Members of the press have donated a boatload of cash to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, according to a new report from the Center for Public Integrity.
“About 430 people who work in journalism have, through August, combined to give about $382,000 to the Democratic nominee,” the watchdog group reported Monday.
Media figures who had donated to Clinton’s campaign include New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum, Russia Today host Larry King, Business Insider’s Melia Robinson, ESPN’s Claire Smith and several journalists who are currently employed by Thomson Reuters.
A Reuters spokesperson said the organization is comfortable with the donations.
“Reuters journalists are permitted to make charitable or political contributions as long as they don’t conflict with their reporting responsibilities,” Abbe Serphos told the Center for Public Integrity.
Nussbaum said of her donations to Clinton, “I rarely write about politics, but it’s true that the [Republican National Convention]-on-TV posts verged on punditry, and I can understand the concern about disclosure.”
She added later that she has decided against contributing to future political campaigns.
“I’m not planning to contribute money in the future,” she said.
The Center for Public Integrity’s analysis found that “journalist-donors” hail from major publications, including the New York Times, as well as “sleepy, small-town dailies.”
The report also found that certain members of media have contributed to GOP nominee Donald Trump’s election effort, though the sum pales in comparison to what Clinton has raised so far from the same industry.
“About 50 identifiable journalists have combined to give about $14,000 to Trump. (Talk radio ideologues, paid TV pundits and the like — think former Trump campaign manager-turned-CNN commentator Corey Lewandowski — are not included in the tally), the report added.
The Trump campaign, which has benefitted in a small way from media donations, claimed that the Center for Public Integrity’s analysis is just further proof that the press is working against the Republican candidate’s campaign.
“Considering that we’re witnessing the single biggest coordinated media attack in political history, it should come as no surprise,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller said in the report. “If the [Federal Election Commission] viewed their biased hit pieces against Mr. Trump as in-kind contributions, they would have exceeded their maximum allowable gift limits a long time ago.”
There are a few points worth noting: First, most of the people mentioned in the Center for Public Integrity’s report are pundits and analysts, and not straight news reporters. And of the reporters who are mentioned, many of them are not political reporters.
Second, no national reporter who is currently covering the Clinton campaign is mentioned in Monday’s analysis.
