Watch: CNN’s Jake Tapper raises concerns about some reporters’ affiliations with SCOTUS justices

06 May 2023

Editor's note: This article has been updated to comply with AP Style standards.

CNN's Jake Tapper is expressing concern about some beat reporters' close ties to U.S. Supreme Court justices as he believes their relationships could lead to conflicts of interest in their reporting.

On Friday, May 5, Tapper laid out his concerns during a segment of "The Beat." At one point during the broadcast, Tapper weighed in on the latest report released by The Washington Post detailing payments made to Ginni Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

The bombshell report this week only adds to a previous report from ProPublica that shed light on lavish gifts the justice had received from billionaire businessman Harlan Crow.

According to Mediaite, a lot of the details in the reports came from investigative journalists as opposed to Supreme Court beat reporters.

Per the news outlet, "There have long been questions about whether 'access journalists' who closely cover government officials are in fact too close to their subjects the kinds of stories that have broken about the court in recent weeks."

Speaking to CNN legal analyst Joan Biskupic, Tapper used reporter Nina Totenberg as an example.

“Nina Totenberg, who is very well-respected, longtime Supreme Court reporter from NPR – she was criticized by NPR’s public editor in 2020 for not disclosing her decades-long relationship with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” Tapper said.

He added, “And this might suggest that one of the problems here is a lot of the journalists who have been covering the Supreme Court – again, not you and not a bunch of other really excellent Supreme Court reporters like Jan Crawford and others. But some on the right and the left have formed such close relationships, that you really have to wonder about their journalism sometimes.”

“Yeah, it is a pretty intimate group of people,” Biskupic replied. “I always kid that justices are appointed for life. Journalists are appointed for life too. We come to this beat and we don’t leave it. But like anything else, you want to be friendly with the people you cover, but you don’t want to be deep friends. And if you have deep friendships, then you try to be careful with your coverage on that. And I do think that there has been an insularity that we fight against and it’s been important to always be able to scrutinize these justices in various ways, which frankly I think many of us have.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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