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Eric Rasmusen's avatar

Re: Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships, by Nina Totenberg. Isn't it unseemly for a Supreme Court journalist to be such good friends with one of the Justices she's covering that she writes a book about it?

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David Lat's avatar

There have been some articles making that argument. Here are two:

https://ballsandstrikes.org/legal-culture/dinners-with-ruth-review/

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/09/23/nina-totenberg-dinners-with-ruth-bader-ginsburg-00058467

(But I am in no position to make such criticisms; as I mention in the About page of Original Jurisdiction, not infrequently I have some personal tie to people I write about.)

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Eric Rasmusen's avatar

Thanks for the links. It's one of those line-drawing things. An experienced journalist will be friendly with lots of his subjects, even with ones on the other side of the political fence about whom he writes critically, but ...

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