Knight Ridder's Alito Story: Factual and fair

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he controversy erupted again this week at Alito's confirmation hearings. After Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., referred to the Knight Ridder story, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., introduced a critique of the story by the Republican staff of the Judiciary Committee into the record of the hearings. Kyl said the story, "has, to my understanding, been rather completely discredited." The first paragraph of the Republican critique, however, said the story was based on "dozens" of Alito's opinions, creating the false impression that Henderson and Mintz didn't examine the judge's entire body of published work.

The Republican National Committee circulated a blistering personal attack on Henderson to some reporters, taking quotes out of context in an attempt to portray him as biased.

The RNC said Henderson "admitted he was previously an editorial writer," as though that very public part of a distinguished reporter's career was a secret that he'd been trying to hide. The RNC statement then linked Henderson to editorials he didn't write.

This hysteria over a carefully researched article that documents the obvious - that Samuel Alito is a judicial conservative - is the latest example of a disturbing trend of attacking the messenger instead of debating difficult issues.

Fact-based reporting is the lifeblood of a democracy. It gives people shared information on which to make political choices. But as people in new democracies risk their lives to gather such information, in this country fact-based reporting is under more relentless assault than at any time in my more than 40 years in Washington.
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