{"id":449427,"date":"2021-04-24T13:06:18","date_gmt":"2021-04-24T17:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=449427"},"modified":"2021-04-24T13:06:23","modified_gmt":"2021-04-24T17:06:23","slug":"graham-should-judges-always-honor-crusading-liberal-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/graham-should-judges-always-honor-crusading-liberal-media\/","title":{"rendered":"GRAHAM: Should Judges Always Honor Crusading Liberal Media?"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fgraham-should-judges-always-honor-crusading-liberal-media%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=449427&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/fb_image-3596.jpeg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"  style=\"display:none\"><\/div>\n<p>New York Times Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak recently sounded the alarm with a headline that read, \u201cThe Supreme Court\u2019s Increasingly Dim View of the News Media.\u201d Naturally, he was upset that some conservative judges aren\u2019t fond of the 1964 <i>New York Times v. Sullivan<\/i> decision, which makes it nearly impossible for public figures to sue media outlets for libel, since the mind-reading standard of \u201cactual malice\u201d must be established.<\/p>\n<p>Liptak began by complaining about Judge Laurence H. Silberman, who\u2019s not on the Supreme Court but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In a recent dissent, Silberman wrote, \u201cTwo of the three most influential papers (at least historically), The New York Times and The Washington Post, are virtually Democratic Party broadsheets.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNearly all television \u2014 network and cable \u2014 is a Democratic Party trumpet,\u201d Silberman wrote. \u201cEven the government-supported National Public Radio follows along.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"column--highlighted-text\">The writer thinks this is an unfair criticism, rather than a fact that is proven daily. <\/span>The Times front page on April 22 had this headline on top: \u201cU.S. to Scrutinize How Minneapolis Handles Policing: Inquiry Signals That White House Aims to Combat Abuses Nationwide.\u201d Below was the headline \u201cRepublicans Sharpen Penalties For Protesters in Flurry of Bills.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is fish-in-a-barrel stuff.<\/p>\n<p>Liptak also cited Justice Clarence Thomas, noting \u201cthe media often seeks \u2018to titillate rather than to educate and inform.&#8217;\u201d If you consider the role NPR and the \u201cDemocratic Party broadsheets\u201d played in Anita Hill\u2019s titillating (and still-unproven) charges of sexual harassment against Thomas during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings (battle) in 1991, you might understand his skeptical viewpoint.<\/p>\n<p>A new article in the North Carolina Law Review inspired Liptak\u2019s lament. Professors Ronnell Andersen Jones and Sonja West reviewed all references to the press in Supreme Court opinions going back to 1784 and found \u201ca marked and previously undocumented uptick in negative depictions of the press by the U.S. Supreme Court.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The pinned tweet on West\u2019s Twitter account reads, \u201cThe press is supposed to be the government\u2019s \u2018opposition party.\u2019 That\u2019s kinda the whole point.\u201d But the media are never the \u201copposition party\u201d when Democrats are in power.<\/p>\n<p>Jones and West dug out the Pentagon Papers and noted that then-Justice Hugo Black wrote, \u201cThe New York Times, The Washington Post and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the founding fathers saw so clearly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But decades later, Liptak referenced the Citizens United decision, claiming that then-Justice Anthony Kennedy cited \u201cthe decline of print and broadcast media\u201d and the \u201csound bites, talking points and scripted messages that dominate the 24-hour news cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This quotation is distorted. Kennedy was objecting to the idea that media corporations had more freedom to speak than a nonprofit group such as Citizens United. Right before that passage, he insisted, \u201cOur Nation\u2019s speech dynamic is changing, and informative voices should not have to circumvent onerous restrictions to exercise their First Amendment rights.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Notice the error here: Even mild and obvious press critiques are somehow comparable to an \u201cincreasingly dim view\u201d on freedom of the press. Favoring the free expression of conservatives \u2014 Citizens United made a documentary criticizing Hillary Clinton in 2008 \u2014 is somehow against the media.<\/p>\n<p>Once again, we see that the liberal media and their academic defenders are great at dishing out criticism and remarkably horrible at taking it. Mock them and you endanger the First Amendment. Accuse them and you\u2019re accusing democracy itself. Freedom of speech is for liberal elites, not for conservative rabble.<\/p>\n<p>They imply the most disturbing and unacceptable exercise of free speech is to denounce the media as Democratic propagandists. So, who is really championing the First Amendment?<\/p>\n<p><i>The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"remove_padding\"><i>Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New York Times Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak recently sounded the alarm with a headline that read, \u201cThe Supreme Court\u2019s Increasingly Dim View of the News Media.\u201d Naturally, he was &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2276634,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/fb_image-3596.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"GRAHAM: Should Judges Always Honor Crusading Liberal Media?","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-449427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/fb_image-3596.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"GRAHAM: Should Judges Always Honor Crusading Liberal Media?","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2276634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}