The Culture of a Women-Led Newspaper by Tracy Everbach on Scribd
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
A “wise Latina” and a son of immigrants
A “wise Latina” and a son of
immigrants: Comparing newspaper coverage of Sonia Sotomayor and Samuel Alito
Tracy Everbach, Ph.D.
University of North Texas
Mayborn School of Journalism
1155 Union Circle #311460
Denton, Texas 76203-5017
214-995-8464
Everbach@unt.edu
Abstract
This research paper compares coverage of the
U.S. Senate Judiciary hearings for Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and
Sonia Sotomayor in two leading United States newspapers, The New York Times and the Washington
Post. The qualitative textual analysis examines news frames employed by the
two papers and finds that they focused on the horserace, the nominees’
personalities, their ethnicity and gender roles. The study concludes that the
newspaper coverage failed to provide much useful information to the public
about how the nominees would perform on the court, instead focusing on the
politics of the hearings. It also concludes that coverage focused heavily on
Sotomayor’s ethnicity but paid scant attention to Alito’s and that the
newspapers cast Sotomayor and Martha-Ann Alito, Samuel Alito’s wife, into
stereotypical female gender roles. Alito similarly was defined in a stereotypical
male gender role.
Introduction
Sonia Sotomayor made history in
August 2009 when she was confirmed as the first Hispanic person and the third
woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. However, her confirmation did not come without
controversy. Women’s groups and Hispanic groups complained she had been
viciously attacked in the media. Conservatives charged that President Obama
nominated her to the court only because of her race and gender. Several conservative
pundits, primarily white males, attacked her in gendered and racial terms.
“She’s an angry woman, she’s a bigot, she’s a racist,” said Rush Limbaugh on
his talk show. Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove characterized
her as “acting like sort of a schoolmarm.” Commentator Pat Buchanan called her
an “affirmative action pick.” And talk show host G. Gordon Liddy of Watergate
fame made the bizarre comment that he hoped “the key conferences aren’t when
she’s menstruating or something.” Sotomayor was 55 years old when she was
nominated to the court (Women’s Media Center, 2009).
During Sotomayor’s Supreme Court
confirmation hearing in July 2009, Republican members of the Senate Judiciary
committee questioned her temperament and her fairness. One of their main
concerns was a 2001 speech in which she called herself a “wise Latina” whose
decisions could be informed by her ethnic and gender background and might be
superior to those of a white male. (Sotomayor grew up in the Bronx, the daughter
of Puerto Rican parents.) During the hearings, columnist Kathleen Parker in the
Washington Post took to task the
Republican male senators on the judiciary committee for their condemnation of
Sotomayor: “Are we to infer that men of
European descent are never unduly influenced by their own ethnicity, gender or
political preferences? Can anyone affirm this assertion with a straight face?”
(Parker, 2009). In addition, Post columnist Eugene Robinson pointed
out that critics of the “wise Latina” comment were operating on “a flawed
assumption: that whiteness and maleness are not themselves facets of a distinct
identity” (Robinson, 2009).
Sotomayor,
a Yale Law School graduate with 17 years of experience on the bench, ultimately
became a Supreme Court justice. But the intense scrutiny raised questions. Only
two of the 17 judiciary committee members who conducted the Sotomayor hearings
were female. Would a male undergo the same kind of criticism and partisan
attacks? Would he be questioned in the same way? An opportunity for a case
study arose. Three years before Sotomayor’s nomination, Samuel Alito, a white
male, faced the same panel. Alito is the son of an Italian immigrant and like
Sotomayor, graduated from Yale Law School. Both he and Sotomayor attended
Princeton University as undergraduates. He also was 55 years old when
nominated. And he, too, made a public statement about his ethnic background
informing his judicial work:
When a
case comes before me involving, let’s say, someone who is an immigrant — and we
get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases — I can’t help
but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn’t that long ago when they were
in that position… When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about
people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic
background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into
account (C-SPAN, January 11, 2006)
This study examines how the two Senate
Judiciary Committee hearings, Alito’s and Sotomayor’s, were covered in two
leading U.S. newspapers, The New York
Times and The Washington Post. It
examines media frames used to characterize a Hispanic woman and a white man, both
of whom were being questioned about the same job, Supreme Court justice. It
asks the research question: How did two leading U.S. newspapers frame coverage
of Samuel Alito’s and Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court confirmations? The study
examines the similarities and differences in the framing and tries to determine
if the justices’ race and/or gender played a factor in newspaper characterizations
of them.
Literature
review
The
first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court was Sandra Day O’Connor,
nominated by President Reagan in 1981. Another woman did not join the highest
court in the land until 1993, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was nominated by
President Clinton. Little literature was found about media coverage of women in
the state or federal judiciary, but some studies exist on news coverage of women
as political candidates for federal offices. Kahn and Goldenberg (1991) found in
a content analysis of U.S. Senate campaign coverage in the 1980s that news
organizations report on male and female political candidates differently,
concentrating more on women’s viability as candidates rather than their stance
on issues. The authors also found that
female candidates received less media attention than males and when they were
covered, were characterized as less competitive than male candidates. When
writing about female candidates, female reporters were found to concentrate
more on issues than male reporters. The authors noted media coverage during the
time period “may serve as a critical obstacle for women running for the U.S.
Senate” (Kahn & Goldenberg, p. 180).
However, six years later Smith
(1997) found in a newspaper content analysis that media portrayals of 1990s female
candidates had become more equitable. The year 1992 was known as “The Year of
the Woman,” following Anita Hill’s 1991 testimony at U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearings. Hill’s accusations of sexual harassment
led to greater awareness and legal reforms that acknowledged such harassment as
a civil offense. Just after the 1992 election, more women than ever before
served in Congress: six in the Senate, and 47 in the House of Representatives
(Abramson, 2009). One of the 1992 Senate newcomers was Dianne Feinstein of
California, who 17 years later was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee
at Sotomayor’s hearing. Smith’s research on 1990s female candidates in
statewide campaigns suggested media coverage perpetuated systematic gender
stereotypes, although “they are not so glaring as reported in previous studies”
(p. 71). He found that women were portrayed less as novelties than in the past,
but news media continued to pay more attention to male candidates.
The same year, Carroll and Schrieber
(1997) concluded that newspaper coverage reflected both positive and negative
stereotypes of female politicians in the U.S. Congress. In their content
analysis of articles in 27 major newspapers in 1993 and 1994, they found that
women elected to Congress in 1992 received more media attention than men
elected the same year. They also concluded that women were portrayed as “agents
of change” (Carroll and Schrieber, p. 145).
Still, media coverage adhered to a number of stereotypes, including
stories about women’s appearances and clothing and coverage in newspapers’
style pages rather than news sections. And the coverage focused mainly on
women’s involvement in so-called “women’s issues,” such as women’s health and
abortion.
By the 2000s, women politicians
still faced hackneyed characterizations. Maytal (2005) examined newspaper
coverage of women officeholders in the 108th Congress during 2003. She
concluded that congresswomen received less newspaper coverage than congressmen,
except for stories published in newspaper lifestyle sections that focused on
their personal lives. In follow-up interviews with press secretaries for female
House of Representative members, Maytal found that some congresswomen’s hairstyles
and roles as mothers had been mentioned
in stories about issues; e.g., Representative Nancy Pelosi was identified as
“the mother of five” in an article about the Democratic Party’s legislative
strategy (Maytal, p. 7).
News frames are structures journalists
employ, consciously or unconsciously, to make sense of the material they
report. Erving Goffman defined frames as a “specific set of expectations used
to make sense of a social situation at a given point in time” (Baran &
Davis, 2009, p. 317). Norris described
frames as ways to “simplify, prioritize and structure the narrative flow of
events when covering men and women in public life” (Norris, 1997, p. 6). Gender
becomes a factor in framing when women are portrayed in ways that support the
dominant ideology regarding women’s social roles. In a patriarchal society,
women hold secondary status and media frames tend to reinforce that status.
Tuchman (1978) and Gans (1979) established that news is socially constructed
and relies upon official sources composed of those who hold power: typically, white,
middle-aged males. News coverage is framed to support the status quo, which
favors the interests of those in power, and frames reinforce common narratives
and images to make sense of social structures (Baran & Davis, 2009; Norris,
1997).
Journalists
learn to employ frames through their professional training and practices, and
therefore may not consciously reinforce gender stereotypes. However, the ways
journalists present news coverage often fall under common socially constructed frames.
Women in media stories often are portrayed as victims, mothers, wives, or other
roles in society’s private sphere rather than the public sphere, and less often
as those in power or seeking power within government or the corporate world.
When women do seek power or hold power, media patterns show they may be
depicted within frames such as “the first woman” to hold the position; as
outsiders, not members of the dominant group; or as agents of change (Norris,
1997; Rakow & Wackwitz, 2004).
The
concept of “the other” addresses the marginalized roles of women and minorities
in society, with white males of U.S. or European descent considered in media
representations as the norm or the powerful (Byerly, 2007). Media perpetuate
these societal beliefs, although groups representing “the other” have made
inroads through activism and social movements. Women, minorities and other
groups that defy traditional gender, racial and sexual norms also have been framed
in news media as outsiders. Tuchman’s (1978) notion of symbolic annihilation
states that those framed as “the other” are either marginalized, dismissed, trivialized
or condemned in media (McGregor, 2000). Women who seek power in patriarchal
society may be framed as “extremists and deviants,” sexualized as objects or undermined
by a focus on their personal relationships and personality traits (Gibson,
2009). These patterns are repeated in mainstream media, which set the agenda
for what is considered important in society, as McCombs and Shaw noted in
1972. Mainstream media also play a role
in how society understands gender roles. The hegemonic function of the news
media protects the interests of males, who hold the majority of power in the
U.S. Also, journalism continues to be a male-dominated business, with women
composing about 37 percent of newspaper staffs (ASNE, 2010) and 40 percent of the
television news workforce (RTNDA, 2007). In journalism management, two out of
three newsroom supervisors are male and three out of four television news
directors are male (McCormick Foundation, 2010). It stands to reason that the
socially constructed news products disseminated in the United States favor the
interests of men, whether the selection and presentation of what is considered
newsworthy is conscious or unconscious.
News
products may be read and analyzed as journalist-prepared texts that help the
public to understand issues, events and other people (Bronstein, 2005). By
consuming repetitive patterns and topics as part of their media diets, readers
and viewers learn to make sense of reality through journalistic presentations.
“Given the majority of citizens’ lack of personal ties to emerging social
movements, media frames can be a powerful influence in the construction of
public opinion,” according to Bronstein (p. 786). Frames also are important
because of what they leave out, giving only a partial or generalized version of
a topic. Therefore, journalism becomes a conduit for routine, expected ideas
that uphold the power order (Baran & Davis, 2009).
Method
The New York
Times and
The Washington Post were chosen as
units for study. The New York Times was
chosen because it is considered the
standard-bearer for excellent journalism in the United States. It also is
widely read, with the third-largest circulation of all U.S. newspapers,
following The Wall Street Journal,
primarily a business newspaper, and USA
Today, a general-interest national newspaper (Mondonewspapers.com, 2010). The Washington Post was chosen because
it is the hometown newspaper for Washington, D.C., the center of U.S.
government. The Post also has a national
reputation for journalistic excellence.
Access World News database was
used to locate newspaper articles that ran in the two newspapers during the Alito
and Sotomayor hearings in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and through their
confirmation votes in the U.S. Senate. Stories mentioning Sonia Sotomayor were
pulled between July 12, 2009, the day her hearings started, and August 7, 2009,
the day after she was confirmed. Stories mentioning Samuel Alito were pulled
from January 9, 2006, the day his hearings began, and February 1, 2006, the day
he was confirmed. After this process, the
stories were cross-referenced with articles between the same dates in the Lexis-Nexis
Academic database to ensure all stories in the Post and the Times mentioning
Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor between those dates were obtained. A total of
127 articles referring to Alito and 119 referring Sotomayor were collected.
Those included not only news stories and opinion columns, but also letters to the
editor, editorials, lists of the Senate roll call tallies and brief items. In
addition, they included stories that mentioned Alito and/or Sotomayor that did
not focus on their confirmation hearings. For example, one story on Monday,
January 9, 2006 in The Washington Post Style
section profiled a lawyer who headed a conservative group that supported
Alito, but the story was about her, not him (Davis, 2006). Such stories were
removed from the analysis because they did not pertain directly to the hearings
or the nominees. After elimination of the stories that did not focus on the
hearings, 113 news texts about Alito and 99 about Sotomayor remained for a
textual analysis. They included news stories as well as letters to the editor
and sets of letters to the editor (counted as one), briefs, the Senate roll
call, transcripts of the hearings, editorials and opinion columns. Photographs
were not analyzed. All articles were read and placed into broad categories
according to the themes or frames they conveyed. Each article was then reread and
the themes were broken down further according to cues and signifiers within the
text. The researcher then identified and interpreted the major frames and subtexts
the Times and Post journalists used in their coverage of Alito and Sotomayor.
Results
Several themes emerged from the
textual analysis.
The horserace.
Much news media coverage is akin
to a horserace. Journalists expend hours reporting and writing and use much ink
and web space attempting to predict winners and losers in a particular
scenario. However, like a real horserace, this sometimes is difficult or impossible
to call. Both the Times and the Post dedicated endless column inches of
copy to speculate how each candidate’s approval would influence Supreme Court
decisions. Most often, Alito was predicted to tilt the court’s focus to the
right and Sotomayor to the left. Although the hearings were not an election,
the far most common news frame focused on the political implications, with Democratic
and Republican senators dissecting and attacking each nominee’s merits and
deficits. Democrats criticized Alito as too conservative to judge fairly and
Republicans criticized Sotomayor as too liberal. Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy
declared Alito was “anti-black, anti-disabled and anti-women” (Babington,
2006). Republicans used Sotomayor’s
“wise Latina” comment to insinuate she was biased. Ironically, they also criticized
statements she made about bringing empathy to the court as “more akin to
politics. And politics has no place in the courtroom” (Baker & Lewis,
2009). Apparently politics had plenty of places in the Senate hearing room.
Stories also predicted Alito
would vote to strike down Roe vs. Wade, the 1972 case in which the U.S. Supreme
Court upheld legal abortion. The New York
Times ran a piece noting that Democrats saw Alito’s confirmation as
“putting an enduring conservative ideological imprint on the nation’s judiciary,”
the political makeup of Congress, the White House and public opinion
(Nagourney, 2006). However, those
predictions did not exactly come true. Just two years later, Barack Obama, a
Democrat, was elected president. And four years later in 2010, Roe vs. Wade was
still the law of the land.
Conservatives quoted in the
newspaper stories portrayed Sotomayor as an “activist” judge who would allow
her gender and ethnicity to influence her decisions. Other articles focused on
political support for each nominee, characterizing conservatives, the religious
right and Republicans as aligned with Alito and liberals and Democrats aligned
with Sotomayor, although the Supreme Court is nonpartisan. Stories also delved
into each judge’s opinions, writings and speeches, gauging how each would vote
on various issues, including abortion, the death penalty, affirmative action,
gun rights and executive power. As each hearing began, stories repeatedly quoted
each nominee insisting he or she would rule on cases impartially and neutrally,
as judges are expected to do. At no point in the hearings did either nominee
reveal his or her political stances on any issue. To clarify, the Times ran more than one story describing
how recent Supreme Court nominees have been coached to steer away from
political topics, to “sound as if you know what you are talking about but avoid
saying anything” (Lewis, 2009; Liptak, 2009).
The biggest political news out of the
Sotomayor hearings appeared to be the fact that one Judiciary Committee member,
Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, broke party ranks and voted for
her confirmation. [1] Graham
even told her during the hearings, “Unless you have a complete meltdown, you’re
going to get confirmed” (Lewis, 2009). But even this reporting offered no real
insights on how Sotomayor would perform as a judge.
Personality
Reporters tried to dissect each
nominee’s personality. Many of the articles portrayed Alito as a dull character.
The New York Times described him as
“shy and serious, prone to spending long hours in case files” and as a family
man who left a job in the Washington, D.C., Reagan administration because he
wanted to raise his children in New Jersey, his home state. Stories also
contrasted him with U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, with whom he
worked in the early 1980s Justice Department and who was confirmed four months
previously. Roberts “was handsome and funny” compared with Alito, wrote David
D. Kirkpatrick in the Times (2006). One
Washington Post story contended Alito’s
hearings were dry compared with those of “the witty, charming and erudite John
G. Roberts Jr.” (Milbank, 2006). In fact, the Alito portrayed by the Post was downright wooden: “While
senators delivered their speeches, Alito sat unnaturally still, feet flat on
the ground, elbows on armrests, hands in lap, wearing an expressionless face”
(Milbank, 2006). Other Post stories
maintained the public was interested in more pressing issues than the Alito
hearings and reported senators nearly fell asleep in the hearing room (Balz,
2006; Milbank, January 10, 2006). In the Times,
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham was quoted ranking Alito an “eight” compared
with Roberts’ ten (Kirkpatrick, 2006). And Times
writer Charles Isherwood (2006) noted the hearings’ lack of drama and the
constrained nature of recent Supreme Court nominees , writing that Alito could
be cast in the role of “The Man With Few Opinions of His Opinions.” However, Kirkpatrick
pointed out that Alito’s “low key, almost shy demeanor” worked to his advantage
because it made it difficult for Democrats to attack him.
While Alito’s emotions were
downplayed, several stories focused on the emotions of his wife, Martha-Ann
Alito. On the second day of testimony she left the hearing room after Lindsey
Graham defended her husband against accusations of bigotry. The Post
reported that Martha-Ann Alito “stood up, tissue in hand, and rushed to the
back of the room, where Capitol Police whisked away the tearful woman”
(Milbank, January 11, 2006). A follow-up story in the Post’s Style section dissected the incident, concluding that “the
crying wife is sacrosanct, an argument-ender, and more than a little
retrograde” (Copeland, 2006). The Post’s
David Broder noted that when Martha-Ann Alito cried, her husband “became the
sympathetic character in this drama” (Broder, 2006). In the Times, Isherwood (2006) speculated that
Martha-Ann Alito actually may have been driven to leave the hearing room
because of “grinding boredom.”
Some
parts of the hearings contained controversy. Democrats grilled Alito about his membership
in a group, Concerned Alumni of Princeton, that in the 1970s denounced
admission of women and minorities to the prestigious university. Alito insisted
he did not remember joining, although it was listed on his 1985 resume
(Russakoff, 2006). The Times ran an
editorial stating that Alito’s explanation was “hard to believe” and
questioning his honesty (The New York
Times, 2006). Alito also testified that he was drawn to conservatism in
part because of early 1970s activism by his Princeton peers and professors. He
said he observed at the institution “some very smart people and very privileged
people behaving irresponsibly” (Cave, 2006).
In contrast to the supposedly
dull Alito, Sotomayor was portrayed in Post
articles as “a confident and mature woman” who laughed, used her hands to
communicate and put her hands congenially on the shoulders of the male
Judiciary Committee members (Gerhart, 2009). On the other hand, the Times wrote of her “forced silence” to
avoid any pot-stirring (Stolberg, 2009). Maureen Dowd (2009)noted that
Sotomayor suppressed her emotions when testifying before the primarily male Judiciary
Committee: “the Bronx Bomber kept a robotic mask in place.” When male senators
asked a series of questions about Sotomayor’s temperament (her previous
speeches were described as “passionate” and colleagues said she ran a “hot
bench” in her courtroom), both Dowd and the Post’s
Kathleen Parker cried foul. Quipped Parker: “Here is what women hear when men
ask a female candidate about her temperament, ‘Are you really the bitch
everybody says you are?’”
Other stories took a more
lighthearted approach to Sotomayor’s personality, pointing out her affection
for Nancy Drew novels as a girl and her admiration of the TV lawyer Perry
Mason.
Ethnic background
Sotomayor’s previous comment
about being a “wise Latina” dominated much of the coverage, so much so that the
phrase became cliche. Sotomayor backed off from the statement during the
hearings, saying she regretted her earlier words. In her first day of
testimony, Sotomayor explained that she made the comment not to insinuate that
her life experiences made her better to judge a case, but “to inspire young
Hispanics, Latino students and lawyers to believe that their life experiences
added value to the process” (Goldstein, Barnes and Kane, 2009). Newspaper coverage speculated that she
distanced herself from the statement as part of a strategy to reveal as little
of herself as possible. In fact, in the Times,
Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe said the hearings revealed
“nothing” about her legal views (Savage, Baker, Liptak & Bennett, 2009).
The Post ran a column from Sotomayor’s former Princeton professor,
Peter Winn, who tried to clarify the “wise Latina” comment. Winn discussed Sotomayor’s
early 1970s experiences as a Latina in Princeton’s “WASP culture,” her growth
as a writer and scholar, and how she inspired him to teach Latino studies, in
which he now is an expert. “Personally, I view the comment as a reference to
the enriching impact of her life experiences on her work as a judge,” he wrote
(Winn, 2009). Nearly every Times story about Sotomayor noted that
her parents were from Puerto Rico, that she grew up in a public housing project
in the South Bronx and that her mother raised her alone after her father died
when she was 9. The Times
characterized Sotomayor’s background in her own words: as “uniquely American”
(Baker & Lewis, 2009) and interviewed summer school students at the school
Sotomayor attended as a child in the Bronx. “Sometimes I think, ‘What if I am
sitting at the same desk she sat in?” commented one student (Fernandez, 2009).
The Post ran a story about Latinos attending the hearings to show
support and pride for the first Hispanic Supreme Court nominee (Montgomery
& Kilpatrick, 2009) and another about Latino response to her confirmation.
“Can you imagine the message this is sending to all the women of the United
States?” one source was quoted as asking (Aizenman, 2009). The Times ran a reaction story the day after
her Senate confirmation quoting Puerto Rican residents of New York proud that
one of their own ascended to the high court (Gonzalez, 2009).
Some
articles pointed out that Sotomayor’s nomination shattered the notion that only
white males have power in U.S. government. Post
columnist Eugene Robinson asked whether the Republican Party would continue
“tying its fortunes to an anachronistic claim of white male exceptionalism and
privilege” (Robinson, 2009). Robinson also noted the hypocrisy of criticizing
Sotomayor for her reference to her background when none was offered for Alito’s
statement about his background as the son of Italian immigrants. “Everyone has
a unique personal history,” Robinson wrote.
Much less was written about
Alito’s comments on his ethnic background. Some coverage mentioned his
ethnicity as an Italian-American and as a white male but not nearly to the
extent Sotomayor’s status as a Latina was emphasized. The Times covered Alito’s statement on the first day of his hearings,
in which he spoke of “his father’s arrival from Italy as an infant”
(Kirkpatrick, January 10, 2006). Several other Times stories identified him as “the son of an Italian immigrant.” However,
the Post did not even mention Alito’s
statement about his background as the son of immigrants could influence his
decisions.
Gender roles
Alito replaced a white woman,
Sandra Day O’Connor, on the bench, and Sotomayor replaced a white male, David
Souter. The Post compared Alito’s
background with O’Connor’s, insinuating that his background as a white, ethnic
male who attended an Ivy League university in the turbulent early 1970s
impelled him to become a conservative as a means to counter the changing
landscape of the time. “Alito’s arrival
on the Supreme Court would mean that, in place of a 75-year-old Western woman
who grew up on a cattle ranch, met with gender discrimination in her first job
search, and then served as a state legislator and trial court judge, the court
will be adding a white ethnic male from the industrial Northeast who has spent
the past 15 years in the wonkish world of the federal appellate bench” (Lane,
2006). However, the other stories did not specifically point out Alito’s male
status.
On the other hand, Sotomayor’s femaleness
was a major topic of stories, many of which pointed out she would be the third
woman on the Supreme Court. Sotomayor
attended Princeton at a time when both women and minorities were rare at the
university, while Alito was part of the male culture there. However, each
nominee employed a network of mentors to ascend through the ranks. The day
before the hearings began, the Post
ran a long feature portraying Sotomayor as a Princeton outsider who bonded with
a “band of misfits.” She later evolved into a brilliant judge mentored by
mainly male, but some female, role models who pushed her to succeed (Goldstein,
2009). The article also highlighted how she had turned to fellow Puerto Ricans
for advice and help. Times columnist
David Brooks tackled Sotomayor’s experiences by describing her life as a
classic story of rising from the bottom to the top, but with more complications.
She is, he wrote, someone “who worked hard and contributes profoundly to
society but who also sacrificed things along the way” (Brooks, 2009). He
attributed much of her success to her extended family and mentors: “Her ascent
wasn’t a maverick change against the establishment. Instead, at each phase, her
talents were noticed by a well-placed member of that establishment—a famous
professor, a revered D.A., a partner at an elite firm. She was elevated and
guided” (Brooks, 2009). Brooks also blamed the breakup of Sotomayor’s marriage
and a later relationship breakup as the consequences of her “workaholism.” He
wrote that these traits provide a glimpse into a high-achieving lifestyle.
However, his column failed to discuss high-achieving male judges, apparently
implying that only high-achieving women have commitment problems.
The day before Sotomayor’s
hearings began, the Times ran a
lengthy magazine piece on the only woman remaining on the Supreme Court, Ruth
Bader Ginsburg, who candidly replied when asked how she felt: “I feel that I
don’t have to be the lone woman around this place.” Ginsburg added that having
only one woman on the court (after O’Connor’s departure) gave the public “the
wrong perception of the court” (Bazelon, 2009). The author, Emily Bazelon,
noted that in Ginsburg’s own 1993 hearings, she had said she hoped soon to see
three or four women on the court. “My prediction was right for the Supreme
Court of Canada,” Ginsburg quipped in the 2009 story. More revelations from
Ginsburg included a defense of Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” comment: “All of our
differences make the conference better”; her thoughts on how women judges might
rule differently from men in discrimination cases: “the women will relate to
their own experiences”; and the fact that she, like Sotomayor, is a product of
affirmative action: “I was the first tenured woman at Columbia.”
Lifestyle
sections have long been relegated the “women’s section” of the newspaper and
apparently the Post believes its
women readers are keenly interested in fashion, even the clothing choices of
Supreme Court nominees. During each nominee’s hearings, the Post’s Style section published analysis
from Robin Givhan, Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion critic, on each nominee. The
story on the “unremarkable” Alito actually focused much more on his wife’s
wardrobe than his own. Givhan (2006) made some snarky comments about Mary-Ann
Alito’s wardrobe, including that her clothing “seemed to be coordinated with a
rigor more commonly found in Garanimals” and describing her suit made of fabric
similar to “the upholstery that once covered La-Z-Boys.” A letter to the editor
condemned Givhan’s criticism of Mary-Ann Alito as “at best, tasteless and, at
worst, malicious” (Stukey, 2006).
In
2009, Givhan’s fashion article on Sotomayor criticized her wardrobe as dated
and unfeminine “like a high school principal” but acknowledged it was “safe and
guarded.” Givhan pointed out in the
Sotomayor piece that Alito also dressed in an “unremarkable” way for his
hearings but that his wife dressed “like a PTA mom turned peacock” (Givhan,
2009).
Discussion
and conclusions
Not surprisingly, the Post and the Times most commonly employed the horserace frame, a classic
approach to news, to construct their coverage about the Alito and Sotomayor
confirmation hearings. The newspapers devoted a great deal of text to reporters’
predictions on hoe each nominee might influence the court if approved, how
senators on the judiciary committee might vote, how arguments between senators
affected the mood of the hearings, what confrontational questions senators asked
nominees and other back-and-forth chatter. But what news value does this sort
of coverage really provide? Not much in the way of useful information. Covering
the horserace aspect does not tell the reader much about the nominees or how
qualified they are to do the job. In fact, the Senate Judiciary Committee
hearings provided more of a forum for senators to grandstand rather than for
the public to learn about the nominees. Several stories described the coaching Supreme
Court nominees receive to reveal little to nothing about their philosophies or
opinions on any issues. In fact, the most recent nominee to the court, Elena
Kagan, once called these hearings a “farce” (Epps, 2010). So reporters covering
the hearings were left with daily space to fill and only an old formula to
rehash.
The Post’s and Times’ attempts
to delve into the nominee’s personalities revealed little as well. The coverage
of Alito described him as dull, but reporters in the hearings could not gain much
insight into his character from watching him give non-answers to senators’
questions. In fact, in search of a speck of action, writers for the Times and the Post leapt onto the fact that Martha-Ann Alito cried at one point
in the hearings, portraying it as a moment of great drama. Stories dissected
her actions and speculated on its meaning, when in reality the news value of
her emotional display essentially was nil. Sotomayor’s personality analysis by
the newspapers revealed only a bit more than Alito’s, with the papers
portraying her as amiable but also playing up some senators’ allegations of a
“temperament” problem, which Post
columnist Kathleen Parker summed up as an attempt to portray her as a difficult
woman.
The ethnicity frame revealed the
most interesting newspaper characterizations. The newspapers generally cast
Sotomayor in the role of “the other” –- a Latina who defied norms and
expectations. Her story of a child of Puerto Ricans growing up in the Bronx was
framed as a classic Horatio Alger success tale with a twist. Several writers
went out of their way to insinuate Sotomayor’s success was not all her own;
that she received help from others of her ethncity who held power. Yet, as much
as her “wise Latina” statement was played up in the news, Alito’s statement
about his ethnicity was played down. A few stories mentioned his heritage as an
Italian-American, but mainly as an attempt to explain why he had become a
conservative against the radical backdrop of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
While Sotomayor was portrayed in the coverage as an outsider and a “first,”
Alito held the inside track as the norm: the white, middle-aged male expected for
a Supreme Court nominee. To their credit, Post
columnists Kathleen Parker and Eugene Robinson pointed out the hypocrisy of
senators’ and others’ categorizing Sotomayor as a challenger to the status quo
rather than accepting her as a legitimate nominee.
Some of the coverage even belittled
Sotomayor by insinuating her success was not all her own. David Brooks’ Times column noted that (male) mentors had “guided” her. No such
column framed Alito as the product of others’ help. He was described in the
coverage as a self-made man, although he clearly had help mentors from the
start of his career. Columns by Parker in the Post and Maureen Dowd in the Times
condemned the senators’ questions about Sotomayor’s temperament and the
statement by Lindsey Graham that she would be confirmed unless she had a
“meltdown,” a word unlikely to be used in association with a male.
The Times faced the gender issue head-on it is interview with current
Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg, who candidly pointed out that the lack of women
on the court created “the wrong perception.” Brooks’ column also addressed it
by discussing Sotomayor’s status as single and childless, and writing that
powerful women often must sacrifice marriage and children to succeed in the
legal field. However, it should be noted that little of Alito’s personal life
and work habits were discussed and no stories questioned how he was able to
succeed with a marriage and children. Apparently it was assumed that his wife
took care of everything outside of work for him. Martha-Ann Alito became part
of the coverage when she cried, but also when the Post’s Givhan opted to critique her wardrobe. The ridiculous Givhan
fashion columns on the nominees focused much more on Martha-Ann than her
husband, yet none of Sotomayor’s relatives were critiqued, except a reference
to her mother “clutching her purse” in the hearing room. There was no fashion
coverage of Sotomayor’s stepfather, brother, sister-in-law, nieces and nephews,
who also attended the hearings, so the coverage of Martha-Ann Alito’s outfits
appeared petty and stereotypical.
In short, the U.S.’s elite
newspapers fell into the same constructed news frames so often employed in news
media. Some of the profile stories gave readers an in-depth look at the
nominees, but overall the coverage sent a message that the hearings were
politics as usual. More disturbingly, much of the newspapers’ Sotomayor
coverage resorted to old gender and ethnic stereotypes that cast her in the
role of “the other” while Alito, the white male, was considered the norm. This
type of coverage helps to uphold the power status quo in America and does
little to advance women’s and minorities’ equity. To their credit, some of the
columnists, notably Park, Robinson and Dowd, pointed out this dichotomy and
some of the readers who wrote letters to the editors did as well. Their
writings helped to balance the unfounded and sexist attacks by others in the
media, including Limbaugh, Rove and Liddy.
Future research in this area will
examine news coverage of the most recent Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan,
whose Senate Judiciary hearings took place in July 2010.
Works cited:
Abramson, J.
(2009, July 19). Women on the verge of the law. The New York Times, Week in Review, p. 1, p. 3.
Aizenman,
N.C. (2009, August 7). For Latinos, confirmation is an emotional moment. The Washington Post, p. A8.
American Society
of Newspaper Editors. (2010). Decline in newsroom jobs slows. Retrieved from http://asne.org/article_view/articleid/763/decline-in-newsroom-jobs-slows.aspx.
Argetsinger,
A. and R. Roberts. (2009, July 16). On Capitol Hill, a fibula buster. The Washington Post, Style, p. C3.
Babington,
C. (2006, January 9). Democrats ready to go after Alito—high court nominee’s
memos opposing abortion likely to be focal points of hearings. The Washington Post, p. A10.
Baker, P.
and J. Lewis. (2009, July 14). Judge focuses on rule of law at the hearings. The New York Times, p. A1.
Balz, D.
(2006, Janury 10). Despite advocacy, Alito is not on public’s radar screen. The Washington Post, p. A6.
Baran, S.J., & Davis, D.K. (2009). Mass
communication theory: foundations, ferment, and future, fifth edition. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Bazelon, E.
(2006, January 12). The place of women on the court. The New York Times Magazine, p. 22.
Broder, D.
(2006, January 15). The company man. The
Washington Post, p. B7.
Brockett, J.
(2006, January 28). Supremely inappropriate fashion critique. The Washington Post, p. A19.
Bronstein, C. (2005). Representing the third
wave: mainstream print media framing of a new feminist movement. Journalism
& Mass Communication Quarterly, 82(4), 783-803.
Byerly, C. (2007). Situating “the other”:
women, racial and sexual minorities in the media. In P. Creedon & J. Cramer
(Eds.) Women in Mass Communication, Third Edition (pp. 221-232). Thousand
Oaks, CA: SAGE.
C-SPAN. (2006,
January 11). Alito confirmation hearings. Retrieved from http://www.dailykos.com/tv/w/001783/ June 22, 2010.
Carroll, S.J., &
Schreiber, R. (1997). Media coverage of women in the 103rd Congress. In P.
Norris (Ed.),Women, media and politics (pp.
131-148). New York: Oxford University Press.
Cave, D. (2006, January
13). At Princeton, the hearings cause unease. The New York Times, p. A19.
Copeland, L. (2006,
January 13). Debating the tissues: what makes a good cry. The Washington Post, Style, p. C1.
Davis, M. (2006, January
9). Expert witness—activist lawyer Jan LaRue is carrying a banner for Sam Alito
in a battle that’s as personal as it is political. Washington Post, Style,
p. C1.
Dowd, M. (2009, July
15). White man’s last stand. The New York
Times, p. A25.
Epps, G. (2010, June
28). Kagan day 1: “vacuity and farce,”
the sequel. The Atlantic. Retrieved
from http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/06/kagan-day-1-vacuity-and-farce-the-sequel/58865/
Fernandez, Manny. (2009,
July 16). At a Bronx school, pupils wonder: Did Judge Sotomayor sit at my desk?
The New York Times, p. A23.
Gans, H. (1979). Deciding what’s news: a study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News,
Newsweek and Time. New York: Pantheon Books.
Gerhart, A. (2009, July 15). Warming the room
with a confident touch. The Washington
Post, p. A1.
Gibson, K. (Spring 2009). Undermining Katie
Couric: the discipline function of the press. Women and Language, 32 (1): 51-59.
Givhan, R. (2006, January 13). The Alitos:
well suited, and dressed for duress. The
Washington Post, Style, p. C1.
Givhan, R. (2009, July 19). Opening a
conventional closet in quest for a supreme robe. The Washington Post, Sunday Arts, p. E1.
Goldstein, A., R. Barnes & P. Kane.
(2009, July 15). Sotomayor emphasizes objectivity—nominee explains ‘wise
Latina’ remark. The Washington Post,
p. A1.
Gonzalez, D. (2009, August 7). For Puerto
Ricans, Sotomayor prompts pride, reflection. The New York Times, p. A13.
Isherwood, C. (2006, January 15). See
Washington gum the scenery. The New York
Times Week in Review, p. 3.
Kahn, K.F.
and E.N. Goldenberg. (1991). Women candidates in the news: an examination of
gender differences in U.S. Senate campaigns. Public Opinion Quarterly 55: 180-199.
Kirkpatrick,
D.D. (2006, January 9). Two legal careers that diverged may intertwine again. The New York Times, p. A16.
Kirkpatrick,
D.D. (2006, January 10). Cheers outside and senators’ lectures inside. The New York Times, p. A1.
Lane, C.
(2006, January 13). A right cautious nominee—measured replies paint picture
with a conservative tint. The Washington
Post, p. A6.
Lewis, N.A.
(2009, July 12). Nominee wraps up rehearsals. The New York Times, p. A16.
Lewis, N.A.
(2009, July 14). Senators stake out positions as Sotomayor hearings start. The New York Times, The New York Times
on the Web.
Liptak, A.
(2009, July 12). Path to court: speak capably but say little. The New York
Times, p. A1).
Mayer, J., & J. Abramson. (1994). Strange
Justice: the Selling of Clarence Thomas. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
McCombs, M.E. & D.L. Shaw. (1972). The
agenda-setting function of mass media. Public
Opinion Quarterly 36: 176-187.
McCormick Foundation. (2010). New media women
entrepreneurs. Retrieved from http://www.newmediawomen.org/site/facts_and_figures_weve_got_both/.
McGregor, J.
(2000). Stereotypes and symbolic annihilation: press constructions of women at
the top. Women in Management Review,
15 (5/6): 290.
Milbank, D.
(2006, January 10). Bipartisan agreement: Roberts was just terrific. The Washington Post, p. A7.
Milbank, D.
(2006, January 11). A day of Q’s and A’s – and a few Z’s. The Washington Post, p. A12.
Mondonewspapers.com
(2010, July 6). The
Top 100 USA Daily Newspapers. Retrieved from http://www.mondonewspapers.com/circulation/usatop100.html.
Montgomery, D. and K. Kilpatrick. (2009, July 14).
For some Latinos, hearing is believing—Sotomayor’s ascension trickles down. The Washington Post, p. A6.
Nagourney, A. (2006, January 15). Glum Democrats
can’t see halting Bush on courts. The New
York Times, p. A1.
The New York Times (2006, January 12). Judge Alito,
in his own words. The New York Times,
p. A30.
Parker, K. (2009,
July 19). The GOP’s Sotomayor sinkhole. Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/17/AR2009071702438.html.
Rakow, L.F.
& L.A. Wackwitz. (2004). Feminist
communication theory: selections in context. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Robinson, E.
(2009, July 14). Whose identity politics? The
Washington Post, p. A17.
Russakoff,
D. (2006, January 12). Alito disavows controversial group—nominee touted his
membership in 1985. The Washington Post,
p. A6.
Savage, C.,
P. Baker, A. Liptak & K. Bennett. (2009, July 17). A nominee on display,
but not her views. The New York Times, p. A11.
Smith, K.B.
(2007). When all’s fair: Signs of parity in media coverage of female candidates.
Political Communication 14: 71-82.
Stanley,
Alessandra. (2009, July 16). Legal inspiration, as seen on TV. The New York Times, p. A18.
Stolberg,
S.G. (2009, July 15). Senate panel wrangles with ‘A tale of two Sonias.’ The New York Times, p. A17.
Stukey, R.
(2006, January 21). For crying out loud, leave Martha-Ann Alito alone. The Washington Post, p. A17.
Tuchman, G.
(1978). The symbolic annihilation of women by the mass media. In G. Tuchman,
A.K. Daniels & J. Benet (Eds.), Hearth
and home: images of women in the mass media (pp. 3-38). New York: Oxford.
Tuchman, G. (1978).
Making news: a study in the construction
of reality. New York: Free Press.
Winn, P.
(2009, July 12). The education of Sonia Sotomayor. The Washington Post, Outlook, p. B1.
Women’s Media Center. Media justice for
Sotomayor. Retrieved from http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/937/t/9160/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=2019
[1]As
a side note, Senator Lindsey Graham also broke party ranks on July 20, 2010 by
voting to confirm Elena Kagan, Obama’s second female nominee to the Supreme
Court.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)