dole out cash to politicians (quietly)"

Journalists are citizens, too, so in and of itself, no big whoop. So just to whom are these purveyors of "unbiased fact-reporting" donating? Glad you asked. From MSNBC:

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.

OK, so it sounds like pretty balanced donating going on, doesn't it? Well, not exactly. You have to look a little farther down to get to this nugget:

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.

So out of this sample of 144 journalists who gave, 125 of them (or 87%) gave to Democrats and 17 of them (or 12%) gave to Republicans. While it is true that this is only a sample of journos who donate to politicians (and not inclusive of journos who don't give money), the numbers virtually mimic other polls taken over the years that show roughly 85%-90% of journalists vote Democrat in presidential elections. Continuing:

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."

Um, a "false impression that the paper is taking sides"? It's clear from studies like this that the impression is far from "false", people. While our country's MSM sources may not exactly be hanging pictures of "Bush as Hitler" in their newsrooms like the unhinged Beeb does, obviously the American people can see with their own eyes what kind of leftist groupthink occurs in newsrooms across the country.