Press Bias # LXIV

The essence of unfair bias is treating similarly situated persons differently. See Melody Music v. F.C.C., 345 F.2d 730, 732 (D.C. Cir. 1965). The media flunks that criterion, repeatedly guilty of coming in like a lion for Republicans and conservatives but likening liberal Democrats to lambs. Today's example was penned by professors Lee Epstein and Jeffrey Segal, authors of Advice and Consent: The Politics of Judicial Appointments. Their lead story in the Washington Post's "Opinion" section, about the predicting Supreme Court votes based on the ideology or "label" of each Justice, dispels any doubt about their distortions:

As it turns out, those labels often convey useful information about how nominees, upon ascending to the high court, approach the cases before them. At the time of Scalia's nomination in 1986, virtually all the commentary -- on the left and the right -- predicted that he would be quite conservative. That forecast proved accurate. Scalia now reaches right-of-center decisions in almost seven out of every 10 cases he considers. Likewise, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, assessed as moderate-to-liberal when she was picked in 1993, votes precisely as that label would suggest, reaching liberal outcomes in about two-thirds of the court's cases.

Got that? Voting to the "right" almost 70 percent of the time is "quite conservative." By contrast, a Justice who votes "left" in "about" 67 percent of the cases is "moderate-to-liberal." What a difference 3 percent makes when comparing Scalia and Ginsburg.

I pity the fool who reads only the MSM.