Presswatch/Supreme Court Press
Eastland, Terry
SUPREME COURT PRESS T n its term ending in early July, I the Supreme Court handed down five decisions involving civil rights, all of which were regarded as losses by the organized civil rights...
...Alone on the other side in this particular story was one of the plaintiffs in the case at issue, a white firefighter from Birmingham, Alabama...
...Maybe the editors of Time actually believe that conservatives are against civil rights (not true) and that conventional civil rights advocates live in some netherworld beyond politics and cannot be politically classified (hardly true either...
...It sued, claiming that the city ordinance violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment...
...Okay, the Court did chip away in that sense, but it also chipped in favor of the rights of all citizens, regardless of race...
...judiciary...
...Under the types claim to speak...
...The civil rights lobbyists know how to punch the big media buttons...
...Inaccuracy...
...News & World Report ran a headline, "Are You Smiling Robert Bork...
...Barry Goldstein was "Barry Goldstein of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund...
...There wally, I shouldn't leave the subject do it," one Chinese American pro- tenant six years ago, but didn't, instead may be smog out there, but it's not the of civil rights without commend- moted for that reason told Nazario...
...dards as all non-minorities...
...So expect more talk about Some were ambivalent about affir- Hispanic American as saying that af- Good story—good because it got bethe "night falling" and the Second mative action, liking it because it had firmative action is "a handout...
...The company won, so there was a vindication of rights in this case...
...To sustain such a conclusion, it's necessary to argue that non-minorities don't have civil rights...
...And William Bradford Reynolds was "the controversial former Assistant Attorney General for civil rights in the Reagan administration...
...Joining Hooks and Lowery in the Times's story were three other "civil rights leaders," making five altogether—five individuals who have more than equal access to the mainstream media...
...So they did...
...research grants...
...Right she is, fessor, reported Nazario, is no longer chief, a job he'll take only if he earns "numerical goals" and the like, which and her story records those rarely heard applying for affirmative-action-related it on the usual terms...
...Newsweek's June 26 story was more accurate than Time's, though not by much...
...SUPREME COURT PRESS T n its term ending in early July, I the Supreme Court handed down five decisions involving civil rights, all of which were regarded as losses by the organized civil rights lobby...
...Rarely heard," firmative action "robs us of our digni- under normal procedures...
...Reaction" stories of this kind show just how skilled the "civil rights leaders" are at getting their point of view, quickly and clearly, into the nation's most influential media...
...I won't argue with that...
...Furthermore, consider her summary of where the Court is, as of July 1989: The Court remains firmly committed to providing remedies for discrimination...
...This pro- did, and now he plans to try for fire lative patrons are forced to deal with affirmative action plan...
...And it believes that white workers who have been adversely affected by a court-approved affirmative action plan can attack that judicial settlement...
...And his tenure, producing important results even after his departure, proves the importance of purpose in office...
...and it prefers not to read statutes as imaginatively as civil rights lawyers might like...
...talents...
...The Court's civil rights decisions precipitated lots of stories and analyses about how the Supreme Court was now clearly, finally, a conservative Court...
...He them out this time, unless their legis- have been hired or promoted under an bring us advancements...
...32 ginia, ordinance that set aside 30 percent of public construction contracts for businesses owned by black, Spanish-speaking, Oriental, Indian, Eskimo, or Aleut citizens...
...And others had come to reject submit to the same promotion stan- whose behalf the organized civil rights the whole idea of race preference...
...But almost as important as Kennedy to the Court's decisions was Reynolds, who served as head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division from 1981 until December 1988...
...One explanation is intellectual laziness, and believe it or not, when it comes to reporting on civil rights, there is a good bit of that around...
...only conservatives were...
...They also illustrate just how one-sided such stories can be...
...Night has fallen on the Court as far as civil rights are concerned," said Benjamin L. Hooks of the NAACP...
...If Time was deliberately inaccurate, then I'll say it: the story was biased...
...I will stick to Congress has left all these years to the voices...
...Time also wins this dubious Pulitzer...
...Hysteria...
...Of course, sometimes the lazy journalist is not really lazy but a true believer, unwilling to admit that minority preferences can discriminate against non-minorities...
...I don't know whether Bork was smiling or not, but I saw Reynolds soon after the civil rights decisions were rendered, and I can verify that he was...
...The magazine told the nation (in a headline) that the Court was "Chipping Away at Civil Rights...
...they want "corrective" legislation, and if you're against it, in their view, you're against civil rights...
...In the media organs known in Washington, there were few contrary voices, not to mention calmer ones, another indication of the one-sided nature of the civil rights "debate" inside the Beltway...
...The Court wants plaintiffs who charge discrimination to prove it...
...But it wants minority set-asides narrowly designed to address proven past discrimination...
...Its story contained some interesting labeling whereby no liberal was actually identified as such...
...Walter Berns was "Walter Burns [sic] of the conservative American Enterprise Institute...
...the addition of Justice Anthony Kennedy made a difference in civil rights as well as in other areas...
...It was a 1988, in response to the Grove City wrote staff reporter Sonia L. Nazario, ty" and encourages the idea "that self-pride thing," he told Nazario...
...Sometimes the lazy journalist comes by this view as a result of a conversation with someone like Ralph Neas, the executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, who talks about civil rights as though they belong exclusively to members of certain minority groups and women...
...PRESSWATCH The question is why Time reported the decisions as it did...
...And also duration...
...There was lots and lots of this in the wake of the Court's rulings, first in news accounts and then in editorials and columns...
...Suffice to say, this guy isn't a regular on the talk shows...
...On the other hand, Time identified Bruce Fein as "conservative court exby Terry Eastland pert Bruce Fein...
...Yet Time reported an erosion of same...
...It observed that the Court had "chipped [do the news magazines collude on choice of verbs?] away at programs designed to advance women and minorities in the work force...
...Eleanor Holmes Norton was "Georgetown law professor Eleanor Holmes Norton...
...Here I have principally in mind Time's treatment of the Court's decisions...
...Or maybe they have unconsciously absorbed these propositions and are unaware of their influence upon their work...
...That would have been news to the plaintiffs in at least three of the cases...
...and in Wall Street Journal...
...Perhaps it says • • • "I don't know if promoting someone fire department's affirmative action something that Nazario works out of because they are Chinese is the way to program, he could have become a lieu- the Journal's Los Angeles office...
...I wouldn't count "are the voices of those who actually somehow color, not hard work, can knew I could make it on my own...
...Or maybe they were just trying to get the word "conservative" into the copy as often as possible in order to fit the story line that a conservative Court was "chipping away at civil rights...
...it doesn't like racial quotas...
...Julius Chambers was "Julius Chambers, director, counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund...
...With the exception of Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, no one picked up on the Reynolds story...
...It was Reynolds who framed the legal issues involving civil rights and forced the federal courts to deal with them...
...But don't count on it happening...
...Mindlessness...
...The New York Times accused the Court of "icy indifference to the hopes of discrimination victims," and Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen went so far as to say that the Court had brought to an end "the Second Reconstruction...
...The subsequent journalism proved notable for several reasons...
...I decision of 1984...
...Joseph E. Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference...
...As night follows day, the hysteria then showed up in the editorials and columns of the newspapers and magazines read especially by folks in Washington...
...That was a pretty accurate summary, and if it were put this way to the American people, there would hardly be cause for alarm...
...Twice in this decade they've been able to prevail with this approach (1982, in response to a 33 voting rights decision of 1980...
...Civil Rights Leaders Attack Court's Decisions," said the headline atop a "reaction" story in the June 13 New York Times...
...the point of which was that Bork should be smiling at the work of Kennedy, whom President Reagan appointed after the Senate voted Bork down...
...The Missed Story...
...Yes, Eskimos and Aleuts in Richmond, notwithstanding that the 1980 Census found only three Eskimos and two Aleuts domiciled there...
...Reynolds had help from various deputies over the years, as well as other senior Justice Department officials, but he was the one constant force...
...Presumably, Time's dictionary lists "controversial" and "conservative" as synonyms...
...it doesn't believe a statistical imbalance between whites and blacks in a particular job category proves discrimination...
...yond the law and policy debates inside Reconstruction, and more editorials opened doors, disliking it because it And she related the story of a Miami Washington and found out what was and columns wailing about the state of had encouraged skepticism about their firefighter, a Hispanic, who decided to in the hearts and minds of those in civil rights in America...
...It's hard to believe Time actually believes that, but it's fair to observe that Time didn't make the argument...
...Reynolds, it bears noting, could have left much earlier, say in 1985, when his promotion to associate THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1989 attorney general was denied by the Senate Judiciary Committee...
...W by the labeling for the latter but not the former...
...A deciding to wait three years until he had civil rights smog manufactured in ing a front-page story in the June 27 black professor of English said that af- the seniority and test scores to qualify Washington...
...Thernstrom THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1989 made the obvious point that we're not back to 1877 (the end of Reconstruction) or even to 1960, that there's a lot of legally uncoerced affirmative action around, and that it's here to stay...
...The J. A. Croson Co., which is not a minority-owned firm, was the sole bidder on a Richmond contract yet was turned down...
...In Richmond v. Croson, for example, the Court overturned a Richmond, VirTerry Eastland is resident scholar at the National Legal Center for the Public Interest in Washington, D.0 He is writing a book about the lessons for conservative government to be drawn from the Reagan and Bush years...
...I can't recall a single case in which the traditional civil rights groups have sided with a white plaintiff in a civil rights case...
...And Laurence Tribe was "Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe...
...Whatever, the labeling was unintelligent...
...The Court is "hiding racism under a cloak of legalism," said the Rev...
...Nazario also quoted a merit," he said...
...O ne of those contrarians was Abigail Thernstrom, writing in the July 31 New Republic...
...Had he not stayed on, one could imagine a less purposeful successor, or even one of a much different mind, with all that might have followed...
...The lazy journalist sees that minorities or women "lose" a case and concludes, as though by the punch of a computer key, that there has been a "chipping away at civil rights...
Vol. 22 • October 1989 • No. 10
