Revealing Campaign Contributions from Academia and the Mainstream Media

People forget how much the world has changed since 9/11. Before 9/11, people seriously debated the question of whether or not a liberal bias existed in the media and whether or not professors at our major universities are overwhelmingly liberal. Liberals tended to dispute these notions because, if you lean left, a liberal bias feels like objectivity. It is only when you disagree with the liberal view that the biases become transparently obvious.

Nowadays, almost no one seriously disputes the idea that academia and the media both lean far to the left. Even so, the evidence concerning how far left they lean never ceases to surprise me. A new report on campaign donations by university employees yielded these amazing results (via Instapundit):


As you can see, for the top 10 university donors, almost 90% of the donations went to Democrats. This calls to mind another recent inquiry into the campaign contributions of journalists, which you can find here:

Journalists dole out cash to politicians (quietly)

MSNBC.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.

I plotted these numbers up so you can get a visual image of this:


Again, almost 90% of the media donors contributed to Democrats. As such, stories like this should come as no surprise:

Rove Incident Causes Editor to Declare: Keep Political Views to Yourself

By E&P Staff

Published: August 15, 2007 10:15 AM ET

NEW YORK No matter what you think of Karl Rove -- or anyone else in politics -- please keep it to yourself, or at least falrly quiet. That was the message in a note sent to staffers at the Seattle Times by Executive Editor Dave Boardman after what he called "an awkward moment at yesterday's news meeting."

What happened? According to Boardman in the latest email installment of what he calls "Dave's Raves" it was this: "When word came in of Karl Rove's resignation, several people in the meeting started cheering. That sort of expression is simply not appropriate for a newsroom....As we head into a major political year, now's a good time to remember: Please keep your personal politics to yourself."

Professors and reporters alike are waging jihad against their own president while remaining comparatively tolerant of (or willfully ignorant of) the incredible atrocities committed by al Qaeda in Iraq. I don't know about professors, but, as I documented yesterday, reporters seem to be slowly awakening from their deep slumber on this issue despite their obvious hatred of Bush and Rove.

Could it be that al Qaeda's surge of violence targeting innocent civilians will be recognized by the media for what it is? Ralph Peters recognizes it for what it is (via RealClearPolitics):

Killing for Congress: Iraq's Latest Massacres

But the second reason for those dramatic bombings was that al Qaeda needs to portray Iraq as a continuing failure of U.S. policy. Those dead and maimed Yazidis were just props: The intended audience was Congress.

Al Qaeda has been badly battered. It's lost top leaders and thousands of cadres. Even more painful for the Islamists, they've lost ground among the people of Iraq, including former allies. Iraqis got a good taste of al Qaeda. Now they're spitting it out.

The foreign terrorists slaughtering the innocent recognize that their only remaining hope of pulling off a come-from-way-behind win is to convince your senator and your congressman or -woman that it's politically expedient to hand a default victory to a defeated al Qaeda.
...
Meanwhile, our military progress has become undeniable. Even Democratic presidential aspirants have started hedging their peace-at-any-price positions. To the horror of al Qaeda and left-wing bloggers alike, cutting and running is starting to look unfashionable.

Well, I'd say al Qaeda is killing for the liberal anti-Bush media as well, but the main point is sound. And Peters agrees with a point I have been making for a while now, which is that the attempt to bring democracy to Iraq has, unfortunately, been transformed into a war against al Qaeda (and, in his view, Iran):

That said, we're not really in Iraq for Iraq's sake now, but for our own. The long-mismanaged situation has morphed from a grand attempt to create a model democracy in the Middle East to become a fight for our strategic security - knocking al Qaeda down, keeping Iran out (see sidebar) and shaping a new Iraq that's at least benign where our interests are concerned.

Let's hope reporters and professors alike can break through their anti-Bush hatred and unblind themselves to this transparently obvious reality.