Philosopher kings or political actors?: How the Media Portary the Supreme Court

Judicature

Volumn 87, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 22-29

  Spill, Rorie L ^a   Oxley, Zoe M ^b  

^a OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNION COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0141543876     PISSN: 00225800     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (45)

1. Fallows, BREAKING THE NEWS: How THE MEDIA UNDERMINE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (New York: Vintage Books, 1997); Patterson, OUT OF ORDER (New York: Vintage Books, 1994); Cappella and Jamieson, SPIRAL OF CYNICISM: THE PRESS AND THE PUBLIC GOOD (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Bennett, NEWS: THE POLITICS OF ILLUSION, 3RD ED. (New York; Longman, 1996).
2. Fallows, BREAKING THE NEWS: How THE MEDIA UNDERMINE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (New York: Vintage Books, 1997); Patterson, OUT OF ORDER (New York: Vintage Books, 1994); Cappella and Jamieson, SPIRAL OF CYNICISM: THE PRESS AND THE PUBLIC GOOD (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Bennett, NEWS: THE POLITICS OF ILLUSION, 3RD ED. (New York; Longman, 1996).
3. Fallows, BREAKING THE NEWS: How THE MEDIA UNDERMINE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (New York: Vintage Books, 1997); Patterson, OUT OF ORDER (New York: Vintage Books, 1994); Cappella and Jamieson, SPIRAL OF CYNICISM: THE PRESS AND THE PUBLIC GOOD (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Bennett, NEWS: THE POLITICS OF ILLUSION, 3RD ED. (New York; Longman, 1996).
4. Fallows, BREAKING THE NEWS: How THE MEDIA UNDERMINE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (New York: Vintage Books, 1997); Patterson, OUT OF ORDER (New York: Vintage Books, 1994); Cappella and Jamieson, SPIRAL OF CYNICISM: THE PRESS AND THE PUBLIC GOOD (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Bennett, NEWS: THE POLITICS OF ILLUSION, 3RD ED. (New York; Longman, 1996).
5. Divided Supreme Court Hands Down Decision: Florida Recount Stops, CBS MORNING NEWS, December 13, 2000. Other examples include: "[t]he conservatives in the majority set aside their concern for states' rights..." (Greenhouse, The 43rd President: News Analysis: Another Kind of Bitter Split, N.Y. Times, December 14, 2000, at A-1) and "[t]he Supreme Court. . . risking its reputation for staying above politics, appeared to end the disputed presidential election" (Denniston, Justice Rule for Bush, Baltimore Sun, December 13, 2000, at 1A).
6. Divided Supreme Court Hands Down Decision: Florida Recount Stops, CBS MORNING NEWS, December 13, 2000. Other examples include: "[t]he conservatives in the majority set aside their concern for states' rights..." (Greenhouse, The 43rd President: News Analysis: Another Kind of Bitter Split, N.Y. Times, December 14, 2000, at A-1) and "[t]he Supreme Court. . . risking its reputation for staying above politics, appeared to end the disputed presidential election" (Denniston, Justice Rule for Bush, Baltimore Sun, December 13, 2000, at 1A).
7. Divided Supreme Court Hands Down Decision: Florida Recount Stops, CBS MORNING NEWS, December 13, 2000. Other examples include: "[t]he conservatives in the majority set aside their concern for states' rights..." (Greenhouse, The 43rd President: News Analysis: Another Kind of Bitter Split, N.Y. Times, December 14, 2000, at A-1) and "[t]he Supreme Court. . . risking its reputation for staying above politics, appeared to end the disputed presidential election" (Denniston, Justice Rule for Bush, Baltimore Sun, December 13, 2000, at 1A).
8. Caldeira, Neither the Purse Nor the Sword: Dynamics of Public Confidence in the Supreme Court, 80 AM. POL. SCI. REV. (1986); Caldeira and Gibson, The Etiology of Public Support for the Supreme Court, 36 AM. J. POL. SCI. (1992); Franklin and Kosaki, Republican Schoolmaster: The U.S. Supreme Court, Public Opinion, and Abortion, 83 AM. POL. SCI. REV. (1989).
9. Caldeira, Neither the Purse Nor the Sword: Dynamics of Public Confidence in the Supreme Court, 80 AM. POL. SCI. REV. (1986); Caldeira and Gibson, The Etiology of Public Support for the Supreme Court, 36 AM. J. POL. SCI. (1992); Franklin and Kosaki, Republican Schoolmaster: The U.S. Supreme Court, Public Opinion, and Abortion, 83 AM. POL. SCI. REV. (1989).
10. Caldeira, Neither the Purse Nor the Sword: Dynamics of Public Confidence in the Supreme Court, 80 AM. POL. SCI. REV. (1986); Caldeira and Gibson, The Etiology of Public Support for the Supreme Court, 36 AM. J. POL. SCI. (1992); Franklin and Kosaki, Republican Schoolmaster: The U.S. Supreme Court, Public Opinion, and Abortion, 83 AM. POL. SCI. REV. (1989).
11. But see Graber, MASS MEDIA AND AMERICAN POLITICS. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1997).
12. Solimine, Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court, 57 JOURNALISM Q. (1980); Katsh, The Supreme Court beat: how television covers the U.S. Supreme Court, 67 JUDICIATURE(1983); Tarpley, American Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court, 1978-81, 61 JOURNALISM Q. (1984); Davis, Lifting the Shroud: News Media Portrayal of the U.S. Supreme Court, 9 COMM. L. (1987); Bowles and Bromley, Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court During the Reagan Administration, 69 JOURNALISM Q. (1992); O'Callaghan and Dukes, Media Coverage of the Supreme Court's Caseload, 69 JOURNALISM Q. (1992).
13. Solimine, Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court, 57 JOURNALISM Q. (1980); Katsh, The Supreme Court beat: how television covers the U.S. Supreme Court, 67 JUDICIATURE(1983); Tarpley, American Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court, 1978-81, 61 JOURNALISM Q. (1984); Davis, Lifting the Shroud: News Media Portrayal of the U.S. Supreme Court, 9 COMM. L. (1987); Bowles and Bromley, Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court During the Reagan Administration, 69 JOURNALISM Q. (1992); O'Callaghan and Dukes, Media Coverage of the Supreme Court's Caseload, 69 JOURNALISM Q. (1992).
14. Solimine, Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court, 57 JOURNALISM Q. (1980); Katsh, The Supreme Court beat: how television covers the U.S. Supreme Court, 67 JUDICIATURE(1983); Tarpley, American Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court, 1978-81, 61 JOURNALISM Q. (1984); Davis, Lifting the Shroud: News Media Portrayal of the U.S. Supreme Court, 9 COMM. L. (1987); Bowles and Bromley, Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court During the Reagan Administration, 69 JOURNALISM Q. (1992); O'Callaghan and Dukes, Media Coverage of the Supreme Court's Caseload, 69 JOURNALISM Q. (1992).
15. Solimine, Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court, 57 JOURNALISM Q. (1980); Katsh, The Supreme Court beat: how television covers the U.S. Supreme Court, 67 JUDICIATURE(1983); Tarpley, American Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court, 1978-81, 61 JOURNALISM Q. (1984); Davis, Lifting the Shroud: News Media Portrayal of the U.S. Supreme Court, 9 COMM. L. (1987); Bowles and Bromley, Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court During the Reagan Administration, 69 JOURNALISM Q. (1992); O'Callaghan and Dukes, Media Coverage of the Supreme Court's Caseload, 69 JOURNALISM Q. (1992).
16. Solimine, Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court, 57 JOURNALISM Q. (1980); Katsh, The Supreme Court beat: how television covers the U.S. Supreme Court, 67 JUDICIATURE(1983); Tarpley, American Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court, 1978-81, 61 JOURNALISM Q. (1984); Davis, Lifting the Shroud: News Media Portrayal of the U.S. Supreme Court, 9 COMM. L. (1987); Bowles and Bromley, Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court During the Reagan Administration, 69 JOURNALISM Q. (1992); O'Callaghan and Dukes, Media Coverage of the Supreme Court's Caseload, 69 JOURNALISM Q. (1992).
17. Solimine, Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court, 57 JOURNALISM Q. (1980); Katsh, The Supreme Court beat: how television covers the U.S. Supreme Court, 67 JUDICIATURE(1983); Tarpley, American Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court, 1978-81, 61 JOURNALISM Q. (1984); Davis, Lifting the Shroud: News Media Portrayal of the U.S. Supreme Court, 9 COMM. L. (1987); Bowles and Bromley, Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court During the Reagan Administration, 69 JOURNALISM Q. (1992); O'Callaghan and Dukes, Media Coverage of the Supreme Court's Caseload, 69 JOURNALISM Q. (1992).
18. O'Callaghan and Dukes, supra n. 5.
19. Ericson, Newspaper Coverage of the Supreme Court: A Case Study, 54 JOURNALISM Q. (1977).
20. Tarpley, supra n. 5; Bowles and Bromley, supra n. 5.
21. Tarpley, supra n. 5; Bowles and Bromley, supra n. 5.
22. Slotnick and Segal, TELEVISION NEWS AND THE SUPREME COURT: ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO AIR? (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1998).
23. Slotnick and Segal, "The Supreme Court decided today...," or did it?, 78 JUDICATURE 95 (1994).
24. Pacelle, THE ROLE OF THE SUPREME COURT IN AMERICAN POLITICS: THE LEAST DANGEROUS BRANCH? (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2002).
25. Slotnick and Segal, supra n. 9.
26. Slotnick, Media coverage of Supreme Court decision making: problems and prospects, 75 JUDICATURE 128 (1991).
27. Our definition of Court reporter, coupled with our operationalization (see page 26 and n. 20), includes those reporters who work at the Court full-time and those who cover the Court only part-time.
28. Slotnick, supra n. 13. Davis, DECISIONS AND IMAGES: THE SUPREME COURT AND THE PRESS (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1993).
29. Slotnick, supra n. 13. Davis, DECISIONS AND IMAGES: THE SUPREME COURT AND THE PRESS (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1993).
30. We analyzed all newspaper stories reporting a decision from the 1998 term that were archived in Lexis-Nexis. We also analyzed all stories about a 1998 term decision that aired on the ABC, NBC, and CBS evening news shows.
31. We wish to emphasize that while the opinion authors likely included many justifications, we only code whether the rationale was included in the news story.
32. While these types of justifications most closely resemble legalistic coverage and political coverage, they are not the only types of justifications that appear in media coverage of the Court's decisions. We coded all types of other legal justifications, including founders' intent, literalism, and other legal approaches, that appeared in the news stories. These other types of justifications were much less common than were those that we examine in the following analyses. Reporters included no other justifications, such as state policy actions or changes in society, frequently enough to warrant, coding as a separate category.
33. We defined a story as the total report on one decision. For example, a "Supreme Court Round-up" by Linda Greenhouse may cover three decisions in a day. This would be coded as three separate stories to ensure that we can accurately describe the overall coverage of each Supreme Court decision. We also included wire stories. It is true that many smaller newspapers rely on wire services for their Court coverage. However, local editors make significant choices regarding how much of each wire story to include. Thus, we felt that each story should be analyzed individually. Last, there were three groups of cases that were announced on the same day that the media treated as one decision since the cases were also grouped together by the justices. We also treated each group of cases as a single decision.
34. For example, the following sentence was coded in both the vote breakdown and the decision content categories: "The high court's 5-4 decision allows EEOC to continue its practice of ordering federal agencies to pay compensatory damages in employment discrimination cases when it deems them warranted" (Fletcher, High Court Says EEOC Can Levy Damages in Federal Bias Cases, Washington Post, June 15, 1999, at A-31).
35. Note that the categories of Court, staff, and wire reporter are not mutually exclusive. One can be both a Court and wire reporter, for example. We categorized journalists as either Court or non-Court reporters, with each category containing both staff and wire reporters.
36. This measure includes reporters who work regularly in the Supreme Court building both full-and part-time as opposed to those who never or rarely visit the Court.
37. While at first blush this list seems quite long, in reality only a handful of these reporters make an appearance in the Lexis-Nexis newspaper archive. Thus, we are confident that the use of the permanent press pass list, even with such a broad range of papers included in the dataset, provides a good list of "Court reporters" for the 1998 term.
38. Not surprisingly, with 47, the New York Times covered more Supreme Court decisions than any other newspaper. However, even this outlet only covered 36 percent of the total decisions.
39. These types of decisions accounted for 25 percent of the Court's output during the 1998 term, according to the Supreme Court Judicial Database; Spaeth, UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT JUDICIAL DATABASE (East Lansing, Mich.: Michigan State University, Department of Political Science [producer]; East Lansing, Mich. : Program for Law and Judicial Politics, Michigan State University [distributor], 2002).
40. To identify landmark cases, we use Harvard Law Review's end-of-the-year analysis [Leading Cases, 11 HARV. L. REV. 200 (1999)].
41. To identify landmark cases, we use Harvard Law end-of-the-year analysis [Leading Cases, 11 HARV. L. REV. 200 (1999)].
42. Supra n. 25. If the case was coded as addressing two or more issues, we utilized the first issue for our analysis.
43. Caldeira, Courts and Public Opinion, in Gates and Johnson, eds., THE AMERICAN COURTS: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT 303-334 (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1991).
44. Gibson, Calderia, and Baird, On the Legitimacy of National High Courts, 92 AM. POL. SCI. REV. 345 (1998).
45. American Trucking Assoc. v. Smith, 110 LED. 2d 148 (1990).