March on Politics

William March, best known for his political blog with the Tampa Tribune, spoke to the class about campaign finance.  This is right up my alley.  Anything that has to do with campaigns, I'm all ears.  I have recently been bitten by the political "bug" as it is known around the nation.

With this bug, came many responsibilities.  One being the recording and organization of campaign financial contributions for the particular campaign I interned with this election season.   My candidate broke records for receiving the highest amount of contributions for a single financial quarter in Florida history...twice.  I was exposed to the websites March showed us just about every day.  Little did I know two of my professors would choose these websites as class lecture topics in the same day.   I am very familiar with the campaign finance websites such as Florida Division of Elections, Florida Election Commission and CQ Money Line.  Websites like these along with many more give an ample amount of detailed information to the public.  You can find out how much money an individual gave to a campaign, each campaign he or she has ever given to and place of occupation.  This is all considered public record.

With all this public record, comes consequences for some people.  Journalists are expected to give unbiased, fact-based news.  Stated in the journalists' code of ethics and many news organizations' policies, an employee must not show objectivity of any kind.  Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC's most popular talk show, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, has been suspended for this very reason.  Olbermann donated money to a few Democratic candidates in Kentucky and Arizona.

After about an hour of researching the public records available to me, I found no record of Keith Olbermann in the databases.  I searched in CQ Moneyline, OpenSecrets and FEC for all three candidates and generated no results.  I presumed he would use his wife's maiden name to donate and then found out he has never been married.  So where is any record of Olbermann donating?  A journalist was the one who found these records and informed MSNBC President, Phil Griffin, who then suspended Mr. Olbermann for two days.  I finally gave up looking and decided to leave it to the pros.

This entire MSNBC ordeal is now sparking up conversation amongst journalists and activists alike.  Their argument is that contributing to a candidate is as much a journalist's right as anyone else's.  Why shouldn't a journalist be allowed to support a political candidate?  Especially a journalist who is part of a well-known partisan news network.  Everyone can agree that MSNBC leans to the left and Fox News leans to the right.   Of course a conflict of interest would arise if a journalist were to contribute to a certain candidate then must interview the opposition, but if it is common knowledge on where these organizations stand, it should not be an issue.  Not only these media outlets are known to be partisan and biased, most actually are.  The same beliefs can apply to NPR, St. Petersburg Times and even William March, who, in my opinion, is obvious in which way he leans.