David Savage

NPR: Supreme Court Won't Want to Be On 'The Wrong Side of History' on Gays
By Tim Graham | March 1, 2013 | 8:12 AM EST

National Public Radio never wants to make a "conservative case" for anything -- unless it's liberal. On Tuesday's Talk of the Nation, they titled a segment "The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage," underlining that a smattering of moderate-to-liberal Republicans filed an amicus brief against Proposition 8 in California.

NPR host Neal Conan's guest was Los Angeles Times legal reporter David Savage, who announced that the gay Left was "brilliant" in going for the "conservative" idea of marriage and military service, and the Supreme Court knows "gay marriage is going to be a national norm and that they don't want to be on the wrong side of history." You know, like Ronald Reagan was on the wrong side of history by fighting the Cold War:

Judge Rules ObamaCare Mandate Unconstitutional, LA Times Waits 12 Paragraphs Before Quoting His Rationale
By Ken Shepherd | December 13, 2010 | 5:23 PM EST

Earlier today, a federal district judge in the 4th Circuit found the individual mandate section of the ObamaCare law unconstitutional.

Tribune Newspapers Washington bureau writers Noam N. Levey and David G. Savage wrote up the 19-paragraph story, which I accessed at LATimes.com.

Levey and Savage waited until the 12th and 13th paragraphs to actually quote U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson:

CNN.com Supreme Court Reporter Failed to Note Key Facts in Indiana Voter ID Case
By Ken Shepherd | April 28, 2008 | 12:52 PM EDT

In a 10:15 EDT post today at CNN.com, producer Bill Mears noted the 6-3 ruling by the Supreme Court upholding an Indiana law requiring photo ID in order to vote. Yet Mears left out that Democrats who challenged the law were unable to produce a single voter who could prove he or she was unable to vote due to the law nor did Mears point out mechanisms the Indiana law has in place for provisional balloting and free voter ID cards.Here's Mears's four-paragraph blog post at the CNN Political Ticker:

WASHINGTON (CNN) – The Supreme Court on Monday backed Indiana's law requiring voters to show photo identification, despite concerns thousands of elderly, poor, and minority voters could be locked out of their right to cast ballots. The 6-3 vote allows Indiana to require the identification when it holds its statewide primary next month.
LA Times and the 'Humane' Nature of Lethal Injection
By Ken Shepherd | April 16, 2008 | 1:46 PM EDT

While the word "humane" does appear within the Supreme Court's ruling today upholding Kentucky's lethal injection method of execution, is it biased of Los Angeles Times reporter David Savage to put the term in quote marks in his lede? I'm leaning towards yes.:

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court cleared the way today for executions to resume across the nation, ruling that lethal injections, if properly carried out, are a "humane" means of ending a condemned individual's life. The court upheld Kentucky's use of lethal injections by a surprisingly large 7-2 vote.

By contrast, here's how the New York Times's David Stout opened his article, set for print in tomorrow's April 17 edition (emphasis mine):

The 2nd Amendment a 2nd Class Right?
By Ken Shepherd | March 17, 2008 | 10:50 AM EDT

NewsBusters.org | MRC.orgIt's a funny thing about the Bill of Rights. Rather than view each Amendment's protections as equally valid, many (but not all) liberals tend to enshrine some as sacrosanct but dismiss others at antiquated. Hence the First and Fourth amendments and their protections of free speech and press and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure respectively are held in extremely high regard, with state or federal restrictions on these rights held to strict scrutiny. But the Second Amendment and the right to keep and bears arms, eh, not so much.

But shouldn't a major newspaper like the Los Angeles Times take due care to not echo that line of thinking in its reporting? Above at right is a screen capture for a teaser headline on the L.A. Times Web page that hints that the First Amendment's protections are more iron-clad in their nature as individual rights than the Second's guarantee of firearm ownership rights.

What's more, in the third paragraph of reporter David Savage's article, the writer seems to suggest the Second Amendment does not guarantee the right to keep and bear arms because, well, the Supreme Court hasn't said as much (emphasis mine):