Until recently, much of the media treated the judiciary, particularly the U.S. Supreme Court, as a high-minded institution not caught up in the partisan battles that divide the rest of the country. But there has been a push to tell a different, more accurate story: the judiciary is also partisan and political. And the Republican Party in particular has stacked the courts with appointees who carry out their political goals.
Balls and Strikes, which is an arm of the progressive group Demand Justice, mostly embodies this style. One of the site’s stories last year criticized NPR legal reporter Nina Totenberg’s close ties to then-Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, arguing that a reporter is supposed to scrutinize those in power, not befriend them. Articles on the site have also shown the largely unknown conservative crucial role lawyers i activists play to push cases that result in rulings of the right.
“Our coverage is based on the reality that interpreting the law is an inherently political act with real-world consequences, and that a given outcome is not just, desirable, or legitimate simply because a person in a robe has managed to string together a few sentences about , “because the law requires it,” said the site’s Jay Willis Chief Editor.
