An Amazing Litany of Bias and Misrepresentation

My introduction to writing interpretative essays goes back to ninth grade. I fell in love with Greek and Roman mythology and later transferred that infatuation to some of the great Greek philosophers. Like everything else that goes back more than a few months, however, I have almost completely forgotten almost everything.

But to this day, I remember reading about Diogenes, the Cynic, who ambled around ancient Greek looking for an honest man. Even with lantern in hand, there is no evidence he found one.

But, in fact, there are honest men and women, then and now, people whom, whatever their own predilections on a subject, insist that we treat the matter with accuracy and sincerity. And, in the case of abortion, when there is no evidence the individual is pro-life yet he or she demands fair treatment, it makes what they have to say all the more important.

More than once I've had occasion to mention Stuart Taylor. Taylor is Nonresident Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institute and a former New York Times reporter. A contributing editor to Newsweek, he is a prolific writer who frequently appears on a host of television programs.

His most recent column in the National Journal ran Monday under the headline, "Alito: A Sampling of Misleading Media Coverage." It is a devastating critique of some (to put it generously) shoddy reporting that is the very epitome of why the Mainstream Media is in such desperate straits. If you wish to read the column in its entirety, drop me a line at dandrusko@nrlc.org.

As you would expect from the excellent reporter that he was and is, Taylor's opening paragraph summarizes his argument:

"A sometimes subtle but unmistakable pattern has emerged in major news organizations' coverage of Judge Samuel Alito's Supreme Court nomination," Taylor writes. "Through various mixes of factual distortions, tendentious wording, and uncritical parroting of misleading attacks by liberal critics, some (but not all) reporters insinuate that Alito is a slippery character who will say whatever senators want to hear, especially by 'distancing himself' from past statements that (these reporters imply) show him to be a conservative ideologue."

If you think about it, short of selling your journalistic soul, that pretty much encompasses all the cardinal sins a reporter can commit.

Taylor cites reporters who make galactic generalizations, alleging this or that shortcoming on Alito's part. However, had they done their homework, they could easily have found clear exceptions to their rule. Still other reporters whack Judge Alito for alleged deficiencies in the beginning of their accounts, only to slip in information later in the story that undermines their lead sentences.

(This is why reporters have editors. Not just to correct typos and straighten out grammar [as well as keep the newspaper out of legal jeopardy], but also to show the reporter when his story is confused, conflicted, or simply not well written.)

Other times, Taylor writes, reporters attribute attitudes and behavior to Judge Alito that are not even tenuously rooted in fact. At the top of the list is either Judge Alito's supposed "insincerity" or allegations that he has "backed off" from things he has written in the past.

But "Such suggestions of insincerity are not based on anything that Alito has said," Taylor writes. "They are based on misleading characterizations by reporters of what senators say Alito has said in private meetings with them. Needless to say, some of these senators are spinning their own agendas."

And so on. There are many other examples, but I think the point need not be belabored.

Like Chief Justice John Roberts, Judge Alito is scary bright. Like Chief Justice Roberts, he is admired by a broad cross-section of thoughtful people.

According to Taylor, why is Alito "widely admired by liberals, moderates, and conservatives"? Because they "know him well as fair-minded, committed to apolitical judging, and wedded to no ideological agenda other than restraint in the exercise of judicial power."