A "Wise Latina" and a Son of Immigrants: Comparing Newspaper Coverage of Sonia Sotomayor and Samuel Alito.

Everbach, Tracy

This research paper compares coverage of the U.S. Senate Judiciary hearings for Supreme Court Associate Justices Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor in two leading United States newspapers, The New York Times and the Washington Post. The qualitative textual analysis examines news frames employed by the two papers and finds that they focused on the horse race, the nominees' personalities, their ethnicity and gender roles. The study concludes that the newspaper coverage failed to provide much useful information to the public about how the nominees would perform on the court, instead focusing on the politics of the hearings. It also concludes that coverage focused heavily on Sotomayor's ethnicity but paid scant attention to Alito's. As much as Sotomayor's "wise Latina" statement was played up in the news, Alito's statement about his ethnicity was played down. In addition, the newspapers cast Sotomayor and Martha-Ann Alito, Samuel Alito's wife, into stereotypical female gender roles. Alito similarly was defined in a stereotypical male gender role.

ALITO, Samuel A., 1950-; SOTOMAYOR, Sonia, 1954-; NEW York Times, The (Newspaper); ETHNICITY; STEREOTYPES; WASHINGTON Post, The (Newspaper); ACTIONS & defenses (Law)

Southwestern Mass Communication Journal, 2011, Vol 26, Issue 2, p1

0891-9186

Academic Journal