How the Media Botched the Health Care Verdict

Lindsay Beyerstein July 10, 2012

Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog gives a blow-by-blow description of how the media garbled the Supreme Court’s verdict on health care reform. Journalism prof Jay Rosen calls this 7000-word piece “the media criticism link of the year.” His praise is well-deserved.

Goldstein describes how CNN and Fox rushed to judgement and got the story wrong just as the Supreme Court’s own website gave out under the traffic onslaught.

A further irony: “The Supreme Court [would] not grant SCOTUSblog a press credential,” Goldstein writes. Clearly, that needs to change.

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Lindsay Beyerstein is an award-winning investigative journalist and In These Times staff writer who writes the blog Duly Noted. Her stories have appeared in Newsweek, Salon, Slate, The Nation, Ms. Magazine, and other publications. Her photographs have been published in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times’ City Room. She also blogs at The Hillman Blog (http://www.hillmanfoundation.org/hillmanblog), a publication of the Sidney Hillman Foundation, a non-profit that honors journalism in the public interest.