Hyping Hamdan
Have you noticed a theme in the press's coverage of last week's Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision? If not, consider these examples:
-"The Supreme Court on Thursday repudiated the Bush administration's plan to put Guantánamo detainees on trial before military commissions, ruling broadly that the commissions were unauthorized by federal statute and violated international law. . . . The decision was . . . a sweeping and categorical defeat for the administration."-- New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/washington/30hamdan.html?ei=5090&en=fea431f33eb7549c&ex=1309320000&partneer=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
-"The Supreme Court yesterday struck down the military commissions President Bush established to try suspected members of al-Qaeda, emphatically rejecting a signature Bush anti-terrorism measure and the broad assertion of executive power upon which the president had based it."-- Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/29/AR2006062900928.html
-"In a sharp rebuke of President George W. Bush's tactics in the war on terrorism, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down as unlawful the military tribunal system set up to try Guantanamo prisoners."-- Reuters http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/29/AR2006062900938.html
-"The Supreme Court rebuked President Bush and his anti-terror policies Thursday, ruling that his plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in military tribunals violates U.S. and international law."-- Associated Press http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/custom/newsroom/sns-ap-scotus-guantanamo-trials,1,4510986.story
-"The Supreme Court on Thursday sharply rejected the Bush administration's use of military commissions to try suspected terrorists, eliminating a central pillar of the president's anti-terrorism strategy. In a blunt dismissal of President Bush's claim that he had unfettered authority to try enemy combatants captured in the war on terror, the court ruled 5-3 that military trials of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba violated domestic and international laws."-- Chicago Tribune http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0606300152jun30,1,6967465.story
All of these stories go well beyond the facts to engage in editorializing, portraying the ruling as not just a legal defeat for the administration but a "repudiation," "rebuke," "sharp rejection," etc. But several serious analyses of the Hamdan decision--including our own on Thursday http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110008583 and David Rivkin and Lee Casey http://wwww.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008599 's, which appeared Friday in The Wall Street Journal, suggest that there is less to it. Justice Anthony Kennedy declined to join his four liberal colleagues in the most sweeping aspects of their opinion, and even that opinion left many issues unaddressed, so that the court's actual decision was narrower than much of the press coverage suggests.
Why were reporters so eager to portray this as a great defeat for the Bush administration? Partly because of anti-Bush bias: In at least some of the news stories--especialy Linda Greenhouse's Times piece, which we quoted extensively http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110008592#gass on Friday--it is clear that the reporter is happy with the result. And partly because of a bias in favor of a dramatic narrative.
It's true that some conservatives agree that the opinion was a "rebuke." They believe that it is an unwarranted infringement on executive power, just as liberal commentators see it as a victory over the evil George W. Bush.

That's fine. Commentators are entitled to their opinions. But reporters are not, and they would better serve their readers if they simply explained what the ruling said and refrained from tendentious characterizations of its significance.