CNN legal expert Asha Rangappa suggested Tuesday that there is something disturbing, and even unprecedented, about a Supreme Court justice appearing on television for an interview.
For context, she’s wrong. There is nothing disturbing or unprecedented about it. In fact, it is so common that CNN’s Ariane de Vogue interviewed Justice Neil Gorsuch in September. You would think a supposed legal expert at CNN would know this.
On Tuesday, Gorsuch appeared on Fox News to plug his new book, A Republic, If You Can Keep It.
A Media Matters staffer then cut and tweeted an abbreviated video of the justice’s appearance, which is where Rangappa first heard of the interview. The legal “expert” then responded to the Media Matters tweet by signaling her unfamiliarity with something that happens often enough on her beat.
“uhhhhh,” tweeted Rangappa, “why is a Supreme Court justice doing a TV interview.”
As of this writing, the alleged legal expert’s abject ignorance has been rewarded with 5,000 retweets and 22,400 likes.
uhhhhh why is a Supreme Court justice doing a TV interview https://t.co/8UxuqQsNfr
— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) December 17, 2019
Elsewhere at CNN, media reporter Brian Stelter was similarly disturbed by Gorsuch’s cable news appearance.
“Justice Neil Gorsuch is on Fox & Friends right now,” said the media reporter. “The Q: How is it appropriate for a Supreme Court justice to try to goose sales of his three-month-old book by chatting on one of the most partisan shows on TV?
Is there something in the water over at CNN? Is the internet down in Time Warner Center?
For the record, it is not uncommon for Supreme Court justices to do media interviews, even with extremely partisan hosts. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, for example, did an interview in 2018 with Obama White House adviser David Axelrod.
CNN did several interviews with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2018 to promote its RBG series exploring her rise to “superstardom,” as noted Tuesday by the Washington Free Beacon. Also, in 2018, Sotomayor appeared on CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. In 2017, Justice Clarence Thomas did an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham. Earlier, in 2015, Ginsburg appeared on MSNBC for an interview with host Rachel Maddow. In 2015, Sotomayor appeared on CBS’s 60 Minutes. That same year, Justice Stephen Breyer appeared for interviews on both CBS’s The Late Show and on CNN.
Just three months ago, Sotomayor appeared on the Daily Show, which is arguably as partisan as any of those other shows.
All of this information is immediately available online with even the most cursory of Google searches.
The death of expertise wasn’t a murder. It was suicide.
