For more than three decades, Joan Biskupic has been leading a public tour of one of the federal government’s most secretive institutions.
Biskupic, CNN’s chief Supreme Court analyst, has documented the evolution of the nation’s highest court, introduced audiences to the personalities of the justices who have shaped American life and detailed the current court’s dramatic transformation as the most conservative in modern times.
A Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of five books on the court, Biskupic told the National Press Foundation’s Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship that success on the beat – and as an author – requires “constant” tending of a broad network of contacts inside and outside the marble corridors.
“I have to say, I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I still am completely energized by it,” said Biskupic, whose career has included stops at Congressional Quarterly, The Washington Post, USA Today and Reuters. “I just love this beat … and source development is something you can never let your guard down on, and you just have to hope that as you go through it, they understand why you are doing your job, they understand why you need to know some things.”
The court’s current conservative makeup has not made the work any easier, especially after the publication of a leaked court opinion that ultimately struck down abortion rights in America and reporting that detailed previously undisclosed gifts and travel to Justices Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito from billionaire conservative donors.
“They’ve essentially closed ranks in a different way. They’ve huddled together and really don’t want anyone to break in so much,” Biskupic said. “Some of them have been warned that only bad things can happen if you lift the veil at all for members of the press.”
Biskupic said the increasingly closed environment “is just something you have to deal with.”
“I feel like that’s the price of doing business on a very competitive beat,” she said. “Both the … leak that was published (by Politico) and the ProPublica stories about Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, I was a hundred percent supportive of those.”
The hyper-competitive nature of the beat requires correspondents to cast a broad net for potential contacts who are knowledgeable and credible.
“I am always looking for alternatives … I think you should think of source development as not just trying to get to the main people on the beat – for me, these nine people – but think of who’s in their orbit: former clerks, people who were their friends, law professors, retired justices, lower court judges who they’re pals with. And I’m constantly circling all those people too,” she said.
Taking that broad approach helped land a 2014 groundbreaking series of stories that Biskupic and then-Reuters colleagues authored, documenting how a relatively small group of top lawyers had shaped the court’s docket.
Just as important, Biskupic said, is to resist the temptation to “write off a source” who may not have been happy with how the information was used.
“I try to always be thinking of how to get back to that person, or as I say, keep widening the circle,” she said. “Most of you will probably stay on a beat for not for as long as 30 years, but if you stay on a beat for any amount of time, you can’t be hit and run. You can’t go in and tick off people and then just hope it won’t matter for the next story.”
