The most direct way to find the result of Supreme Court decision is to read the decision which is posted directly on their website. For the average person, this isn't always comprehensible. This decision was 97 pages long and includes the majority opinion, a concurring opinion from Justice Kennedy, and 2 dissenting opinions, one from Justice Ginsberg and one co-authored by Justices Breyer and Kagan (Burwell v Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 2014). There are almost 40 footnotes in the opinion and the dissent from Justice Ginsberg, which often reference other cases.
Most of the story is quotes from sources, the very first of which is a reaction from the White House which is passed through the Press Secretary Josh Earnest. It is always questionable using an edited reaction like this that was specifically crafted to become the talking point on the subject.
The next source was the Supreme court decision itself. This is obviously a very reliable source. The author took quotes from both the majority and dissenting opinion to avoid bias.
The next quote is from SCOTUS blog, which is a very widely known and respected resource for these decisions. The link itself it not quite accurate as it is takes you to a live blog that has changed over time. So it is hard to find which individual actually said the quote taken from the site- is it one of the regular contributors or a random guest? The editors of SCOTUS blog almost all are lawyers who have argued at the Supreme Court. Thus they can translate the dense decisions into plain English.
The article then has some quotes from NPR's legal correspondent Nina Totenberg ("Nina Totenberg," n.d.). It is almost questionable that she didn't just write an article herself. These quotes could be old as they just explain the substance of the case, not the current decision. However, it does not link to an article that these quotes are taken from.
The most questionable sentence of the whole article is this "The case, Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby, is perhaps the most important decision of the high court's term, legal analysts say" (Chappell, 2014). Why wouldn't you pick one legal analyst that actually said that?
For more background information on the basis of the case being sent all the way to the Supreme Court and all of the legal reasoning behind the arguments, Bill links to an article that is on NPR but is actually partner content written by a Kaiser Health News journalist Julie Rovner.
We then finally get to some background information about the plaintiffs in the case, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialists, and they include a link to the latter website, but not the former's. This may suggest bias.
The final 2 links are mostly superfulous. He includes links to the "Emergency Contraception Website" which have information about Plan B and Ella which were a particularly controversial part of the case ("Emergency Contraception: Plan B," n.d.). These links were clearly there to suggest that educational sources; the website is run by Princeton University, do not think that emergency contraceptive counts as abortion.
Since this author is not the most credible on this topic, the large number of sources used, and the good quality of sources make this article more reliable. I would not trust a random personal blog to detail Supreme Court cases, but a veteran journalist like Bill Chappell with his wide network makes this more credible. The media have made mistakes reporting Supreme Court decisions before see this article about the Wolf Blitzer mix up on the individual mandate decision- Supreme Court health care ruling: CNN, Fox news wrong on individual mandate (Fung, 2013). Overall, I think Montecino would find this to be a credible source (1998). But I can not wait until someone tricks major networks into reporting a Supreme Court decision going the wrong way again with our unrestricted blogs.
References
Bill Chappell. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/people/14562108/bill-chappell
Burwell v Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., No. 573 (June 30, 2014).
Chappell, B. (2014, June 30). Some companies can refuse to cover contraception, Supreme Court says. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/06/30/326926331/companies-can-refuse-to-cover-contraception-supreme-court-says?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20140630
Emergency contraception: Plan B. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://ec.princeton.edu/pills/plan-b.html
Fung, K. (2012, June 28). Supreme Court health care ruling: CNN, Fox news wrong on individual mandate. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/28/cnn-supreme-court-health-care-individual-mandate_n_1633950.html
Montecino, V. (1998, August). Helpful hints to help you evaluate the credibility of web resources. Retrieved from http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/web-eval-sites.htm
Nina Totenberg. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/people/2101289/nina-totenberg
Katie,
ReplyDeleteYou picked a really good story to do this assignment! Supreme Court decisions are some of the most complicated pieces of information out there. In a situation like this you almost have to put your trust in reliable news organizations due to the legal complexities and political squabbles that surround them. Even with that, as you mentioned, organizations like CNN and Fox have made mistakes. Those mistakes were a rush to either be first or not last in reporting. As a journalist, my only hope is those mistakes make organizations put protocols to avoid these mistakes again. Also, in my opinion so much of the actual information about the case was not portrayed that people got wrong impressions about both sides views and contraception coverage. Very interesting stuff!