An arbitrator has ruled there was nothing wrong with my $500 donation to Michigan Democrats in 2004.
Last year, Free Press managers told me they might fire me if I continued to give money to political parties.
The Newspaper Guild filed a grievance, and the managers denied it. Early this year, there was a hearing for the binding arbitration that is called for in the union contract with the Free Press.
Arbitrator Paul Glendon ruled late in May that I didn’t violate Free Press ethical guidelines when I made the contribution to a political party. He set aside a new management edict in June 2007 that was specially designed to ban the kind of donation I made. The new company rule is “null and void,” Glendon wrote. The Free Press ethics policy in effect until June 2007 didn’t prohibit political donations.
Free Press staffers are now free to make political contributions in this highly political presidential election year. Want to give to your favorite GOP or Dem? No problem. No need to ask permission of editors. Surprise! Journalists are citizens, too. It’s my contention that we always had that right.
In an ironic twist, the ruling clears Free Press Editor Paul Anger of having violated his own ban on donations. A couple weeks after the new rule was announced, Anger contributed $175 to the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee. In his testimony during the arbitration hearing, Anger tried to minimize the importance of his donataion. It was paid for by Gannett, owner of the Free Press, he said. “A company expense,” he called it.
In June 2007, Free Press managers learned about my donation in an MSNBC report about journalists’ contributions to political causes. I’d made no secret of it. My contribution was listed on the Michigan Secretary of State website. I never told editors about it because I believed it was none of their business.
Reacting to the MSNBC report, Free Press editors re-wrote the paper’s ethics policy to prohibit donations like the one I made. They also told me that if I made another political donation, I’d be subject to discipline up to and including termination.
Glendon’s order that the Free Press repeal its anti-donation rule was good news to me, since I believe that journalists don’t give up their constitutional right to take part in the political process when they enter the profession. When I was interviewed by MSNBC’s Bill Dedman, I pointed out that I hadn’t violated the Free Press ethics policy. Nor had I violated the professional integrity section of Guild’s labor contract with the Free Press.
“Whatever the Free Press policy is,” I told Dedman, “I actually have my own policy about that: I’m a citizen of the United States. I have a right to support whatever candidate I like.”
The arbitrator agreed.
Before my case with the Free Press, there was no precedent in this area. Now we have a ruling that says journalists are free to make political donations. I hope the ruling will have an impact on restrictive ethics policies around the country.
Guild attorney Duane Ice argued during the hearing that Article XI, Section 7 of The Newspaper Guild contract with the Free Press guarantees the employer can’t meddle in workers’ extracurricular activities so long as those activities don’t harm the paper’s integrity: According to that section, “There shall be no limitation upon the outside activities of any person employed by the Free Press, except that no such person shall engage in any activity that compromises the integrity of the newspaper.”
I got the good news in an email from Lou Mleczko, president of Local 22 of The Newspaper Guild.
“We won!” Lou told me. “Arbitrator Paul Glendon ruled in our favor on our political contribution grievance. Although Glendon dismissed the portion of our grievance that the warnings issued to you violated the contract, he ordered the new rule prohibiting political contributions for all editorial employees set aside and declared null and void retroactive to the date when it was promulgated, June 25, 2007.”
“It was a seven-page decision,” Lou told me. “Glendon said the Free Press failed to show any evidence that your political contribution compromised or affected the integrity of the Free Press in any way.”
“The Company presented no such proof,” Glendon wrote. “In fact, (Executive Editor Caesar) Andrews … conceded the Company did not possess or even look for evidence that the MSNBC revelation of grievant’s 2004 contribution to the Michigan Democratic Party compromised the Free Press’ integrity. Even in the terms in which management chose to view this (namely, risk of harm to reputation) it failed to make its case, because it had no evidence that even one reader complained.”
Andrews testified he was not aware of the professional integrity section in the Guild contract.
Because I retired before the case was finished, Glendon rejected the Guild’s argument that editors had disciplined me and threatened me with firing if I made another political donation. By retiring while the grievance was pending, I made my “individual complaint moot,” he wrote.
This wasn’t so much about me as it was about establishing that citizens have rights that employers can’t erase just because they chose to be journalists.
Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
Joel,
Congrats on your victory.
But keep this in mind: It could still be wrong for a journalist to take sides, even if the arbitrator says that legally the company can’t prevent you from doing it.
In other words, this wasn’t an ethics ruling. It was a legal ruling.
Ethically, many journalists choose not to give money to candidates, for good reason.