NPR, Fair and Balanced

Or maybe not.  Over at the Althouse blog we have a commentary on a Four Minute spot on Conflicts of Interest on the part of US Supreme Court Justices, or at least some of them.  The title of the Blog Post is "NPR Devotes Over 4 Min. to Supposed Ethics Issues of Thomas, Scalia, Alito; Barely Touches on Kagan."  Professor Althouse links to a News Buster post of the same title.

I think that National Public Radio is an important institution in this nation, but it is (1) no BBC and (2) not really "National" in the sense that it speaks to everyone across the fruited plain.

Going back to the Althouse post we have this comment:

I kept waiting and waiting for Totenberg to get to the part about the liberal justices. After loads of detail about the conservatives, all we got was one sentence:

The conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch, has also suggested that Obama Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan should recuse herself from participating in any upcoming case challenging the Obama health care law, because she had been a legal official in the Obama administration.

So, what is going on here?

1. NPR Reporter Nina Totenberg is planning to follow up with a look at the other side and an in depth look at Justice Elena Kagan—just stay tuned.
2. This is an example of the normal slant of NPR reporting.
3. This is just a sloppy job of reporting.
4. This is a piece designed to inoculate the listening audience to the [right wing] contention that Ms Kagan should not participate in a SCOTUS look at what has come to be known as "Obamacare".
5. Some of the above.

I leave it to the reader to make a judgement and then we will see how it plays out.

As for Ms Althouse, her last word on the subject is "Ridiculous!"

Regards  —  Cliff