MediaWatch: May 1994
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: May 1994
- Amount, Tone of Scandal Coverage Markedly Different Than During the Reagan Era
- NewsBites: Newsweek Loves the Times
- Revolving Door: Formative 60's
- First Lady Called "Candid" and "Responsive" After She Evades Questions
- Vanishing Liberal Bloc?
- Stossel's Scare Special
- Washington Post's America of Cliches
- Janet Cooke Award: NBC's Ann Curry Offers Dire Scenario of Overpopulation Without Citing Sources
Vanishing Liberal Bloc?
The Blackmun Blues
Reporters split into two camps upon the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun: those who hailed him as a liberal and those who failed him as not liberal enough.
Blackmun was "widely regarded as the conscience of the court," Bryant Gumbel told April 6 Today viewers. Reading from the same script that afternoon on CNN's Inside Politics, anchor Judy Woodruff proclaimed Blackmun's "fierce protection of individual rights led some to anoint him the moral conscience of the court." The next day, Los Angeles Times reporter David Savage asserted Blackmun "slowly transformed himself into an outspoken liberal and a champion of justice and fairness."
In an April 7 Associated Press story reporter Laurie Asseo wrote that Blackmun traveled a "philosophical journey that brought him a new sensitivity toward the human beings behind the legal issues." On April 11, The Boston Globe called him an "increasingly passionate advocate of the oppressed and underrepresented."
The April 18 Time honored Blackmun as someone who "underwent a highly public evolution from conservative to liberal jurist, becoming one of the court's most passionate defenders of constitutional liberties for ordinary citizens."
Newsweek's David A. Kaplan led the other camp the same week in an article titled "Why the Court Needs a Liberal," which complained: "John Paul Stevens will be about the closest thing to a liberal that the Supreme Court has left....Blackmun's `liberalism' was apparent only against the right-wing backdrop at the court that emerged in the '80s." The solution? Clinton "should pick an unabashed liberal for the court...because it would enhance the court's prestige for the long term. There hasn't been a liberal nominated since 1967." Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a staunch supporter of abortion rights and opponent of the death penalty, didn't qualify.
New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse told colleagues on the PBS show Washington Week in Review: "As for Harry Blackmun's liberalism, you know, it's everything in context. I think that the last true liberals on the court were Justice Brennan and Justice Marshall." Steven Roberts of U.S. News replied: "Is this the end of the liberal bloc on the court?"
