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Blogger flyspecks Ledbetter coverage

By Mark Obbie

Lawyer-blogger Hans Bader has published this analysis of news coverage of the Ledbetter v. Goodyear employment-discrimination case from two Supreme Court terms ago. He's critical of what he calls a pattern of distortion and inaccuracies. Back in January, when I noted that National Journal's Stuart Taylor had made similar claims about coverage of Congress' post-Ledbetter legislative fix, Bader posted a comment that he's now expanded into a link-filled post at OpenMarket.org. He accuses The New York Times in particular of mischaracterizing the facts of Lilly Ledbetter's case, and of the Supreme Court's findings, and of shrugging off the alleged errors with a lame "everyone else wrote the same stuff" excuse. It's intriguing, and deserves careful study. As I said before, the notion that journalists fundamentally misinterpreted a case that became such a critical political and business issue is deeply troubling, and needs to be analyzed and understood. But I have a few nits to pick. First, Bader quotes me as saying the coverage of the Ledbetter decision "stank." I never wrote that. I have not studied it. I simply paraphrased Taylor's verdict on the media's coverage of the Congressional debate (and not even of the court decision). Second, Bader weakens his analysis by treating as equivalents an alleged factual error and an alleged error of interpretation or analysis (he spends time berating the Times' Linda Greenhouse for her speculation that Ledbetter might have turned out differently if the Alito vote hadn't replaced the O'Connor vote). Whether the Times makes logical inferences is not at all the same as whether the Times accurately summarized Ledbetter's facts and holding. Both are worthy subjects for argument and inquiry, but they shouldn't be intertwined without distinction. Same goes, in my mind at least, for Bader's blending of complaints about reported stories and editorials. The latter is advocacy, and usually is derived from others' reporting. Yes, it matters if editorial writers distort the factual bases for their opinions, but I'd much rather know whether reporters failed in their primary role as fact-gatherers. Despite those complaints, I consider it healthy to have Bader and other experts monitoring journalists over their coverage of important cases. The question now is whether someone (hey, don't look at me!) will take this question another several steps into a careful scholarly analysis, and figure out who's right.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on March 05, 2009 (boomark / email).