Should Fox be Required to Reveal its Conflict of Interest?

I don’t know how you could possibly draw the line, but it seems less ethically shady for a company to give money to both parties, even if it gives twice as much to one party as the other.

That sort of donation sounds more like “we’re trying to gain some benefit here (fewer restrictions on business? etc.), and we’re going to donate to both parties to cover our asses.” A donation to only one party sounds like “we want this party to win.”

So does the “chortle” mean you expect to find little or no contributions? Or you expect to find the contributions to the GOP outweighing those to the Dems by, say, 2:1?

Like we find with GE (NBC) and Disney (ABC), but in the other direction?

As I noted corporations tend to donate to who they think the winners will be.

If you want to be fair with your cites note what GE and Disney did in 2004:

GE in 2004 (cite):

Disney in 2004 (cite):

As you can see they seem to bend the way the wind is blowing. 2008 was a no-brainer the Republicans would take a bath so corporations bet heavy on Dems. They were right and it paid off for them.

OK, so in your view, this:

MegaCorp gives $2,000,000 to Democrats and $1,000,000 to Republicans

is fine, but this:

MegaCorp gives $1,000,000 to Democrats and $0 to Republicans

is not?

One should trigger disclosures about bias, but the other should not?

I’d rather not assume either way, so what did Newscorp give to the Democrats?

Oh, absolutely.

But did the 2008 donations trigger the need for those corporations to disclose their bias during their news stories?

I’m guessing you got those numbers from OpenSecrets? As far as I can tell that is a conglomeration of all individual donations (i.e., employees of GE). Is that correct?

Do you know of any way to break down which parts of that are from the company itself… and am I wrong in stating that before the recent Supreme Court ruling the company itself couldn’t make the type of donation directly to the parties that News Corp just made?

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000125

Also, somewhat interesting to notice the totals from 1990-2010 for GE: Dems, 51%, Reps, 48%.

Well, that certainly changes things, Bricker.
Would you happen to know what the GE and Walt Disney gave to the Democrats and Republicans as corporations?

My guess? The ratio of Newscorp’s Republican to Democrat contributions will be comparable to, but still higher than, the reciprocal ratio for both GE and Disney. Side bet: I’d also expect to see that, over the years, GE’s and Disney’s contributions varied a lot more according to which party was in power than did Newscorp’s.

The chortle was an ill-defined, and perhaps unwarranted, personal response to a combination of the notion of Newscorp financing the Democrats and the unmentioned assumption that any such contributions weren’t worth noting.

My second post has a link to a CNN story with information about how money the political action committees of Time Warner, News Corp., and so on gave to the two parties. That should be distinct from donations by employees.

Well, we need a little more than “guesses” to make a debate.

Sorry about that

Of course. Much better to get all the facts first, and then figure out what your principled position should be. Anyone can see that.

In 2008, Newscorp gave a TOTAL of $242,850; 53% to Democrats, 47% to Republicans.

From the site you provided

Yes.

No.

It lists the PAC contributions.

See my link above.

Depends on when “before” is.

Sure. And News Corp’s totals: 54 percent of its donations to Democrats and 46 percent to Republicans.

Chortle. :rolleyes:

I’m not much of a supporter of blind faith in anything.

I think this sums up the issue well and why this particular donation seems “special” to us somehow:

Newscorp is waaaay out there ahead of the other two on this one and distinctly skewed in comparison.

You’ll have to excuse me if I’m dubious of the exact veracity of this statement. Rightwingers, of late, have had the bad habit of saying “Obama received X millions from Y corporation!”, without disclosing that the donations actually came from individual employees of that organization. So how much from NewsCorp, the corporation?

I see.

So let’s consider Newsweb Corporation, a publisher of ethnic and alternative newspapers in the United States; they also own television and radio stations.

Since 2002, they’ve given over $7.5 million to the Democrats, and $0 to the Republicans. Absolutely zero. In fact, since 1990, they’ve given $0 tot he Republicans.

They should be running some kind of disclaimer or disclosure – right?

Time Warner’s split in 2008 was 81% Democrat ($2.35 million) and only 19% GOP. Disclosure needed?

And why is the Governor’s Association so special? You note that Time Warner gave the DGA $35K and the RGA $25K, which is somewhat even, I grant. But overall, Time Warner gave Democrats over 80% of their money.

I don’t see what line you’re drawing that somehow excludes Time Warner but snags News Corp.

That is the corporation.

Newsweb Corporation has donated that money to Democrats, or Newsweb employees? 'Cause I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if employees at such a company donate to Liberal politicians.