MSNBC published a report today on journalists and their donations to various politicians. The results should come as little surprise:

MSNBC.com identified 144 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 17 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.

Actually, this paragraph is wrong. I went through the list -- which included several employees at the Union-Tribune (and that's all I'm going to say about that) -- and noticed the name of one individual at the Union-Tribune who had donated to Republicans. Unfortunately for the ratio, that one guy is an advertising graphic artist. He creates ads for the advertisers, he's not a journalist nor part of the newsroom.

The pushes the ratio down to 125 to 16.

I've said it before, but I'm glad this sort of information is made public, and I'd love to see more of it. Journalists and journalism would be much better off if we all admitted where we were coming from, honestly strived for objectivity in our news reporting and let our readers decide how well we were doing.

The public sees through the lame idea we've been peddling for decades that journalists come from outer space and we have no political, social, cultural or religious bias. If we really value our credibility as much as we claim to, we'd fess up.

One final comment: Looking at all those donations and judging by those numbers, somehow, over the years, I've gotten the shaft when it comes to remuneration.