Why today's journalists need not hide their politics

[Commentary] There was a time when hearing that a bunch of employees of news organizations had given money to candidates in a current election cycle would have caused a stir. Today, not so much.

Megan Wilson, an enterprising reporter for OpenSecrets.org, a blog run by a Washington-based non-profit, has named 235 news-related contributors in a spreadsheet linked to the blog. People working for such respected outlets as The Washington Post, The New York Times, the New York Post, News Corp., Vanity Fair and Reuters are on her list. When the number of media outlets was limited by the physical process of production, including expensive printing presses and a limited broadcast spectrum, journalists were more careful about appearing partisan. It was a business issue as much as an ethical one. With relatively few outlets going for the same mass audience, it was important to be trusted. To be trusted by the greatest possible number of consumers, we carefully concealed our biases. In today's era of narrowcasting, media thrive by focusing on smaller audiences and gaining their trust by mirroring the biases of specialized audiences. Journalists of yesteryear strained to seem like the proverbial man or woman from Mars, remote and uncaring about the outcome of the daily battles over public policy.