The Wall Street Journal came under fire Wednesday for its highly unusual decision to preempt another media organization’s story about Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. his reply on that opinion page.
Judge Alito’s essay, published in the opinion section of the journal, which operates independently of the newsroom, states: performed online It ran Tuesday evening under the headline “Judge Samuel Alito: Pro-Publica Misleads Readers.”
According to an editor’s note at the beginning of the essay, two ProPublica reporters, Justin Elliott and Josh Kaplan, emailed Judge Alito questions on Friday asking for answers by noon Tuesday. It says. An editor’s note reads, “This is Judge Alito’s reply.”
ProPublica released investigation A few hours later on Tuesday, he questioned Judge Alito and took part in a lavish fishing trip in 2008 as a guest of Republican donor billionaire Paul Singer, but has since divulged the trip. The company said it did not and had withdrawn from the lawsuit involving Mr. Singer’s hedging. fund.
ProPublica editor-in-chief Steven Engelberg said in a statement Wednesday that ProPublica always seeks answers from people mentioned in articles before publication. ProPublica has published several articles in recent months about possible conflicts of interest among some Supreme Court justices.
“I was surprised to see Judge Alito’s response to our question in the Wall Street Journal opinion essay, but I’d be happy to receive any response,” he said.
“We would be interested to know if the journal fact-checked the essays before publication,” he added. “We strongly reject the claim of the headline ‘Pro-Publica Misleads Readers.’ Thing.”
A spokeswoman for the Journal did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In an editorial published Wednesday evening, the magazine’s editorial board confirmed ProPublica’s questions to Judge Alito, stating that “the defense clearly wants it to be published in full, rather than being piecemeal edited.” I was there,” he said.
Bill Gruskin, professor of journalism at Columbia University, said opinion page essays usually receive some form of fact-checking, but in this case, the journal did not include it because the pro-publica research had not yet been published. said it could not have been done. .
“Judge Alito could have issued this as a statement on the SCOTUS website,” Gruskin, the journal’s former top news editor, said in an email. “But the fact that he chose the journal, and that the editorial page was willing to serve as his faithful factual record, says a lot about their relationship.”
In the article, Judge Alito argued that ProPublica’s argument that it should have withdrawn from certain cases and disclosed certain items in its 2008 financial disclosure report was invalid.
Rod Hicks, head of ethics and diversity at the Association of Professional Journalists, said, “It’s extremely frustrating for news outlets to allow officials to use their platforms to respond to questions from another news outlet. It’s rare in Japan,” he said.
“And it’s completely unheard of for other news outlets to post that reaction before they publish the story,” he added. “Professional courtesy, if not ethics, should have restrained journals.”
