Justice Roberts’s Full Disclosure
- The Los Angeles Times editorial page finds a reason to celebrate after Chief Justice John Roberts’s recent seizure and no, it’s not because the page wishes him ill health. The editorial begins:
In providing the public with what seems like complete information about Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s seizure, the Supreme Court is breaking from one of its least admirable traditions: shrouding the health problems of justices in secrecy or less than full disclosure. The immediate comparison is with the frustrating lack of detail about the illness that ended the life of Roberts’ mentor and predecessor, William H. Rehnquist. But throughout its history, members of the court, usually when they reached an advanced age, have suffered impairments that weren’t public knowledge until after they died.
The openness about Roberts’ seizure reflects well on the court, on the Roberts family and on the hospital where he was treated. It also provides a model for the disclosure of the health problems of other members of the high court.
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And a bit more Murdoch.
The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait read Wall Street Journal publisher L. Gordon Crovitz’s letter to readers and isn’t reassured that Rupert Murdoch won’t meddle with the political coverage in the news pages of his new paper.
Writing in The Plank, Chait reacts to Crovitz’s statement that The Journal considers “the integrity of business and financial journalism to be even more important than for many forms of general-interest news.” Chait’s reaction: “That isn’t what I wanted to hear.”
