Another Reporter Falls for the Manhattan Institute

It's always nice to see the folks over at the Manhattan Institute's Overlawyered.com touting their success at spoon-feeding some of their propaganda to willing reporters, so you know what they've been up to. It's not so nice when it turns out that the spoon-fed reporter is someone you know and like.

I cringed when I noticed an Overlawyered mash note to Mike Crowley, an editor at the New Republic and columnist at Reader's Digest, which for some reason has long been a very reliable and one-sided mouthpiece for tort reform groups.

I know Mike from my early days at the Washington Monthly, where he was once an intern. So I was pretty surprised to see the approving Overlawyered cites to several of Mike's Reader's Digest columns, especially this one, which reads like boilerplate tort reform rhetoric that could have come right off Overlawyered (and apparently, according to MI's Walter Olson, lots of the column did). A sampling:

Our society has become so sue-happy that the average federal district judge fields 400 new cases a year. With dockets so clogged with junk, it can take years for any legitimate case to wind its way through the courts. Justice delayed is justice denied.

All of these loony lawsuits hit our wallets too. Insurance premiums skyrocket as everyone scrambles to cover his behind, court costs rise, and astronomical settlements depress corporate earnings and shareholder value. According to a White House Council of Economic Advisors estimate, the United States suffers an excessive "litigation tax" of $136 billion per year. Meanwhile, the personal-injury lawyers -- whose smiling faces are plastered everywhere on ads encouraging us to join the lawsuit parade -- are laughing all the way to the bank.

For those unfamiliar with the Manhattan Institute, the think tank's center for legal policy is funded by insurance and tobacco companies (AIG's former head Hank Greenberg has been a stalwart donor). It's primary mission is to mold reporters into a "pro-tort reform" position, providing an "intellectual" foundation for the corporate tort reform movement's self-serving legislative goals.

I write more about this in my book, but an early fundraising letter sent out by Manhattan Institute president William Hammett actually named many of the reporters it was targeting, and they tended to be folks at magazines like TNR (though back then it was Michael Kinsley and Fred Barnes they were after). Hammett explained the group's research mission to potential donors, saying, "Journalists need copy, and it's an established fact that over time they'll 'bend' in the direction in which it flows." 

As a result, the MI makes it really, really easy for reporters to write stories bashing the legal system, trial lawyers and juries, without having to make too many phone calls.  Unfortunately, like the Reader's Digest pieces, those stories not only serve a bigger corporate agenda, but they give the public a pretty miserably skewed view of what really happens in the legal system. Oh, Mike...

Comments

[Alan Cummings]

Tsk, tsk, Stephanie. Haven't you heard? Ted Frank and Walter Olson are "scholars."

[pause]

Bwahahahahahaha!!!!

[Anirban]

"Unfortunately, like the Reader's Digest pieces, those stories not only serve a bigger corporate agenda, but they give the public a pretty miserably skewed view of what really happens in the legal system"

It is no brainer that each sides have their share of megaphones, on the default position they stand on. That's no point. The point is that are those stories ,coming on a regular basis, also have an element of truth in it,and if not where are those rebuttals on a case by case basis,may be in a style of 'media matters ' ,which is quite popular.As I see it, Everything boils down to the consistency and content, and this site and its ilk are way to go, to match overlawyered.