The Corner

Today’s High Label Count

MRC’s Brent Baker reports Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito is conservative and all the television coverage Monday morning made that clear, but several reporters went further by either repeatedly applying the tag or by adding adjectives to suggest he’s out of the mainstream. On ABC’s Good Morning America, Jessica Yellin issued five labels in under 50 seconds, describing Alito as someone who will please Bush’s “conservative base,” has “established conservative credentials,” is “a law and order conservative,” who is “in the mold of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia” and whose “writing is so similar to the conservative justice’s, he’s sometimes nicknamed ‘Scalito.’” Just before Bush’s announcement, Charles Gibson called Alito “very conservative” and “the most conservative member” of the otherwise “liberal appellate court.” Gibson soon repeated himself: “The President has picked somebody very conservative.” Over on CBS’s Early Show, Gloria Borger dubbed Alito “quite conservative,” the same label applied a few minutes earlier on CNN’s Daybreak by Carol Costello before Jeffrey Toobin applied the “very conservative” tag. NBC’s Katie Couric asserted that Alito “could be a controversial choice” because he’s “a favorite on the right and he would replace moderate justice Sandra Day O’Connor.”

Tim GrahamTim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center, where he began in 1989, and has served there with the exception of 2001 and 2002, when served ...
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