Newscorp, which owns Fox News, gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association. The Democratic head of the Democratic Governors Association said:
But Fox has done no such thing. Just yesterday Bill O’Reilly had GOP Gubernatorial Candidate for Ohio John Kasich on, but made no reference to the conflict of interest.
Is the donation unusual for a news agency? Should they have more transparency.
I would think so, maybe other news agencies do it to, but I have never heard about it, and if they did it seems like a bad idea.
That is true. But everything they do is pro conservative. Their donation is not a big shock. Why? Because they are a right wing ,conservative enterprise.
Should we review Ted Turner’s or Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.'s contributions? And then require the disclosure on CNN?
But wait! AOL-Time Warner owns Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., and they’re huge republican donors! So, they should need to spend 10-20 seconds to report their donations each time they interview or take a position on anything?
Does GE (or whatever they are calling the umbrella parent company) make contributions to political parties? Because if they do, then yes, they should also run disclaimers.
Please note that this is different than Murdoch making contributions to political parties. He is free to do whatever he wants and Fox News shouldn’t be tainted by it. But when the company itself makes the contributions, that’s when the viewer should be informed.
I don’t think it would be a bad idea for news organizations to have disclaimers similar to how investment advisors need to. For that matter, I don’t think its a bad idea for corporations to do so (see the recent Target flap). I think people would be surprised how many corporations donate where.
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There’s not any kind of legal requirement that they do so, so they won’t. There’s not much sense in pretending they’re going to do it.
True. Nonetheless this is an enormous and blatant conflict of interest, and it’s just a joke. You really can’t find a more basic ethical issue than this: you can’t donate money to a political party and then present yourself as an unbiased news organization. If News Corp. and Fox don’t take a major hit for this, it’s only because everyone already knows they are in the tank for the Republican Party.
I know Ted Turner is a major donor to Democrats (with a few independents and Republicans sprinkled in), but that’s money from Turner as an individual - not money coming from Time Warner, the company that owns CNN. I welcome a cite if I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am.
Is it ethical for a foreign national to donate money to an American political entity?
I am certain that it is not illegal, but that wasn’t my question.
It isn’t hard for me to imagine a foreign conspiracy to undermine our country’s ideals by promoting those candidates that are most likely to kow-tow to specific foreign interests.
Of course, in this case, the foreign national is Rupert Murdock and he supports the GOP which is supposedly not into ‘internationalism’ (whatever the heck that means these days).
So, I suppose my question is purely rhetorical since this is not what is happening in this instance (… or is it… <insert spooky music here>)
Back in the '96 elections, there was allegations of China trying to donate money to the Presidential Campaign. I think it’s illegal for a foreign government to donate money. Dunno about private individuals.
Nearly all corporations donate to campaigns. No news there.
What I have noticed is corporations often donate to a lot of sides. Rather than choosing a party they want to choose the winners so the people who get to congress are beholden to them…whatever their political stripe. Rarely do they want to go all in for one side or the other else, if they make the wrong bet, the winning side will tell them to fuck off next time they come hat-in-hand.
In the case of Newscorp they are clearly pushing for one side. Also considering they report the news (at least they pretend at that) then a conflict of interest is relevant. For instance a stand-in host the other day on the Rachel Maddow show made it clear the guy he was interviewing was his father-in-law. I think that is good, open reporting.
Is it illegal for Newscorp to not divulge that? No (I don’t think so anyway). Should they when doing political reporting from now till the election? Yeah if they had any sense of responsibility in reporting. Since we already know they don’t and couldn’t give a fuck about that we know they won’t.
Not like them pushing for the Republicans is news anyway. You’d have had to be in a coma the last 10 years to miss it. Jon Stewart talking about this last night noted that really, the Republican party should be paying FOX for this kind of support. Was funny and scary because that makes sense.