Linda Greenhouse covers the Supreme Court for the New York Times, and the liberal bias with which she performs that task is legendary. As if this weren't enough, Ed Whelan finds an additional source of potential bias with respect to her reporting in the Boumedienne case argued last week in the Supreme Court. It turns out that Greenhouse’s husband, Eugene Fidell, filed an amicus brief in the case when it was argued in the Court of Appeals. Moreover, he is listed in the amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court in the case on behalf of the Constitution Project as one of the signatories to that outfit's Statement on Restoring Habeas Corpus Rights Eliminated By The Military Commissions Act. Finally, Fidell also submitted an amicus brief in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, decided last year by the Supreme Court.

Fidell’s role in these terrorist rights cases has not prevented Greenhouse from covering this litigation for the Times. Whelan points to a series of articles she’s written about Boumedienne and Hamdan, including this one announcing the government’s “sweeping and categorical” defeat in the latter case.

Is this ethical? It would seem not. Whelan explains:

The Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists (which describes itself as the “nation’s most broad-based journalism organization” and has some 9,000 members) sets forth the proposition that journalists should “[a]void conflicts of interest, real or perceived.” But that proposition would appear elementary for any journalist with any claim to being objective.

It’s not difficult to perceive a conflict of interest when a journalist covers litigation in which her husband is involved as a lawyer.

This is not to say that Fidell’s role has, in fact, influenced Greenhouse’s reporting. As Whelan puts it, “it would be impossible to separate any such bias from the broader political bias that pervades so much of Greenhouse’s reporting.” But this “over-causation” problem is no defense to an ethics violation charge, since (as just noted) the appearance of a conflict of interest when one reports on cases in which one’s husband has a role seems quite clear.

JOHN adds: Greenhouse's obliviousness to an obvious conflict of interest can be understood, I think, only in the context of the absurdly low standards maintained by the New York Times. The Times' philosophy appears to be: We're all liberals here, so how can there possibly be any conflict?

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