MEDIA WINNER:
Shannon Bream
Shannon Bream aired a brutal montage of CNN and MSNBC anchors hitting at Justice Neil Gorsuch over a now-debunked NPR report while appearing on Thursday’s edition of America’s Newsroom. The report, published this week by NPR’s Nina Totenberg, claimed that Gorsuch refused to wear a mask while taking the bench earlier this month, despite being asked by Chief Justice John Roberts to do so for the sake of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is at elevated Covid risk due to diabetes. Bream said Thursday that she reached out to her own sources right away, because the report of a feud over masks didn't sound right to her, and got "a totally different story." Tuesday night, Bream reported that there had been no request or appeal ignored, and no friction over masking. She also said that Gorsuch had not rebuffed any mask request, specifically rebutting what NPR had explicitly claimed. But Bream's report was largely ignored by all but conservative media. The following day, the Justices themselves -- that is the villain, the victim, and the hero of Totenberg's tale -- all stated definitively and on the record that the story was false and no such incident had occurred. Despite that fact, NPR stood by the story and much of the rest of media has given them a pass. Bream outlined her reporting on Thursday and included a brutal montage of some of the reactions on other networks, taking the NPR story as absolute fact and attacking Justice Gorsuch over it. Bream won the story about Gorsuch refusing a request from Roberts to wear masks. While mask gotcha reporting has declined in the press it has not disappeared, and most of the time it follows only one format: evil Republican refuses to care. Despite many, many mask lapses from Democrats and progressives. But NPR and Totenberg took the narrative game to another level. Fox's Shannon Bream took it back. | 
