NPR Employees Give to Democrats, One Guy Shocked
at the Washington Post: “Then what the heck is Post reporter Evelyn Nieves doing giving $500 to Ross Mirkarimi, Green Party candidate for San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors?”
Petrelis then shifted his gaze to NPR. He’d read with close interest the column ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin posted November 9 at npr.org. Dvorkin told the tale of Michele Norris, an All Things Considered host who’d been pulled off political stories because her husband was a senior adviser to the John Kerry campaign.
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“At a certain point,” Dvorkin went on, “complete disclosure becomes absurd.” He wasn’t certain where that point was, but “the final product should be the evidence. If there is a failure of journalism, it will soon be obvious. If there is no evidence of bias on the radio, the journalists should be allowed to get on with their jobs.”
Thanks to research Petrelis had already done, he knew this instruction hadn’t been followed to the letter. He promptly sent Dvorkin a list of 13 contributions by seven NPR employees. “So what is NPR management doing about the donations?” he wanted to know. “Is management aware of the donations? Will NPR ask that the contributions be returned? Should NPR post the donations on its web site or include the information in an on-air story? If it’s determined the giving broke NPR policy, will the journalists be reprimanded? A prompt reply is respectfully requested and appreciated.”
If it’s Dvorkin’s belief that keeping up appearances isn’t a good enough reason to forbid NPR journalists to give money to candidates, I’m tempted to agree with him. What I’m certain of is that NPR hasn’t thought through the question of how things look.
Umansky told me the Flintoff-Derby contribution didn’t count anyway, because the ethics code didn’t become effective until February 25, 2004. So in the in-every-sense-of-the-word-a-journalist category, that leaves only science correspondent Michelle Trudeau. She gave $500 to Dean for America last September and, after the code was put in place, $500 to John Kerry for President Inc. in May.
