Politico On Media writer Peter Sterne got his hands on a February 11 memo by Gawker Media executive editor John Cook sent to staff urging them to be sure to disclose in their articles if they've given money to the politician(s) they're reporting on.
"I do not care who you vote for, nor do I care what you do with your money," Cook began, adding that (emphases mine):
....for both substantive and strategic reasons, it is wise when writing about politics—or anything, really—to lay out for our readers any publicly available information that may inform their assessment of your views and motives. If you are writing about a political candidate, and you have donated money to that political candidate (or to that political candidate’s opponent), you should disclose that in the post. It does no harm, and it robs our critics of the thrill of looking up your name in a database of FEC records and waving the donations in your face.
[...]
I don’t believe in regulating the political activity of reporters. But I do believe in making our motivations and biases clear to our readers, whether it’s implicit in our writing or explicit in disclosures. Our policy going forward will be to unobtrusively disclose any political donations or activity related to any candidates or institutions we write about.
You'll notice the tone is centered on avoiding embarrassment for the Gawker website, not necessarily a high-minded view of journalists ethics. The FEC does not require the listing of donors to campaigns who give less than $200 in an election cycle. So, for example, a Gawker writer who gave say Hillary Clinton $175 this cycle could rest assured his or her donations would NOT end up publicly-searachable via the FEC website and may consider the advice to disclose the donation irrelevant since it would never be discoverable by a blogger doing a simple Web search.
In closing his memo, Cook added a personal mea culpa about his previous failure at transparency:
Disclosure: I volunteered for the Barack Obama New York primary campaign in 2008. I have written about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton many times without disclosing that, and in many cases I probably should have.
You can read Sterne's full post at Politico here.
