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7 - Which Decisions Are Reported? It's the Issue, Stupid!

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2009

Elliot E. Slotnick
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
Jennifer A. Segal
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky
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Summary

“They're more driven to stories that will produce ratings, and, therefore, they may be evaluating stories not on the basis of their importance, but how they'll play – whether it meets sort of a bar-stool test, whether people will fall off their bar-stools when they see the story coming on television.”

Carl Stern, former NBC news correspondent

The data we have presented throughout this volume make very clear that the networks' primary interest in the Court is focused on its docket and the decisions that are handed down each term. Further, as chapter 5 has illustrated, the Court's rulings in the terms' leading cases were the primary focal point of network news coverage. It was equally clear, though, that only a small proportion of cases, even of these leading cases, were reported during each of the terms in our analysis. The question remains, then, what influences the choice of which cases to cover? There have been others before us who have examined this question empirically, and their work is discussed briefly below. This research, while noteworthy, has been infrequent and limited in a number of ways. We then turn to our own analysis of the factors related to the coverage by the three networks of the cases that were granted certiorari and eventually decided on their merits with full opinions during the 1989 term. Our effort builds on and attempts to overcome many of the limitations in the previous research and has enabled us to understand more precisely how the choice of which cases to report is made by network news personnel.

Type
Chapter
Information
Television News and the Supreme Court
All the News that's Fit to Air?
, pp. 212 - 229
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1998

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