Sotomayor, Gingrich, and the demise of our press corps

[Commentary] Last week's press coverage of Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court was gruesome in so many ways, as reporters routinely fell down and failed to reflect even the most basic tenets of journalism. Given the near ubiquity of the press failing, it's hard for me to believe that it wasn't been done intentionally. I'm not into newsroom conspiracies, but it's just difficult to believe that among these elite, college-educated journalists, that virtually every one of them covering the Sotomayor story mysteriously forgot to provide even the slightest context for the "Latina woman" quote -- a single sentence from a speech given eight years ago. Having looked at this story from every angle, I can only conclude that the lack of context has been a conscious, deliberate decision by journalists to, in a sense, purposefully un-inform news consumers, which, of course, is the opposite of what journalism aspires to accomplish.