SCOTUS Justice takes the bait
The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal apparently shares similar right-wing views of its own news media colleagues as Fox News and the extremist fake news sites like NewsMax and OAN. That’s the conclusion one reaches after the editorial board became entangled in a controversy involving Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
Let’s start with some background:
An investigation by the journalism site ProPublica showed that Justice Alito had been taken on a luxurious, and expensive, fishing trip by a conservative billionaire and received other such “gifts” but never reported them as is expected under the law. He also ruled on several cases involving the billionaire’s companies and never recused himself. That investigation followed a similar investigation by ProPublica of Justice Clarence Thomas which showed that he also had been provided expensive travel gifts and not reported them.
Prior to publication, ProPublica offered Alito’s office a chance to respond — a standard journalistic practice to provide a fair and balanced report. And that is where the Wall Street Journal comes into play.
The reporters sent an email to the Supreme Court spokesperson, Patricia McCabe, spelling out a series of questions they had for the Justice regarding the trip. McCabe called the reports asking that they provide the 18 questions in a Word document, which they did. That was on a Friday.
decided to publish a fact-challenged rebuttal by Justice Samuel Alito to an investigation by ProPublica BEFORE the report was even published.
ProPublica — “Journalism that holds power to account.” — “Investigative journalism in the public interest.”
Six Pulitzer Prizes along with numerous other journalism awards through partnerships with nearly a hundred other news organizations.
They honor “excellence in journalism” and “prize original reporting, good writing and, where appropriate, visual storytelling.”
Even more evidence of the editorial board’s political and philosophical bias is that it referred to ProPublica as a “leftist” organization. That’s the kind of language used by ethically corrupt politicians.
NOTE: This is a recounting of the situation by ProPublica. This posting is an update on an earlier posting in which THE Week provided a summary of the various news media criticisms of the WSJ stance.
DISCLAIMER: The Wall Street Journal is a division of the Dow Jones company which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s Dow Jones Company and its editorial views often reflect that conservative “bias.” However, the reporters at the WSJ do not reflect that and are recognized as practicing the highest journalistic standards.
The Wall Street Journal is not normally thought of as a right-wing news source. But it is. Or at least its editorial board is. And this is further proof of that.
The WSJ editorial board published a rebuttal by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to a report by the investigative news site, ProPublica, BEFORE the story even appeared. It made NO effort to contact ProPublica before publishing the rebuttal on a story they knew nothing about. Nor did they try to fact-check or even do the most basic journalistic examination of the alleged “facts” in Justice Alito’s ‘editorial.’ When asked about its decision to publish this piece, the WSJ editorial board sunk to the kind of political name-calling one would expect from some politician — calling ProPublica a leftist group.
For the record, ProPublica has been recognized with several awards for its investigative reports. Also, for the record, the actual journalists at WSJ are some of the best in the business following traditional journalistic standards. It is completely divorced from the editorial board’s extremist ‘right-wing’ philosophy.
