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March 05, 2005
Just Another Biased Headline Story
The lead story in the Houston Chronicle today trumpeted:
A new rallying cry for conservatives?
After losing a key ruling, some vow: 'No more Souters, no more Kennedys,' only hard-liners
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court's decision to abolish the death penalty for juveniles has incensed many conservatives, who vow to step up their pressure on President Bush to resist compromising on the ideology of judicial nominations.
The article exhibits the classic symptoms of bias that Bernie Goldberg documented so exactly: conservative stances are characterized as somehow extreme, hard line, controversial; while by default, liberal values are assumed to be mainstream. In this piece of over 900 words, the word "conservative" is mentioned 15 times--that's fine, it is an article about conservatives, after all. But the word "liberal" is mentioned--twice. Conservatives are described as "hard-line", once in the body of the piece, and also in the headline. Kennedy is described as "consensus-oriented".
Although the White House has not publicly divulged potential Supreme Court nominees, Bush suggested during his 2000 campaign that his model Supreme Court justices were Scalia and Thomas — the court's most hard-line conservatives.
The president has also nominated a number of controversial conservatives to federal appellate courts, drawing the opposition of Senate Democrats who have filibustered their confirmation.
"Controversial"? To whom, all those "hard-line" left wingers? (I guess they must not exist, otherwise they certainly would have been qouted here.) And yet no one doubts that those "controversial" nominees would easily gain Senate confirmation if only they were allowed a vote by the full Senate.
The article really demonstrates the insidiousness of MSM bias--author Bennett Roth does manage to sketch out conservatives' complaints against Kennedy:
Conservatives, however, are concerned the Supreme Court may be drifting toward judicial activism rather than strict interpretation of the Constitution. [...]
Some conservatives said it was not just the international examples that offended them, but also the majority's reasoning that juveniles should not face the death penalty because they did not have the maturity of adults.
"It is absurd to think that a 16-year-old doesn't know that murder is wrong," said Todd Gaziano, director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Of course this cogent example of common sense comes about one column-inch from the end of the article, buried on page A12.
If you strip the muscle off of this story, I suppose the skeleton is could be described as symmetrical. But it's as if the patient has had a stroke: one side is fleshed out, and the other side has atrophied.
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