CBS Mornings and ABC’s Good Morning America (GMA) offered dissenting opinions on the Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action ruling Friday morning under the guise of objective journalism. CBS’s Tony Dokoupil strategized about avoiding the Court’s ruling by including race in essays, and Prairie View A&M University president Ruth Simmons likened the ruling to Plessy vs. Ferguson.
Both morning shows disapproved of the “decades of precedent” the courts allegedly flouted but then switched to discussing the benefits of overturning other cases a few moments later.
Appearing on CBS, Simmons, one of Harvard’s defendants, inferred that the case resembled Plessy V. Ferguson. If anything, it more closely reflected affirmative action, which also was based on differential treatment for certain races. Yet, Simmons offered the comparison as a solace to the journalists that it could be overturned:
Well, I think it simply means we'll get to work once again to try to deliver the justice that we've been seeking for a long time. Keep in mind that justices used their judgment, and we know from Plessy V. Ferguson as well as many other cases before the Supreme Court that the cases have sometimes -- their judgments have been overturned. So this is a long struggle, and we have to be in it for the length of the struggle, not because we are winning or losing at any given time.