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Sonia Sotomayor was Story of the Day. The first day of hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee into her nomination to the Supreme Court was the unanimous choice to lead all three newscasts. Ceremony aside, little original news was made, as the first day consisted of the reading of prepared statements by both panel members and the nominee. NBC, courtesy of the University of Phoenix, this day's single sponsor, expanded its newshole (25 min v ABC 17, CBS 20) by running fewer commercials than usual.

A pair of soundbites was selected to sum up the day's proceedings in all three reports. Judge Sotomayor's description of her own judicial philosophy: "Simple. Fidelity to the Law." And the prediction by Sen Lindsey Graham, the Republican from South Carolina, on her prospects for success: "Unless you have a complete meltdown you are going to get confirmed." CBS anchor Katie Couric asked her colleague Bob Schieffer (at the tail of the Andrews videostream), anchor of Face the Nation, why the Republicans were challenging her: "I guess they do not want the folks back home to think they are potted plants," he speculated.

NBC's Pete Williams had a sardonic take on the day's speechifying, in which the nominee's own words occupied a scant eight minutes: Sotomayor "displayed an essential talent for Supreme Court nominees--the impassive stare." Williams reminded us that President Barack Obama had praised Sotomayor for her empathy when he nominated her. Sen Jeff Sessions, the senior Republican on the panel, asserted that such a quality does not amount to insight into all parties in a case, but sympathy for some and prejudice against others instead. Mused Williams: "At times the President's empathy remark seemed as much a focus of the hearing as his nominee."

Both ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg and CBS' Wyatt Andrews saw Democrats on the panel concentrating on Sotomayor's 17-year record on the federal bench and Republicans focusing on her extracurricular speeches. They both pointed to that famous wise Latina women soundbite that all three network newscasts--and the White House--mangled when the judge was nominated in May. Back then Tyndall Report (here, here and here) catalogued how the quote was misquoted.

Here we go again. This is what Sotomayor actually said: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who has not lived that life." This is how CBS' Andrews heard it: "A wise Latina woman would reach a better conclusion than a white male." ABC's Crawford Greenburg was almost word-for-word the same: "A wise Latina would reach a better conclusion than a white male."

Both did the judge a disservice. Both ignored the fact that this was an aspiration not a prediction: "I would hope that…" Both ignored the difference in experience between the two: her life had "richness;" his lacked it. Both ignored the tendency and saw a hard and fast rule: "…more often than not…" Dropping all those qualifiers gives unwarranted credence to Sotomayor's critics.

Andrew Tyndall 7/14/09 9:01:37 pm

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