Case Salience and Media Coverage of Supreme Court Decisions

• Author: Christopher A. Cooper,Todd A. Collins
• Date: 01 June 2012
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912911404565
• Published date: 01 June 2012
• Subject Matter: Articles

Political Research Quarterly

65(2) 396 –407

© 2012 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912911404565

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On June 10, 1996, the United States Supreme Court upheld

the convictions of Michael Whren and James Brown. While

the defendants were initially pulled over for minor traffic

infractions, they were convicted of serious drug offenses.1

The young defendants were driving a new car in a known

drug area and were African American. The defense in

Whren v. United States contended that the investigating

officers needed probable cause of drug activity for the

stop. To rule otherwise, the defense argued, could justify

racially discriminatory behavior (Sklansky 1997, 289). The

Supreme Court’s decision, stating that the judiciary should

not look at the officer’s subjective state of mind, was

quickly heralded by law enforcement (Biskupic 1996), but

criticized by many who suggested the opinion made all

drivers “become prey to police officers’ arbitrary whims,

hunches, suspicions, and prejudices” (Levit 1996, 187).

On the same day as the Whren decision, New York City’s

mayor Rudi Giuliani agreed to a new budget; the city of

Newark, New Jersey, implemented new policies to improve

some of its failing schools; and presidential candidate Bob

Dole announced changes to the Republican Party’s plat-

form concerning abortion. We know these events occurred

because they were reported on the front page of the New York

Times on June 11, 1996. Absent, however, from the

Times front-page coverage is any mention of the Whren

case. Although contemporary critics called this case a “clear

step . . . toward authoritarianism, toward racist policing,

and toward a view of minorities as criminals” (Harris 1997,

547), the Times placed a story about Whren on page 22. On

the same day, however, the editors of Washington Post,

404565PRQ65210.1177/1065912911404565Co

llins and CooperPolitical Research Quarterly

1Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC

Corresponding Author:

Todd A. Collins, Department of Political Science and Public Affairs,

Western Carolina University, 358 Stillwell Building,

Cullowhee, NC, USA

Email: todd.a.collins@gmail.com

Case Salience and Media Coverage

of Supreme Court Decisions:

Toward a New Measure

Todd A. Collins1 and Christopher A. Cooper1

Abstract

Judicial behavior is contingent on case salience. Unfortunately, existing measures of case salience have met with some

skepticism. After discussing the characteristics of an ideal measure of salience, the authors construct a new measure of

case salience. This new measure expands on prior studies by examining coverage in four diverse newspapers and includes

coverage anywhere in the paper, instead of concentrating on front-page coverage only. By developing this new measure,

the authors uncover patterns about national media coverage of the Court and provide a potentially more useful measure

of case salience.

Keywords

judicial decision-making, salience, media, Supreme Court

Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times all devoted space

on the front page of their papers to the Whren holding.

There could have been many reasons why the editors

of the New York Times did not place the Whren decision

on page 1. Perhaps they felt the case was not that important.

Perhaps they felt that local issues, such as the Newark

schools situation and the city’s budget, were more interest-

ing to their subscribers. Perhaps the conservative, pro–law

enforcement decision did not coincide with the ideology of

some of the editors, and these editors wanted to downplay

the decision’s relevance. Whatever their motivations, the

result is that a Times reader may have a very different impres-

sion of the importance of the Whren decision, covered on

page 22, than a reader of the many other papers across the

nation that gave the decision front-page attention.

This example is not an indictment on the coverage of

the Times, as reporters and editors must weigh a number of

different characteristics of newsworthiness when deciding

what to cover and where to place certain stories (Gans 1979).

The problem arises when scholars use news coverage in

the New York Times as a measure of a case’s importance,

relevance, or “salience.” Using front-page coverage of the

Times as the only indicator of salience could be problematic