I have frequently shared my theory that the information environment we inhabit is a major cause of our current disarray–that the ability of Americans to “curate” a fact environment that conforms to our biases allows us–indeed, encourages us– to inhabit very different realities.
What I haven’t previously appreciated is the extent to which even accomplished, educated people, people who should know better, deliberately choose sources that confirm rather than challenge their preferred worldviews. That blind spot is probably an outcome of my own professional experience–lawyers and academics are forced by those professions to take note of contending beliefs and positions, if only to counter or analyze them. It never would have occurred to me that Supreme Court Justices–people who must review arguments from litigants pressing wildly different perspectives, jurists who were once lawyers, after all– would be guilty of selecting their information sources in order to confirm or buttress their desired realities.
According to an article in The New Republic, I’ve been very naive.
The article, titled “Where Do Conservative Supreme Court Justices Get Their Information?” was triggered by recent oral arguments in an important voting rights case. A review of the Justices’ comments suggested to the author that the right wing of the high court has a “suspect media diet.”
The article noted that some thirteen years ago, when an interviewer asked Justice Scalia about his media diet, Scalia had responded that he just read The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times–that he had once gotten The Washington Post, “but it just … went too far for me. I couldn’t handle it anymore.”
The Journal, at the time, had the most prominent conservative editorial board among major newspapers, while the Times had an even more right-wing reputation. What’s wrong with the Post, Senior asked? “It was the treatment of almost any conservative issue,” Scalia explained. “It was slanted and often nasty. And, you know, why should I get upset every morning? I don’t think I’m the only one. I think they lost subscriptions partly because they became so shrilly, shrilly liberal.”
As an old saying has it, reality has a liberal bias…
The author noted that Scalia’s admission had come to mind during oral arguments in Watson v. Republican National Committee, a GOP legal challenge to a Mississippi election law allowing mail-in ballots to be counted so long as they were postmarked by Election Day and received within the subsequent five days. Numerous states have similar laws.
