The New York Times’ Standards Editor reminds the staff of their rules of “Ethical Journalism.” There’s nothing about accurate, balanced articles in those rules; they’re all about avoiding obvious politicking that might tend to give people the right idea. For example:
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.
He says it explicitly: the problem isn’t supporting the candidate; the problem is the Internet makes it easy for people to know that you’re supporting the candidate. You don’t want to feed a “false impression” of bias. (He must have chuckled as he wrote that one.) Anyway, that ship has already sailed.
(Via LGF.)
UPDATE: It’s old, but I’m reminded of this as another sort of thing the NYT might want to avoid.
Internet Scofflaw 