Beltway Journos Grasp at Credential Authority to Try to Keep Out Blogger Experts Like SCOTUSBlog

A terrible Supreme Court
decision yesterday probably hasn’t gotten the attention it really
deserves. That’s likely because the decision wasn’t made by the
justices but rather by a group of journalists who have the power to
decide who gets credentials to cover Congress (which in turn helps
determine who gets credentials to cover the Supreme Court). The
Standing Committee of Correspondents of the Senate Press Gallery,
at the same time as the Supreme Court was announcing new rulings,
declared that SCOTUSBlog, one of the best resources to keep track
of and understand the intricacies of the rulings of our highest
court, did not qualify for media credentials.

Thousands turn to SCOTUSBlog for their explanations of Supreme
Court decisions. The site’s publisher, Tom Goldstein,
noted in his response to the committee’s decision that 10,000
people were watching their liveblog of yesterday’s decisions at the
same time that the committee was denying the press credentials.

And the main reason the committee denied credentials for
SCOTUSBlog is also the main reason why people turn to the site: It
has lawyers who have argued before the court writing for them. The
committee argued that SCOTUSBlog lacks editorial independence
because Goldstein is both the publisher of the site and “lobbies
the government” as a lawyer. It’s a decision that fails to grasp
how the Internet has changed how the public can avoid certain
gatekeepers (or perhaps just vainly hopes to hold back the tide).
Experts no longer need to be filtered through journalists in order
to communicate to the public, and there are times where this can be
an improvement, such as dealing with some very complicated Supreme
Court decisions. Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conpsiracy (hosted at
The Washington Post,
which has an employee on the Standing Committee of
Correspondents),
criticized the choice for these reasons:

By making it possible for anyone to communicate to the world at
large, the Internet makes feasible (among other things) reporting
and analysis by experts in the field — not just reporters who
often lack the experts’ experience, education, or specialization,
and not just by large mainstream media organizations that
understandably lack a commitment to truly deep coverage of a
particular issue.

If you’re interested in the latest decisions about computer
crime law, you are no longer limited in reading what reporters who
know little about computer crime law have to say about it; you can
also come to this blog and read Orin Kerr, the leading American
expert on computer crime law. If you’re interested in breaking news
stories about appellate decisions, you can read appellate lawyer
Howard Bashman’s posts on How
Appealing. If you’re interested in linguistics stories in the
news, you can read the linguistics professors at Language Log. If you’re
interested in the Supreme Court, you can read the unparalleled
resources put together by SCOTUSblog, which was founded by Tom
Goldstein, one of the nation’s leading Supreme Court
litigators.

And you can read these items without the filtering,
oversimplification, and distortion that usually happen when
nonexpert journalists write about technical issues — and that
often happen even when the best, most knowledgeable nonexpert
journalists write about such issues. Of course, you can still
choose to read nonexpert journalists’ stories on the subject,
precisely because you value the filtering and simplification that
the nonexpert journalists provide; often, that’s what one wants,
especially on subjects in which one has only modest interest. But
sometimes, you want to go straight to someone who has decades of
professional experience actually working on what he’s writing
about.

And of course, the 24/7 news cycle results in infamous mistakes.
Everybody remembers the contradictory reports of the outcome of the
Supreme Court’s ruling on the constitutionality of Obamacare
mandates with Fox and CNN both getting it wrong.  Does anybody
remember that
White House staff were watching SCOTUSBlog’s live feed to get
the right information?

What I find most amusing—or perhaps galling (I am often amused
by things that are galling)—about the committee’s decision is how
it treats traditional news outlets as though they aren’t huge
businesses that also frequently lobby the government. Media is
probably the only industry in the world where a huge chunk of its
own employees simply cannot grasp that they are part of a business.
Does every journalist turn in his or her credentials when a free
press issue comes before the court? Don’t be silly. Newspapers
cover lawsuits even where the newspaper itself is a party. They
simply are transparent with readers that they have a connection
with the case. SCOTUSblog also indicates when a lawyer with the
site has a connection with any case they’re covering. It’s up to
the readers to decide how much weight to give that knowledge when
reading the blog’s analysis of a case. The same is true for
traditional media outlets. Maybe that’s what’s scary for some
journalists; that even knowing of potential biases at SCOTUSblog,
some readers still see them as having better command of the
information.