Chief justices' perceptions of news coverage of state supreme courts

Newspaper Research Journal, Winter 1999 by Hale, F Dennis

Chief justices feel their courts get less coverage than legislative and executive branches of state government.

Although numerous scholars have examined the issue of news coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court, researchers have virtually ignored the parallel and equally significant issue of media coverage of state supreme courts. A few earlier studies examined newspaper coverage of specific state supreme courts, but no studies have examined broadcast and newspaper coverage of all of the nation's state supreme courts.

This study therefore evaluates newspaper and television coverage of state supreme courts by surveying the chief justices of those courts. Justices were surveyed about their demographics, public information activities of courts, and perceptions of the overall news coverage and newspaper and broadcast coverage of their courts.

Review of literature

Relevant to this survey are the numerous books and articles that have scrutinized press coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court, the limited number of commentaries and studies that have evaluated press coverage of state appellate courts, and one study that examined newspaper coverage of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

The communication of U.S. Supreme Court decisions to the public received serious attention from scholars in the late 1960s in books by David Grey, Stephen Wasby and Richard Johnson.' Those works underscored the uniqueness of the Supreme Court as a news source. The court largely operates in secret and shuns media attention. Fred Graham, who covered the court for CBS and the New York Times, observed: "In a world in which everybody else wanted to be on television, only the justices and the Mafia avoided it."2 Most of the court's operations are invisible. It accepts for review only three percent of the cases appealed to it; and it provides no explanation for either accepting or rejecting a case. Between the time that a case is accepted by the court and the release of a court decision, only one public event occurs. Attorneys for both sides appear in a public session of the court for one hour of oral arguments. The Supreme Court is most newsworthy when it files a written decision that decides a case, which in the 1990's occurs about 100 times a year. The filing of Supreme Court decisions is unlike other news events in Washington, D.C. There is no advanced warning of when a specific case will be decided. And the written decisions must stand on their own as sources about the court's actions; neither judges nor court personnel will interpret the decisions. Also unlike other Washington, D.C., institutions, there are very few news leaks at the Supreme Court. Any conjecture about court decisions must come from legal authorities outside of the court.

Most studies of news coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court have examined the quality and quantity of the content of newspaper stories, editorials and opinion columns. However, one study by Ethan Katsh examined network television coverage of the court.3 The study of the last five court terms of the 1970's found that networks covered 20 percent of court decisions, with half of those covered by the networks' legal affairs specialists who had law degrees. Another study examined Supreme Court coverage by the three U.S. newsmagazines. Dorothy Bowles and Rebekah Bromley4 measured coverage of eight court terms in the 1980's and found that 10 percent of decisions were covered, down from 15 percent in a 1970's study. They also found that the decision stories were quite thorough. For example, 89 percent of the stories discussed the reasoning of the majority court opinion.

The issue of the quality and quantity of Supreme Court coverage continues to attract attention from scholars, media commentators and even members of the court. A 1993 study by Elizabeth Atwood-Gailey evaluated editorial coverage of the controversial Rust v. Sullivan decision in which the court upheld a Reagan Administration policy that prevented medical clinics that received federal funds from informing patients about the option of abortion. The researcher found it quite encouraging that 80 percent of the editorials criticized the court decision. But the researcher was alarmed by the failure of the editorials to examine the consequences of the decision for other recipients of government funds.5

In 1990 Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia told a gathering of journalists that the press often missed the most significant aspect of a decision when it emphasized the result and ignored the reasoning behind a ruling.6 And in 1993 columnist Nat Hentoff decried the lack of interpretive reporting of the Supreme Court: "Most Supreme Court reporters are quite competent, but they do not receive, on all but the most highly visible cases, such as those concerning abortion, the necessary room to tell the full story."7

In 1996, two journalists who regularly cover the Supreme Court discussed obstacles to coherent reporting that are created by the court and the news media. Tony Mauro, USA Today correspondent, placed much of the blame for flawed reporting on the court in a chapter aptly titled "The Supreme Court and the Cult of Secrecy." Mauro criticized the court for banning cameras in its courtroom and for choosing "to speak only through its opinions."8 Linda Greenhouse, who has reported on the court for 18 years for the New York Times, observed in 1996 that the number of reporters who cover the court full-time was shrinking, and that the court cannot be covered effectively on a part-time basis. She also criticized the court for releasing four or more decisions in one hour which creates a nightmare for newspaper and broadcast journalists with strict time limitations.