This Scotusblog post on how many got the intital ACA ruling wrong is a really fascinating read, but two snippets just stood out to me and made me sigh:
Elsewhere, others are picking up the story from CNN and Fox. Back at the Court, the Huffington Post’s reporter, Mike Sacks, has not yet filed a story on the ruling. Their social media team does not wait, however. Taking the news from CNN without attribution, it tweets – “BREAKING: Individual mandate has been ruled unconstitutional by Supreme Court.”
Yep. That’s the HuffPo’s MO. The this:
Observing the controversy and taking care not to make an error, The New York Times (whose own reporter Adam Liptak is still in the Courtroom) puts up a simple banner (at 10:09): “Supreme Court Rules on Health Care Law.”
That’s our gray lady alright, timidly leading from behind.
Baud
A little unfair, there. It was very early, and they didn’t jump the gun on like CNN and Fox and HuffPo did on what the ruling was.
dslak
Isn’t the NYT response shown to be the right one, in this case? Everyone else seems to have only read the part of the ruling which didn’t uphold the ACA mandate on Commerce Clause grounds, and decided that meant it didn’t uphold it at all.
Given that everyone else was reporting that the mandate had been stricken down, the NYT had to say something. At least they waited to report on the actual contents of the ruling.
Narcissus
Shorter NYT: “Something Just Happened.”
David in NY
The Times is not without flaws; this was not one of them.
BBA
“It’s very complicated, so we’re still figuring it out.” – SCOTUSblog, 10:09 AM
David Koch
1) I can’t believe there’s anyone left who still watches CNN.
2) I was amazed how quickly Reuters got the story. They posted at 10:08 that it had been upheld.
barbara
Yeah, I have to agree that this wasn’t timidity — it was an insistence on actually reading the entire ruling on the mandate rather than jumping the gun. While CNN and Fox were reporting the incorrect result, SCOTUSblog itself initially said the ruling was complicated and they needed a little time to sort it out. Then they reported that the mandate was constitutional as a tax. All of that turned out to be correct. So the Times was right to wait.
Davis X. Machina
@Baud: I thought the golden rule was “Get it first, get it right — but first get it right.”
Shawn in ShowMe
Couldn’t these guys have just done a search on the word “upheld”? Does Control+F not work in their version of Acrobat Reader?
MattF
NYT was competent, if uninspired, ‘news’ at FOX does not use its crayons inside the borders of the ‘competence’ Venn diagram, CNN fell flat on its face.
Spatula
Not getting how waiting until the ruling had been accurately assessed to post a story is “leading from behind.”
Especially right after you mock another media outlet for getting it wrong out front.
WTF?
David Koch
You should have seen how devastated Jan Crawford was when she had to read live on-air that ACA had survived.
JS
So let’s slam CNN and FOX for reporting before they were sure of the story…
and also slam the NYT for not reporting before they were sure of the story?
Is this what they call cognitive dissonance?
trollhattan
SCOTUSblog has been as big a discovery for me in the last year as 523 was for me on ’06. Absolutely indispensable. I wonder if that’s why they had the DNS attack? (Which is one of the weirdest parts of their story.)
mainmati
@Davis X. Machina: Yes, exactly both my brothers are journos (Reuters and Dallas News) and that is exactly the code. A lot of pressure but this story also shows the big difference in approach between print and TV journalism.
amk
The wire services (AP/Reuters/Bloomberg) are the winners here. Yet another confirmation that cable news is all noise.
JBurke
My favorite part (emphasis mine):
Glad somebody knows how to read.
Keith G
What the hell are you typing about? So, you want the Times to follow the Cole method and blow their wad in ignorance?
Your night of self reflection must have been a dead end. Come on. You are better than this dreck.
David Koch
And the Balloon Juice Tunch trophy goes to dmsilev who first posted the correct information, just ahead of General Stuck.
dmsilev
@David Koch: To be fair, the hamsters that power this site were gasping for breath at the time, so it really was just luck.
That said, I’d like to thank the Academy, my fourth grade teacher, that guy in line ahead of me at the airport security line last week…
Yutsano
@Shawn in ShowMe: The summaries were on paper. SCOTUS stopped e-mailing rulings awhile back.
amk
@Yutsano: Yup. Scotus fucked up big time on that.
Louise
That last bit about the NY Times doesn’t make any sense. Methinks John is either +4 or more — or he huffed too much TunchFur last night.
pseudonymous in nc
Count me with the “but first get it right” crowd; the NYT’s web team made the right call. We’re talking about a few minutes, and as the blog post notes, the “BRAKIN NEW!1!’ stuff was really a battle between the wire services and the cablenewsers: the online divisions of newspapers and NPR and broadcast news deliberately took a bit longer.
Other interesting snippets from the tick-tock: it was Megyn Kelly of all people (who once had the SCOTUS beat) who was following SCOTUSBlog and turned around the Faux News battleship, and the CNN/Faux fuckup meant that the White House wasn’t prepared to trust the wires.
burnspbesq
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Nobody had the PDF for almost a half hour. You could see that in the SCOTUSBlog live blog as it unfolded, and you can also see it in the comments on at least one thread here.
The Court’s press office handed out hard copies.
Omnes Omnibus
I’ll join the chorus of those who don’t see anything wrong with the way the Times handled this.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
Yeah, and what’s the point of someone getting the “scoop” by 30 seconds, which one of the news sites was crowing about? Really? That’s your claim to fame? WTF.
amk
@pseudonymous in nc: Yup, why the fuck was Obama watching the cable noise beats me.
I dropped a congratulatory mail to Tom Goldstein, the author of this piece, and he replied back saying “. And the whole, long process made me respect reporters even more. “
rikyrah
can’t stand the NYT most days, but they got this right.
unlike CNN, Fox and HuffPO
arguingwithsignposts
I read that scotusblog autopsy and I do have to say that the race to the scoop on this is just plain stupid, and it shows. It’s not like there’s a whole lot more that’s going to come out other than the opinion. The NYT played it right here.
amk
Great DNC ad on mittbot & koch brothers and on why are they betting on him.
Good to see the dems falling in line for once.
ETA: Linly fix.
Yutsano
@amk: Link no work. U fix please.
amk
@Yutsano: Done.
not motorik
That’s our john cole all right, having a brain fart and sharing it with thousands.
Brachiator
The point isn’t to be timid or bold. The point is to be accurate.
Shit, most pundits and bloggers had reduced the case to dumbass speculation over what the vote would be, as though it were the same thing as a baseball score.
And then, ironically enough, the actual decision required going deeper than a reductive 5 to 4 count, or a simplistic soundbite, “the Court declares the individual mandate to be unconstitutional.”
Some editor at the NY Times had the gall to tell their reporters to read the goddam decision before filing the story.
Isn’t this what reporters are supposed to do?
And once again, the new media BS of HuffPo, along with sad sacks like CNN and assclowns like Fox News, get rightfully kicked in the butt.
There ain’t no substitute for competence. And sometimes you gotta take a little time to get it right.
BrianM
Would it somehow have impeded the dignity of the Court for them just to have cut to the chase and said “We have upheld the PPACA”? Or perhaps they’ve never heard of the doctrine of attractive nuisance? Why make a zillion people scramble?
Keith G
@BrianM: Because they can.