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What is the point on reporting about the spouses of Supreme Court Justices? This headline and the previous ones I remember on Ginny Thomas seem publicized just for waging the culture and rallying voters. The court members are appointed for life and I doubt these there is political appetite to impeach a justice for their beliefs or family associations after they are already seated on the bench. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/10/us/politics/alito-pride-flag.html The reporting on the gifts received by the justices makes sense to me since that would speak directly to concerns of an impartial judiciary. These type of stories remind me of the reporting and reactions to the Butker speech, wrong beliefs equals condemnation no matter the context.
Taking a step back, I see the same culture war reporting from the other side; see Conservative media reporting on Biden, Pelosi, AOC or Rashida Talib but don't recall where beliefs of their family members was reported as news.
The point is to get clicks.
It gets clicks by frothing up lefties about how awful and illegitimate those terrible republicans are and they're a danger to democracy, can you imagine what's going to happen to us in a country where a judge's wife can hang a flag the wrong way up, etc, etc. There's a demand for "Republicans are the spawn of satan" stories, so they get shoveled out the door.
The media is awful, but in most cases it's because the audience is also awful.
Isn't it curious they don't try to get clicks by reporting on the police siding with local rape gangs, child castration fetishists influencing a medical standards setting body, or Epstein running a child prostitution ponzi scheme?
The "mundane" "for the clicks", or " they just do it for the profit" explanations run into obvious problems very fast. Conspiracy theories seem a lot more consistent with reality.
No, that isn’t the market they’re serving.
The market is news, and it's news,and would bring them clicks.
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