Lazy Journalism

I hate it when Journalists are too lazy to do fact checking. I hate it even more when they use incorrect assumptions they hold because of laziness to make the main point of their articles. I hate it even more when they state their assumptions as fact and make ignorant readers even more ignorant. This is one such article.

The first sentence begins the ignorance: "John Roberts faces the unsettling task of reigning in strong-willed and experienced colleagues, including two men he beat out for the job of chief justice, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas." The idea that he "beat out" the sitting associate Justices is what really gets me. Later she states, "If confirmed, Roberts would become the junior member of the court, where the average age is 70. In a twist, he would be its administrative captain." And shortly after this, "But he has never attended a conference where the justices debate cases. The weekly meetings are open only to the nine justices. Roberts would run the sessions, and that requires keeping long-winded justices in line." Basically she is making the case that Roberts has a particularly hard job because he is going to be Chief Justice without ever having been an associate. She also tries to make the case that Thomas and Scalia may be upset about not getting the seat themselves. That might be true, but I hardly think it reasonable to say that "Bush picked the 50-year-old appeals court judge on Monday to succeed William H. Rehnquist, passing over conservative Supreme Court justices the president has praised in the past: Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas " -- passing over implies that it was at least in some way expected that they would be nominated for elevation. And even more absurd is the idea that, "In turning to Roberts, Bush avoided a nasty and lengthy confirmation fight but he may have miffed the sitting justices." Again, to be "miffed" these Justices would have to have thought they were in line for the job.

And now for the facts that make this article so absurd. I obtained these facts in less than 30 minutes searching the web using Google. In the history of the Supreme Court there have only been 16 Chief Justices. Of those 16 only 5 have ever been associate Justices (you can search through all the chief Justices at this link). One of those was John Rutledge who only served 4 months on a recess appointment before being rejected by the Senate. Additionally, he and Charles E. Hughes were not members of the court when they were appointed chief Justice (Rutledge retired in 1791 and was appointed chief in 1795. Hughes retired in 1916 and was appointed chief in 1930). That leaves only three men who were elevated from sitting associate Justice to chief Justice: Edward D. White (appointed chief in December, 1910), Harlan Fiske Stone (appointed chief in July, 1941), and William H. Rehnquist (appointed chief in September, 1986). Therefore it would be completely unreasonable to believe that president Bush would choose a sitting Justice to become chief. In fact, it would be more remarkable and out of synch with history if he did. The sitting Justices mentioned may indeed feel "miffed," but they have no right to feel such, because there is no history to show that they have been "passed over," but rather Bush has followed suit with most of history by leaving them associates. Further, it would be almost as historically similar to promote a retired associate than a sitting associated. So by that logic every previous associate Justice who is still alive (now I'm being lazy, because I don't know if there are any) should feel just as "passed over" as Thomas and Scalia.

Gina Holland is right -- Roberts does have a difficult task ahead. She is also right that Rehnquist's shoes are going to be tough to fill -- for anyone. However, she has absolutely no reason to insinuate that Roberts is going to have any harder a job than the 11 other chief Justices that were never associate Justices. And by stating such as though it were a fact she is causing already ignorant readers to become even more so. I don't know if Ms Holland is aware of the facts that I have presented, but her article makes absolutely no reference to them. And that is irresponsible journalism. In this case the inaccurate representation/lazy reporting is going to have little or no fallout. However, if this kind of thing is going on with these articles there is no reason to believe that the same practice is not being used for articles with far weightier implications and consequences (like the Time piece about Koran flushing that cost lives). Publications ought to strive to make their journalists produce works that are factually sound and give an accurate picture of the story. Otherwise they are going to quickly be replaced by blogs -- if you can't produce something better than some idiot with internet access why do I care about your article? Why on earth would I pay for it? If they don't have something unique and valuable to offer they will be replaced.