PBS's Judy Woodruff Also Gave to the Clinton Foundation
Judy Woodruff's 2010 donation of $250 brings up a more complicated set of ethics questions.
In the final few paragraphs of The Wall Street Journal story on George Stephanopoulos’ apology for failing to disclose his $75,000 donation to the Clinton Foundation was news of another journalist’s donation. In 2010 PBS NewsHour co-anchor Judy Woodruff gave $250 to the Clinton Foundation for earthquake relief in Haiti.
An undisclosed $75,000 donation is a much clearer ethics violation than a $250 one, but the contrast perfectly shows the trickiness of establishing hard and fast boundaries. Should disclosure come with a minimum donation rate? For a political reporter, does a journalistic conflict happen when you give just a single dollar, even if the cause itself is apolitical? And is this a failure-to-disclose problem, a shouldn’t-have-donated-in-the-first-place problem, or both? There is a haziness similar to the 2012 debate about the ethics of journalists contributing to the Romney and Obama campaigns, even when the journalists didn’t cover politics.
There
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