The headline for Scott Whitlock’s June 27 NewsBusters post reads, “Cocky Journalists Declared ObamaCare Would Be Upheld, Maybe by a 8-1 Vote.” As the URL indicates, Whitlock started out by referring to “Cocky, Condescending Journalists,” but the middle word mysteriously disappeared somewhere along the line.
Anyway, Whitlock is rather upset that “journalists over the past few months have dismissed and derided the concept that the President’s signature legislation could be declared unconstitutional.” But the first three examples Whitlock cites aren’t from journalists:
- CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin is a legal analyst, not a journalist.
- Even Whitlock admits that Linda Greenhouse is an “ex-New York Times Supreme Court reporter.” He curiously fails to mention, however, what Greenhouse does now: she’s a journalist in residence at Yale Law School, not a working journalist.
- Andrew Cohen is a legal analyst and legal editor for CBS Radio News, not a working journalist.
Whitlock names only one person who’s anywhere close to being a working journalist, NPR’s Nina Totenberg.
Whitlock huffily concludes: “If the Supreme Court strikes down all or part of Obamacare, Thursday, will these journalists admit they weren’t quite the constitutional experts they claimed to be?”
Since the vast majority of Obamacare was upheld as constitutional, will Whitlock admit that these “journalists” kinda knew what they were talking about after all?