Clarence Thomas
Nina Totenberg, National Public Radio's legal affairs correspondent, talked to Grant Reeher on public radio station WRVO, warning about the Supreme Court’s threat to abortion rights, criticizing the hearing performance of Brett Kavanaugh, and denying her outlet’s liberal bias. The NPR member station, which serves New York state from the campus of SUNY-Oswego, posted on Friday some transcribed highlights from Reeher’s half-hour interview with Totenberg, whose liberal bona fides are well-established on NewsBusters.
The New York Times’ got rather overdefensive in Thursday’s “In Attack, Trump Aims ‘Enemy of the People’ Directly at The Times.” The paper stretched its complaint against Trump’s concerning slogan to cast blame on him for every worrisome development experienced by a Times (or Washington Post) journalist anywhere: "They have added up to a rough few days for freedom of the press, a once-sacrosanct American notion that has been under sustained assault since Mr. Trump made fiery denunciations of journalists -- and the rallying cry “Fake news!”-- into hallmarks of his campaign and presidency."
New York Times political reporters Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni clearly objected to President Trump meeting with “hard-right” activists led by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in Sunday’s “Trump Is Said To Have Met Wife of Justice And Activists.”
New York Times’ Susan Chira, a “senior correspondent and editor on gender issues,” interviewed Anita Hill for some reason for Friday’s paper, “Hill Reflects: ‘Clearly the Tide Has Not Turned.’” Hill is seen by the press as a victim of both Clarence Thomas and the all-white, all-male Senate Judiciary Committee who brutally questioned her and has achieved secular sainthood, so there are never any inconvenient questions. Interviewing and citing Hill in the aftermath of sexual allegations against Republicans is a regular thing at the paper now. This one is keyed to the accusations hurled against now-Judge Brett Kavanaugh, whom the paper promises “we’re still investigating.”
Journalists have been bashing conservative Supreme Court judges for decades. Even after Clarence Thomas was confirmed, reporters never liked him much. On November 2, 2007, Jeffrey Toobin sneered that Thomas is “angry,” “bitter,” and “isolated.”
CNN has made a hero out of Kaitlan Collins, after the young White House correspondent was banned from one press briefing for her petulant behavior a few months ago. But maybe they should make sure their reporters actually know what they’re talking about before giving them important assignments like reporting from the swearing-in ceremony of the next Supreme Court justice.
Brett Kavanaugh may have won his Supreme Court nomination, but New York Times Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak tried to defuse the excitement on the front page of Sunday’s paper: “Confirmation Battle May Have Eroded the Public Trust.” Now that conservatives have an apparent majority, the Supreme Court is now suddenly “injured and diminished.” Liptak also warned with this liberal talking point: "It cannot help the court’s reputation that a third of its male justices have been questioned about sexual misconduct."
WASHINGTON — If you have read enough pro-Kavanaugh articles, give this one a pass. You are not going to like it. Yet if you have not heard enough, you will probably like this one. I have nothing but congratulatory things to say about Judge Brett Kavanaugh. As with Justice Clarence Thomas, he is a fighter. He is a gifted defender of the truth. And he is worthy of serving on the highest court in the land. I would trust my case with him, and I would trust yours, too, whether you are with him now or against him. He believes in the rule of law.
Journalists sometimes ignore facts and evidence in order to promote an ideological narrative. For example, journalists peddled the Duke Lacrosse and University of Virginia rape hoaxes even after they were debunked. They also continue to distort the facts about a 1991 Supreme Court nomination, in which the FBI and members of the U.S. Senate rejected as unfounded claims that Judge Clarence Thomas said sexually offensive things to Anita Hill.
The New York Times editorial page on Friday joined the paper's news pages in criticizing Brett Kavanaugh’s “angry” tone in defending himself against uncorroborated assault allegations during his Senate Judiciary Committee testimony on Thursday. And former executive editor Jill Abramson doesn't seem to know what “corroborating evidence" means.
Going into Thursday’s show trial, the liberal media were hopeful that the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and speeches from Democratic Senators would get the public against Judge Brett Kavanaugh. But Ford’s perplexing lapses in memory, dubious collusion with Democratic Senators, and Kavanaugh’s own impassioned defense had put their hopes in jeopardy. So much so, that NBC Nightly News closed out the program by lamenting that “tribal politics” would keep us from seeing the hearing in the same way.
After having spent their entire Thursday listening to testimonies from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the mood on CBS’s panel seemed to be one of resignation and even admission by some of them that Kavanaugh appears headed for confirmation. Right after the hearing ended, chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford observed that “[p]eople saying that she looked credible on both sides” and while it seemed grim for Kavanaugh’s chances this morning, Kavanaugh’s came through, thus leading to a “shift in the room.”