Alito 'Scoop': What's Old Is News Again

Almost anything can mushroom into a big news story the day before Christmas weekend, when desperate journalists are tantalized by tidbits as if they were gift-wrapped holiday presents.

The cable news networks yesterday jumped on an Associated Press report that a newly released document showed Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito had once called for Roe v. Wade to be overturned.

Small problem: The document was released nearly a month ago and got huge coverage at the time.

No one was in a hurry to point that out as the ersatz scoop deflated like a leftover party balloon. Ironically, other Alito papers from the Reagan Justice Department, released yesterday under the Freedom of Information Act, contained actual news on other issues.

Shortly after 9:30 a.m., a story by AP reporter Donna Cassata said, "Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito wrote in a June 1985 memo that the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion should be overturned" and noted that the document was "one of 45 released by the National Archives on Friday."

At 9:35, CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien reported the AP dispatch with a "Just In" banner on the screen, saying: "Obviously, this will put a little fuel in the fire for people who are very contentiously debating Samuel Alito as a nominee." She then asked White House reporter Elaine Quijano for reaction.

At 9:36, Fox anchor Jon Scott reported the AP story in a "Fox News Alert," saying, "We don't know a great deal more about it" and promising updated information as it became available. But Fox did not return to the story.

At 9:57, CNN's O'Brien asked former prosecutor Kendall Coffey about the memo's potential impact. He said it could be described as a "smoking-gun document."

At 10 a.m., MSNBC anchor Amy Robach reported the story, saying "it is adding more fuel now to the abortion debate." Fifteen minutes later, she asked Washington Post editor Fred Barbash, a former Supreme Court reporter, for his reaction.

"This has no significance as far as I can tell," Barbash said, because the same document had been released several weeks earlier. "I think this is a bit of a false alarm. I could be wrong," Barbash said.

Robach didn't miss a beat. "Even though it may be an old document, it's still a document," she said, asking Wall Street Journal editor John Harwood for his reaction.

As it dawned on news organizations that the same document had been released Nov. 30, they used careful wording that avoided any acknowledgement of the earlier goof.

At 11:31, CNN anchor Daryn Kagan said: "A document from Samuel Alito regarding legalized abortion is getting renewed attention after it was rereleased this morning. . . . The first document was released back in November." Network spokeswoman Edie Emery says that CNN "clarified it on the air."

Says MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines: "Once it became apparent that that memo was the same as one released last month, we no longer reported it as a new development."

AP, for its part, never moved a story saying that its previous reports that morning -- which hit various Web sites, from the New York Times to the Drudge Report -- were old news. Instead, the wire service included a note to editors on a later Cassata story that used a different lead about Alito's view of wiretapping. In the 26th paragraph, she wrote that Alito's June 3, 1985, memo "contained the same Alito statements as one dated May 30, 1985, which the National Archives released in November -- but with a forward note from Reagan administration Solicitor General Charles Fried acknowledging the volatility of the issue and saying it had to be kept quiet."

Upon learning that the memo's contents were old news, spokesman Jack Stokes says, "the AP updated the story to reflect this and to raise the reference to Fried's comments acknowledging the volatility of the issue." Unfortunately, the Fried note had also been released and reported on last month.

Some conservatives minced no words. M. Edward Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, reported the screw-up on National Review Online at 10:02 under the heading "Groundhog Day!," adding: "Wake up, AP!" For good measure, Whelan e-mailed reporters an hour later that "the memo that AP breathlessly reports" was ancient history.

Howard Kurtz hosts CNN's weekly media program.