DATA: New York Times employee political donations
The New York Times has a reputation of being fair and impartial. Is it? Let's have a look at where their employees donate their political cash.
After reading a recent article where another New York Times ‘journalist’ repeated the term ‘far right’ to describe someone he disagrees with, I wanted to see if the donations reported by NYT’s own employees would show this impartiality.
The first place we have to go is to NYT’s own guidelines on ethical journalism titled:
Ethical Journalism
A Handbook of Values and Practices for the News and Opinion Departments
You can view the entire backed-up handbook here. The most recent update to the handbook is June 20, 2024.
Who is this for?
According to the guidelines, these rules apply to:
These guidelines generally apply to all members of the news and opinion departments whose work directly affects the content of the paper, including those on leaves of absence. *(emphasis added)
They include reporters, editors, opinion writers, photographers, picture editors, art directors, artists, designers, graphics editors and researchers. This group of professional journalists is what this text means by “staff ” or “staff members.”
News clerks, administrative assistants, secretaries and other support staff are generally not bound by these strictures, with two important exceptions: First, no newsroom or opinion employee may exploit for personal gain any nonpublic information acquired at work, or use his or her association with The Times to gain favor or advantage. And second, no one may do anything that damages The Times’s reputation for strict neutrality in reporting on politics and government; in particular, no one may wear campaign buttons or display any other form of political partisanship while on the job.
Our contracts with freelance contributors require them to avoid conflicts of interest, real or apparent. In keeping with that, they must honor these guidelines in their Times assignments, as set forth in Section 14.
So you should NOT see any donations by journalists, editors, photographers, etc.
Got it?
Can applicable staff make donations? Nope.
Staff members may not themselves give money to, or raise money for, any political candidate or election cause. Given the ease of Internet access to public records of campaign contributors, any political giving by a Times staff member would carry a great risk of feeding a false impression that the paper is taking sides.
The Data
So let’s crunch the data. According to the FEC, donors who listed New York Times as an employer donated approximately $25,000 this year. Here’s where they donated.
You can download all donations categorized by recipient in the PDF below.
You can also search the FEC database here.
The WinRed donations are all very interesting as they are all for $1 each and have jobs like Social Worker, Police Officer, Teacher, etc. That’s a very odd type of donation. Almost all donations are ‘earmarked for Doug Burgum for American Inc’. Doug is the govenor of South Dakota.
There are a few randoms like Chris Christie for President in the Winred Pile and a few for Trump.
Did any of these donations violate the NYT policies?
There is at least one ‘journalist’ we tracked down that did violate. According to her LinkedIn she is an Audience Reporter at the New York Times. She has made $700 in donations to Harris Victory Fund, Act Blue, and Harris for Presdident.
Most of the other ‘journalists’ who listed employment for the NYT were ones who donated $1 to Doug Burgum’. You can view the list of donations by donor here.
One of the larger donors at NYTimes isn’t a ‘journalist’, but is an executive on ‘media strategy’. Would that type of person have an influence in coverage? Is that not the purpose of ‘strategy?’
Another donor who contributed over 40 times to Actblue works for the “New York Times Magazine” and is a ‘Freelance Copy Editor’. Perhaps the magazine doesn’t have the same stringent standards on political donations.
Another donor at New York Times is a award winning ‘writer’ who donated 6 times to Act Blue this year.
There’s also a ‘Director’ at NYT that donated multiple times to ActBlue. According to his linkedin he moved to another company in June.
There’s also a ‘director of strategy’ who made 5 donations to “Harris for President” since July.
There’s also a New York Times editor who donated 6 times to ActBlue. He recently worked on an article titled:
There’s a Copywriter who donated in July to Actblue.
One really weird thing in this are the employees listed as nurse or dentist who somehow donated to WinRed and Doug Burgum. Why would all those people whose jobs are clearly not affiliated with New York Times be donating $1 and list NYT as an employer? It’s probably a glitch, but it’s a weird one.
If the donations to WinRed are a glitch in the ‘employer’ category, then almost all of the New York Times employees donate to left wing causes. While the amounts don’t total up to a tremendous amount, does the NYT give in other ways like providing positive coverage?
I’m leaving the names of these people out intentionally. You can find them in the public records provided by the FEC if you want. If these employees didn’t make all these donations, perhaps this will motivate the NYT to investigate ActBlue donor fraud as reported by James O’Keef.
All mainstream media is biased and corrupt. I'm sure they all make political donations.