What About That O'Connor Speech
A friend passed along this Slate article about the lack of press coverage of a recent speech by Sandra Day O'Connor bemoaning Republican attacks on the judiciary. In the speech O'Connor apparently warned that an erosion of judicial independence could lead to dictatorship. The only real coverage of the speech came from NPR's Nina Totenberg and Keith Olbermann, an insufferably smug, self-important ignoramus unworthy of additional pixels.
I actually heard Totenberg's somewhat breathless report on NPR the morning after the speech. It didn't seem particularly noteworthy and I assumed Totenberg was reporting on it primarily because she had attended the event which was not widely attended. But liberal bloggers are up in arms over the press's ignoring the speech, pointing to this as further evidence that the press protects the Bush administration. But as this Slate article makes clear, the speech simply was not news.
Contrary to what many apparently believe, it is not the press's job to publicize criticisms of Republicans. It is instead the job of the press to find and report "news" - i.e., things we don't already know. O'Connor focused on comments made by Tome DeLay and Sen. John Cornyn early last year - moronic comments that were at the time widely covered and roundly denounced. She didn't much care for the comments. So the press is supposed to give major coverage to the earth-shattering revelation that a retired Supreme Court justice thought that a Senator's suggestion that activist judges are just asking to be shot was out of line? Or that efforts to restrict the judiciary's independence is a bad idea? Now if O'Connor said in her speech that the judiciary ought to be reined in or that Cornyn had a point about activist judges, that would be news. But she said nothing of the sort - in fact what she did say she'd already said before, as the Slate article makes clear:
I actually heard Totenberg's somewhat breathless report on NPR the morning after the speech. It didn't seem particularly noteworthy and I assumed Totenberg was reporting on it primarily because she had attended the event which was not widely attended. But liberal bloggers are up in arms over the press's ignoring the speech, pointing to this as further evidence that the press protects the Bush administration. But as this Slate article makes clear, the speech simply was not news.
Contrary to what many apparently believe, it is not the press's job to publicize criticisms of Republicans. It is instead the job of the press to find and report "news" - i.e., things we don't already know. O'Connor focused on comments made by Tome DeLay and Sen. John Cornyn early last year - moronic comments that were at the time widely covered and roundly denounced. She didn't much care for the comments. So the press is supposed to give major coverage to the earth-shattering revelation that a retired Supreme Court justice thought that a Senator's suggestion that activist judges are just asking to be shot was out of line? Or that efforts to restrict the judiciary's independence is a bad idea? Now if O'Connor said in her speech that the judiciary ought to be reined in or that Cornyn had a point about activist judges, that would be news. But she said nothing of the sort - in fact what she did say she'd already said before, as the Slate article makes clear:
To begin with, the Georgetown talk wasn't the first in which O'Connor had chided congressional meddlers, and it won't be the last...Last July she lamented the threat posed to an independent judiciary by "some members of Congress." Ralph Thomas of the Seattle Times quoted her as saying, "in our country today, we're seeing … a desire not to have an independent judiciary."The mainstream press ignored the O'Connor talk not because of some hidden agenda - it simply lacked any news content.
posted by ziel | 3/15/2006 11:03:00 PM
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