GOTCHA!

Investigative reporting, which increasingly relies on the power of computer search engines to prowl databases for items that, to be kind, appear fishy, can turn up the oddest things.

Like journalists giving to political campaigns.

Bill Dedman, MSNBC's investigative reporter, recently went looking through the public records of the Federal Election Commission and identified 144 journalists who had made such donations from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign. Most of the contributions -- 125 -- went into the pockets of Democratic candidates or to liberal causes.

Cybergossip Matt Drudge sensed a big story and bannered a link to Dedman's reporting on his Drudge Report. Conservative bloggers picked it up and ran with it -- further confirmation, no doubt, of liberal media bias.

What were these people thinking? This isn't just stupid, it's dumb and dumber. And let me just say that I imagine every editor worth his or her salt spent some amount of time scanning the names and their news outlets, no doubt hoping to avoid developing an ulcer. Safe to say, most could hold the antacid.

What's most remarkable about Dedman's inquiry is the small number of journalists who would give a donation -- and the lack of a really big fish among those who did. (Full disclosure: The Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning movie critic, Stephen Hunter, as well as Newsweek's Jane Bryant Quinn and Anne Underwood, were named. You can read their responses here, here and here. Also, Newsweek, which is owned by The Washington Post Co., has a cooperative arrangement with MSNBC.)

And what's really at issue, I think, is the age-old question of how far a journalist can go as a participant in a free-flowing democracy such as ours and still be true to his or her vows to remain impartial in reporting the news. Some companies, such as the Post, have very clear guidelines. The Post's policy on contributions? Absolutely not. Yet company policy does not suggest that a reporter or editor not vote, although executive editor Len Downie and some other senior editors voluntarily give up their franchise to avoid the appearance of political favoritism.

Some media companies are not so hidebound. They argue that reporters and editors should be citizens like anyone else, using their discretion to avoid conflicts of interest and checking with management when in doubt. If there is a silver lining here, perhaps it is that all news organizations might review and perhaps strengthen their policies.

The very small number of journalists who would pony up to a candidate or a cause may be indicative of industry pay standards, but I prefer to think it says more about the larger number of journalistic practitioners -- and there are thousands of them -- who know, either because of company policy or instinct, that this is a line that probably shouldn't be crossed.

One immediate fallout of the Dedman expose was at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., which decided to drop the planned addition of an ethics columnist because he was named as a campaign contributor (hat-tip Romenesko). My hunch is that other papers may make similar decisions.

Yet before you buy into the claim that the MSNBC report "proves" the liberal bias of the news media, I'd just add: Get real. If it did, you can bet there would be much bigger fish to fry.