Courts

Media Should Be Ashamed Of Itself Over Its SCOTUS Coverage... But That Would Require Critical Reflection

A step-by-step look at how Supreme Court reporting got thoroughly embarrassed by Trump's White House.

By  
on

When Donald Trump announced, on June 29, that he would name his latest Supreme Court nominee on July 9, I likened the scheduled affront to the dignity of the office to the world’s worst game show. America’s chief executive would determine the shape of decades of law based on a last-minute cram session that would make a college sophomore blush all to meet an artificial deadline of his own making.

But it would be a hell of a show, folks!

Ultimately, the pick was Judge Kavanaugh… just like everyone assumed it would be when this all started.[1] But jumping right to the obvious conclusion would have made for boring television. So instead, at every stage of this game, hapless media members got thoroughly embarrassed by an administration that knew how to play them like horny housemates vying for an immunity challenge.

Trump’s contrived reveal show was always intended as a transparent distraction from the bad press piling up on the White House stoop. But when it came to pushing “kidnapped children” below the fold, the Trump team didn’t rely on the media to fill its own schedule with SCOTUS talk… they affirmatively manufactured content that the media gleefully spit up daily.

When Trump announced his timeline, Judge Kavanaugh and Judge Kethledge broke away from the pack. Two highly regarded conservative jurists… two Kennedy clerks… one of them didn’t go to Harvard or Yale… do you think Kennedy retired based on a backroom deal to replace him with one of his clerks? All fascinating plotlines, but certainly not enough to fill a week and a half of speculation.

Enter Judge Amy Coney Barrett, entering the media circus from “well-placed sources” and promptly earning baseless pronouncements of certitude from CNN. Now Trump was considering the newcomer to the bench who gained notoriety after Senator Feinstein questioned Barrett’s scholarly work on religion and adjudication. Conservative legal pundits blasted Feinstein — and by extension all Democrats who dared question Barrett — for anti-Catholic bias. Never mind that Feinstein was raised Catholic herself. They just wanted the media to repeat “Feinstein attacks Catholic faith” uncritically until the public started to see the senator as the villain in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ 2: The Passioning.[2] Anti-Semitism still sells.

Kavanaugh vs. Barrett brought a new round of “swamp monster” vs. “the outsider from the heartland” tropes. We could muse that Barrett’s ascendency represented an appetite on the Right to overrule Roe outright vs. the “death of a thousand cuts” method that mainline conservatives planned to ride to four-week abortion cutoffs in the near future. I certainly joined in this speculation in the early days.

Sponsored

But then it all became a little too obvious and some started to see the cracks.

It was just a bit too convenient that every one of these shortlisters opened the door to another “irresistible” news cycle. They may all be paint-by-numbers Federalist Society loyalists, but their minor biographical differences just happened to set up a new round of takes. The gurus at the White House shifted them around like clockwork every news cycle to keep people talking.

Kennedy clerks and the precise nature of Roe‘s demise took care of the first couple of days. Then Judge Thapar’s candidacy picked up some steam — not enough to dislodge the top trio, but just enough to energize a bored media — and we got a spate of “Is Mitch McConnell taking over this process with his preferred candidate surging?” cocktail chatter. After 18 hours or so, that died down and we started getting the gauzy “golly gee, aren’t they a nice person” posts, amplified on social media by those setting up the inevitable “how dare the Democrats ask him those unfair questions about Brown vs. Board… it’s so uncivil” attacks. Then just to keep us on our toes, we closed this off with Judge Hardiman — a complete non-entity this whole cycle — reemerging as a front-runner. That’s a solid week and a half of takes all painstakingly engineered by White-House-approved-but-don’t-tell-anyone leaks served up with a flourish by an uncritical media.

It should’ve been more obvious. This administration hates leaks. They rail against leakers constantly for showing “disloyalty” to the president. They threaten to prosecute anyone suspected of a leak. Yet the media was getting horserace tips every day and no one complained once. That’s how you know it’s not a leak, it’s propaganda.

Sponsored

Gone dark? Now that silence benefits the White House?

It’s almost like all those juicy leaks Fox and the New York Times and, yes, Above the Law kept getting were really officially sanctioned intel drops to keep everyone chattering about the horserace and dutifully pushing the party line all along.

But now that we’ve got a nominee, outlets are going to be more responsible and not blithely toss out White House buzzwords, right?

Wow.

White House 1. Media 0.

Earlier: Supreme Court Announcement Scheduled Just Like The World’s Worst Game Show

[1] Indeed, we’ve now learned that Justice Kennedy’s retirement was negotiated on the condition that he’d be replaced by his former clerks, rendering this whole affair a complete joke. Funny how that “source familiar” wasn’t divulging this fact earlier in the process, isn’t it?

[2] This was intended as a joke, but, amazingly, Mel Gibson is actually working on a Passion sequel.

HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

Topics

, , ,