The Warren Court and the Press

The conventional wisdom about the relationship between the ·warren Court and the news media runs something like this: With a few exceptions, the press corps is populated by persons with only a superficial understanding of the Court, its processes, and the values with which it deals. The Court has poured out pages of legal learning, but its reasoning has been largely ignored by a result-oriented news industry interested only in the superficial aspects of the Court's work. The Court can trace much of its "bad press," its "poor image," to the often sloppy and inaccurate work of news gatherers operating in mindless deadline competition. The competition to be first with the story has been the chief obstacle in these critical years to a better public understanding of the Court and of our liberties and laws.