If you spent any part of Monday checking SCOTUSblog for the Supreme Court orders, you’re not alone — about 10,000 people were on its live blog around 10 a.m., Editor Amy Howe wrote.
But SCOTUSblog’s indispensibility has not yet translated into a credential to cover the court. The Senate Press Gallery granted it a credential — usually a prerequisite for Supreme Court credentials — but it later revoked the credential. SCOTUSblog’s appeal has failed:
Senate Gallery has apparently denied our credentialing appeal, releasing its decision to the press (although not to us).
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 23, 2014
Earlier Monday, SCOTUSblog Publisher Tom Goldstein said he hadn’t had a chance yet to read the decision: “Ironically, we’re covering orders and opinions from the Court,” he wrote in an email to Poynter. Since then he was able to spend some time with it: The problem, he writes, was not SCOTUSblog’s journalism but his dual role as publisher and proprietor of a law firm that argues before the court.
“The members of the Standing Committee are traditional journalists who come from a proud and treasured tradition of complete independence from anything other than their craft,” he writes. “That is a fantastic model for journalism. But it is not the only one.”
SCOTUSblog will appeal the decision to the Senate Rules Committee, Goldstein writes.
Related: Siobhan Hughes: “while the media are ever evolving and changing, the need to guard against conflicts of interest remains.” (Senate Press Gallery) | SCOTUSblog can’t get credentialed, but news agencies owned by foreign states can
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