After the “butter emails” debacle you don’t really need this but if you want another example of how editorial choices about what to cover in politics can actually lead to a lack of understanding, here’s a good one:
The wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told a Washington Post reporter in January 2021 that an upside-down American flag recently flown on their flagpole was “an international signal of distress” and indicated that it had been raised in response to a neighborhood dispute.
Martha-Ann Alito made the comments when the reporter went to the couple’s Fairfax County, Va., home to follow up on a tip about the flag, which was no longer flying when he arrived…
The Post decided not to report on the episode at the time because the flag-raising appeared to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito, rather than the justice, and connected to a dispute with her neighbors, a Post spokeswoman said. It was not clear then that the argument was rooted in politics, the spokeswoman said.
This was right after January 6th and someone on the paper had to know by that time that the wingnuts were using this upside down flag as one of their primary symbols. It appears that nobody asked:
The upside-down flag has long been a sign of distress for the military and protest by various political factions. In the fraught weeks before and after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, it had also been adopted by supporters of the “Stop the Steal” movement,which embraced Donald Trump’s false claims thatJoe Biden stole the election from him. Some of the rioters who participated in the attack had carried upside-down American flags with them.
Mrs Alito seems like such a lovely person:
On Jan. 20, 2021 — the day of Biden’s inauguration, which the Alitos did not attend — Barnes went to their home to follow up on the tip about the flag. He encountered the couple coming out of the house. Martha-Ann Alito was visibly upset by his presence, demanding that he “get off my property.”
As he described the information he was seeking, she yelled, “It’s an international signal of distress!”
Alito intervened and directed his wife into a car parked in their driveway, where they had been headed on their way out of the neighborhood. The justice denied the flag was hung upside down as a political protest, saying it stemmed from a neighborhood dispute and indicating that his wife had raised it.
Martha-Ann Alito then got out of the car and shouted in apparent reference to the neighbors: “Ask them what they did!” She said yard signs about the couple had been placed in the neighborhood. After getting back in the car, she exited again and then brought out from their residence a novelty flag, the type that would typically decorate a garden. She hoisted it up the flagpole. “There! Is that better?” she yelled.
[…]
In Virginia, a neighbor who lives down the street from the Alitos told The Post on May 17 that her adult daughter had placed the protest signs that prompted the dispute with Martha-Ann Alito outside her home in the weeks after the 2020 election. Martha-Ann Alito and the neighbor’s daughter clashed over the signs in January 2021,both the mother and a second neighbor said. The daughter, who now lives on the West Coast, declined an interview request.
Mrs Alito could have shown some forbearance as the spouse of one of the most powerful men in the country who is supposed to be above partisan politics. She could have simply ignored it or argued in person if she was so upset. But she wanted to signal her sympathy with the insurrectionists as a sign of defiance to those who oppose her politics. She is an extremists just like her good friend Ginni. And her husband.
The Post took him at his word and that was that. I wonder if anyone ever thought about that story when this came out in December of 2021:
Thomas and Alito are letting their wives do their blatant partisan activism for them while they use their lifetime appointments to enact their agenda from the bench. Just as Trump is using his surrogates to get around the gag order, these two wingnuts are using their wives to circumvent the rules and the laws they are supposed to be protecting. And since they’re completely shameless, they are daring anyone to do something about it.