How Newsworthy Is the Foiling of a Midnight Assassination Attempt on Justice Kavanaugh? It Depends . . .

A political spin starts to emerge in the way the various papers are playing the story.

AP/Jacquelyn Martin
Television crews film near the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in Chevy Chase, Maryland on June 8, 2022. AP/Jacquelyn Martin

How newsworthy is it that, shortly after 1 a.m. Wednesday, a man dressed in black, carrying a knapsack containing ammunition, a gun, and the kind of wrist-ties used in the assassination of a Wisconsin judge last week, was arrested outside the home of a United States Supreme Court Justice preparing to decide the future of Roe v. Wade?

The answer, it turns out, depends on which newspaper one reads.  The conservative dailies are running Californian Nicholas John Roske’s arrest for an attempt on the life of Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh as their top stories this morning.  “Incited to kill” is the wood in the New York Post. The Drudge Report has it under four steaming headlines, starting with “Supreme Scare.”

If one is looking for the story in the Democratic papers, though, the message is: Bring a microscope. Reuters and the Associated Press have nothing about the case on their home pages. The Washington Post ran an article on the front page of its print edition, yet it was relegated to the local section online.

The Times buries the story under a tiny headline in the “More News” on its home page. The story was absent from the home pages of the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and the Chicago Sun-Times. The Los Angeles Times features a small link to an opinion piece about how the assassination attempt will affect Democrats’ efforts to restrict the Second Amendment.

It is hardly the first time publications have put a political spin on news of political violence. A study in the Federalist found that the attempted assassination of the members of the Republican Congressional Caucus in 2017 by James Hodgkinson, a radicalized Democrat, received only half the coverage of a paranoid schizophrenic’s attempt on the life of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, in 2011.

Mr. Roske appeared before a U.S. Magistrate judge Wednesday afternoon at Maryland federal district court, where prosecutors filed an affidavit detailing the 26-year-old’s desire to “give his life purpose” by killing Justice Kavanaugh, whom Mr. Roske blamed for his prospective votes on abortion rights and gun rights.

Mr. Roske traveled from California and was stopped by two U.S. deputy marshals while getting out of a taxicab in front of Justice Kavanaugh’s house. Attorney General Garland and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre both condemned the attempt at press conferences Wednesday.


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