05 Sep Marcia Coyle on Blogs and the Confirmation Process
One of the more interesting parts of the symposium last week at Pepperdine on the Rookie Year of the Roberts Court were the comments of Supreme Court correspondents David Savage, Gina Holland and Marcia Coyle. You can view their comments here.
I thought it was quite interesting that Marcia Coyle, Washington Bureau Chief and U.S. Supreme Court Correspondent for the National Law Journal, devoted virtually her entire presentation to the role of legal blogs in the confirmation process. What was particularly refreshing about Coyle is that although she is a pillar in the established world of mainstream Supreme Court journalists, clearly she is quite taken with legal blogs. Here is the key part of her comments:
I think overall, today the media does an excellent job of getting all the relevant information, and maybe not so relevant, out to the public and perhaps not so excellent a job of presenting it in a way that gives your audience a clear view of what the information means. And part of it is just the sheer amount of information.
I mentioned earlier the blog example…. I think probably in terms of news and information what was really defining about this confirmation process is that Roberts and Alito truly were the first Supreme Court nominees of the Internet age. All of us in the media today are dealing with increased pressure to get information on to our websites and even some reporters now are being asked by editors to blog off their beats. And so there’s this incredible pressure to compete with the immediacy of news.
The blogs to me were the most fascinating aspect of this whole Internet feature of the confirmation hearings. I started reading them very closely during the confirmation hearings- both political and legal blogs – and I was amazed at the amount of information they generate. And it’s not just gossip and rumor. A lot of them presented detailed background information on all of the nominees, opinions, links to cases, reports, some had highly placed sources. I don’t consider them established new media, but I do consider them, I think in the future to play a very significant role, perhaps akin to what TV did to the confirmation hearings.
… I think blogs, pod casts, all of this is also going to have a major role down the road in how nominees present themselves and how senators question them. I know in one blog cite, and this was not uncommon, that people would post opinions, maybe 5, 6, 10 times a day and those postings would attract anywhere from 200 to 500 public comments. Special interest groups all had their own blogs, they had pod casts during the confirmation hearings. This is all part of trying to convey a message to the public; trying to influence as well the media. I know that White House officials talk to bloggers in order to get their message out about the nominees and so I think what we saw with Roberts and Alito is only at the very beginning of what will be quite fascinating down the road as we head more and more into the Internet age. And I’m not sure what the ultimate impact is going to be.
Afterwords I spoke with Marcia during the reception and she indicated that if she had more time she would have discussed the role of blogs in the Harriet Meyers confirmation process. She stated that while the White House was still convinced of the viability of the Meyers’ nomination the blogs had already recognized (and contributed to) her quick demise.
Regarding the Alito nomination, I told her that Opinio Juris had done over a dozen posts on Alito, addressing every possible international law angle about the nominee, from his senior thesis on the Italian Constitution to his record on immigration. Her response, “I remember. Opinio Juris is bookmarked on my computer.”
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