FAIR Media Advisory: "Borking" History:

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Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
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MEDIA ADVISORY:
"Borking" History:
1987 Supreme Court fight often misremembered

July 21, 2005

The media have settled on a conventional wisdom about the failed 1987 Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork. As the oft-repeated story goes, Bork's supporters were somehow unable to mount any kind of pro-Bork campaign as a well-organized liberal opposition outmaneuvered them and doomed Bork's chances to be a Supreme Court justice. This conventional wisdom bears little resemblance to what actually occurred--but it's a very useful myth for conservative activists preparing for a possible confirmation battle over Bush nominee John G. Roberts.

The Washington Post (7/11/05) reported the Bork history this way: "When President Ronald Reagan nominated Bork, liberals mounted a well-organized, well-financed campaign against him, and conservatives were slow and ineffective in responding." The Post article attributed the creation of the Committee for Justice, a group formed to lobby for George W. Bush's Supreme Court nominees, to "the lasting influence of the Bork fight in 1987."

Much of the current media discussion is a chance for right-wing activists to claim they were victimized--a tale that has found a sympathetic media ear. As Time magazine put it (7/11/05), conservatives "were caught off guard by Sen. Edward Kennedy's lightning-fast characterization of Bork--within an hour of Bork's nomination--as a man who would create an America where 'women would be forced into back-alley abortions blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters.' The label stuck and helped ensure Bork's defeat."

According to the Los Angeles Times (6/20/05), "Civil rights groups followed up with million-dollar lobbying campaigns and a barrage of criticism of Bork's views on civil rights laws." National Public Radio (7/6/05) aired without rebuttal a soundbite from conservative legal activist Jay Sekulow, who complained, "That was a time when the right was not mobilized at all." And Bork himself told CNN (7/3/05) that "there were no groups in my support."

The Washington Post reported that things have changed (7/3/05): "The conservative movement has something it lacked during its losing battle for the confirmation of Robert H. Bork to the court 18 years ago: a highly coordinated movement that has fused the big dollars of economic conservatives with the grass-roots clout of millions of religious conservatives."


Down the Memory Hole?


But what were prominent media outlets reporting back in 1987 about Bork's supporters?

"Arrayed on the pro-Bork side are the Knights of Columbus, the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Federation of Republican Women and the Southern Baptist Convention Public Affairs Committee, according to a list released last week by the White House," the Washington Post reported (9/25/87).

The Post went on to suggest that pro-Bork groups were less visible in Washington--but that doesn't mean they weren't active:


"Instead, right-to-life, religious and conservative organizations have concentrated on direct-mail and telephone campaigns, with some success. At the office of Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.)--a key vote on the Senate Judiciary Committee--where staffers answer the phone, 'Sen. Specter's office; are you calling about the Bork nomination?' letters from constituents were running 25,373 for Bork and 10,414 against as of Tuesday."


A September 3, 1987 New York Times story (headlined "Bork Backers Flood Senate With Mail") also indicated that a pro-Bork campaign was well underway: "The Senate Judiciary Committee is receiving thousands of letters from Bork supporters who say his ascension to the Court from the Federal appeals court here would mean the reversal of dozens of decisions, including those on abortion, school prayer and pornography." Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell was quoted by the Times as saying that the campaign to support Bork's nomination "is the most important one in which we have engaged in years.... The future of America may be at stake."

And some participants suggested that Bork's supporters were in fact ready from the start. Patrick McGuigan of the Coalitions for America, a pro-Bork lobbying group, told the Washington Post (7/7/87): "It began immediately. The first meetings of conservative leaders to brainstorm and begin to start action were the very next morning."

Concerned Women for America activated phone banks to generate messages of support to Congress, and reportedly collected 72,000 signatures on a pro-Bork petition (L.A. Times, 9/25/87). Direct mail pitches were common among conservative groups, as was outreach to the media. One New York Times report (9/11/87) suggested that conservative groups "could ultimately amass $10 million" in support of Bork. Conservative direct mail guru Richard Viguerie told the Times, ''This is probably the strongest mailing conservatives have had in many years.'' ABC's Barry Serafin reported (9/3/87) that "Two and a half million dollars for newspaper ads supporting Bork and blasting his opponents is being raised by a California group."

Some of Bork's supporters were explicit about their reasons for pushing the nomination. A letter from a prominent evangelical group advised, "Robert Bork does not support the idea of a constitutional right to engage in sodomy.... He may help us stop the gay rights issue and thus help stem the spread of AIDS." Prominent conservative Jack Kemp sent a similar letter to his supporters (New York Times, 9/3/87): "Will the right of communities to take positive steps to prevent the spread of AIDS be upheld?"

After the dust had settled, opinions varied about why Bork was defeated. One Washington Post report (10/24/87) claimed that "Bork's critics made some wild and distorted charges against him, but there is no evidence that they made an important difference in the outcome.... But by the end of the long and painful struggle, there was a consensus in the Senate that it was Bork -- and his lifetime of iconoclastic resistance to the main tides of American politics and jurisprudence-- that lay at the heart of his downfall."

Bork did have extreme and unusual views about the Constitution, such as his severely restrictive view of the First Amendment: "Constitutional protection should be accorded only to speech that is explicitly political," he wrote in the Indiana Law Journal (Fall/71). "There is no basis for judicial intervention to protect any other form of expression, be it scientific, literary or that variety of expression we call obscene or pornographic."

Fifty-eight senators--the most that ever voted against a Supreme Court nominee--decided that these and other controversial beliefs made Bork an unsuitable candidate for the Supreme Court. Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy perhaps summed it up best (10/18/87), writing that right-wing complaints about the unfair process were "the sound of a sore loser. Losing, apparently, is a sensation from which Bork's supporters thought, by divine right or Reagan's winning 49 of 50 states in 1984, they were exempt."

Unfortunately, reporters are now allowing these conservative complaints to frame much of their reporting. Rather than accepting this as the natural working of a system that is designed to check the president's power to select justices, the media has decided to present this as an injustice--using "bork" as a verb meaning "to attack a person's reputation and views unfairly" (CNN, 7/1/05; see Media Matters, 7/3/05).

This story has relevance for today's battle for the Supreme Court. Conservative activists have been making the same complaint over and over again to reporters: Our side didn't get a fair shake in 1987. Are conservatives pressing these bogus grievances in the hopes of generating more friendly media coverage in 2005? The answer would seem to be yes.

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[Lefty48197]

1. Here's the REAL reason Bork was rejected:

It was because of his role in Richard Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre", where he fired the top two officials in the justice department, because they refused to fire the special prosecutor that was investigation Nixon. After firing the first two, Tricky Dick went to the #3 man in the "Justice" Dept. and he apparently had no problem helping Nixon obstruct justice. That #3 man was Robert Bork.