The Corruption of Supreme Court Coverage

In 1979, Renata Adler, a New Yorker staff writer and Yale Law School graduate, wrote a negative review of The Brethren, Bob Woodward's and Scott Armstrong's book on the inner workings of the Supreme Court, for the front page of The New York Times Book Review.

Today there is no chance that a review like Adler's would appear in The Times because it so clearly anatomized the flaws of Supreme Court journalism - most recently evident in coverage of flags flown above homes of Justice Samuel Alito.

Understanding how the attack on Alito fits into long-term journalistic malpractice involving the Court means examining the trends Adler pinpointed and tracing them to the present.

In her review, Adler honed in on the basic problems of applying investigative reporting to Supreme Court law.

The mismatch between the aims of justices and journalists, some of the latter of whom are also connected to government-funded law schools staffed by liberal legal scholars, could not be more stark.

Justice Gorsuch has been tarred over a property in which he owned a stake.

Chief Justice Roberts has received flak over his wife's work in the legal recruiting field based on comments from an ex-colleague let go from her firm.

Its real function is to allow ethics experts to decry the justices and Democrat politicos to tie the Supreme Court to a broader "Dark money scheme." The deeper aim of the exercise is cruder still: as New Republic editor Michael Tomasky, an influence on the Biden White House, put it last year, "The Democrats Need to Destroy Clarence Thomas's Reputation: They'll never successfully impeach him. But so what? Make him a metaphor for every insidious thing the far right has done to this country." The recent attacks on Justice Alito represent recognizable continuations of this playbook.

Liberal neighbors of the justice were sources for The New York Times' Jodi Kantor, a "Star" reporter known for driving highly political narratives, for a story about a politically symbolic flag the justice's wife had put up after a dispute with a neighbor in 2021.

A Democrat representative introduced a resolution censuring the justice on the logic that it "Kind of put[s] a scarlet letter on him" and, presumably, on any decisions he helps the Court reach.

The journalists targeting the justices should be as well. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/05/the_corruption_of_supreme_court_coverage.html