If you’ve been paying attention to how the media covers the Supreme Court, it’s getting harder to ignore the obvious double standard and the latest reporting around the Dobbs decision just adds fuel to that fire.
Mollie Hemingway’s new book on Justice Samuel Alito makes a pretty serious claim: that the court’s liberal justices deliberately slowed down the release of the Dobbs ruling, even after the unprecedented leak in May 2022 put a target on the backs of the conservative majority. According to her reporting, Alito had circulated the draft as early as February. Yet months later, even after the leak sparked protests outside justices’ homes and raised real security concerns, the dissent from Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan still wasn’t finished.
Discussing her new book, ALITO, Mollie Hemingway notes how the media played "a major role" in ginning up threats against SCOTUS after the Dobbs leak. pic.twitter.com/iUKZRUN4b4
That alone raises questions. But it doesn’t stop there. The book alleges that the dissent included a reference to another pending case effectively forcing an additional delay of several weeks. All of this happened while conservative justices and their families were dealing with escalating threats, including an attempted assassination.
Now, if the roles were reversed, it’s not hard to imagine how the media would react. We’ve seen how quickly major outlets jump on any story that can be framed as misconduct or controversy involving conservative justices. But in this case? Near silence. Outlets that usually position themselves as watchdogs of judicial ethics don’t seem particularly interested.
Leftists launch "propaganda efforts and other political campaign strategies to go after any [Supreme Court] justice who they dislike" and undermine the integrity of the court, Mollie Hemingway noted pic.twitter.com/3yH7Byo8js
A quick look at coverage patterns tells the story. Despite the book becoming a bestseller and its claims circulating widely, major publications like The New York Times and others didn’t meaningfully engage with these allegations during the key window after its release. At the same time, those same outlets continue to run headlines painting conservative justices as partisan or dangerous.
That contrast is what stands out. Over the past several years, conservative justices have faced intense media scrutiny whether it was Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation battle, Clarence Thomas’s personal associations, or even stories built around flags flown at private homes. In many of those cases, accusations were amplified long before facts were settled, and in some instances, never really substantiated in a meaningful way.
Meanwhile, stories that could reflect poorly on the court’s liberal wing don’t seem to get the same level of urgency or attention. That selective focus naturally leads people to question whether the goal is really accountability or something more political.
At the end of the day, trust in institutions like the Supreme Court depends in part on how they’re covered. When media organizations appear to apply one standard to one side and a completely different standard to the other, it doesn’t just hurt their credibility it feeds the broader sense that the system itself is being shaped by narrative rather than facts.
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