Linda Greenhouse in C-SPAN Spat
One of legal journalism’s most famous names is at the center of a media controversy. The issue: whether a panel discussion on covering the U.S. Supreme Court should have been televised to a national audience.
Other Supreme Court reporters participating in the program apparently made no objection. But Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times—aka “Hurricane Linda”—raised a tempest and refused to participate when she found out, admittedly at the last minute, that C-SPAN would be covering the event yesterday, according to the Columbia Journalism Review. At that point, because of Greenhouse’s star status among the panelists appearing in the program, the organizer decided to cancel it.
Although Greenhouse has previously been covered by C-SPAN, she apparently is feeling a bit wary of television appearances right now after a speech she gave at Radcliffe College last summer that was later criticized as revealing too much of her personal views. (Many reporters traditionally have tried to avoid taking public positions on issues, for fear that they will be perceived as biased when covering related news stories.)
As Greenhouse herself puts it in a letter responding to a missive sent by C-SPAN to the program organizer, “There is a difference between appearing before a room of 50 or so professors and speaking on national television, as I’m sure you recognize. I did not agree to do the latter, and notwithstanding my willingness—as you note—to appear on C-SPAN dozens of times in the past, whether to do so remains, it seems to me, a matter in which I still have a say.”
Other panelists, however, disagreed—and see an irony in a participant at a journalism event discouraging television news coverage. “Television is part of the news media,” says Lyle Denniston, who covers the U.S. Supreme Court for SCOTUSBlog, in a e-mail to CJR, “and I strongly support its access to cover public events.”
