Like virtually all the seemingly endless media attacks on the Thomases, recent reporting on Justice Thomas’s financial disclosure issues has produced more smoke than fire. This is true of the leading reports by ProPublica, which will be analyzed in a forthcoming post. It is even more so in the case of a downright frivolous Washington Post follow-up story. Indeed, the Post story illustrates how far the media will go to over-hype these issues.
The headline of the Post story, echoed by a number of other media outlets, reads: “Clarence Thomas has for years claimed income from a defunct real estate firm.” What? It turns out a family business tied to the Thomases apparently reorganized at one point and tweaked its name from “Ginger, Ltd., Partnership” to “Ginger Holdings, LLC.” That’s it. The story does not suggest that Justice Thomas failed to report fully and accurately income received from this enterprise, which is by no means “defunct” but simply operating under a slightly different name. Justice Thomas’s only sin was failing to pick up the subtle name change.
A less provocative and more accurate headline for the story would be: “Clarence Thomas’s financial disclosure filings contain a slight discrepancy in the name of a real estate firm from which he claimed income.” But who would read an article with a nothing headline like that? A better question is would any media outlet publish a story with so little substance to it unless it involved Justice Thomas or his wife?