Vanity Fair’s support for women in high offices conditional on ideology

March 25, 2022

By Accuracy in Media Staff

As potential Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson faces the Supreme Court confirmation process, people can’t help but compare the treatment towards when Justice Amy Coney Barrett was nominated. 

Vanity Fair, a politics, news and entertainment outlet, has lauded Jackson saying she was “made for this moment” and that the judge is “schooling” Republicans who question her history of sentencing. The publication then seethes at the Senators interviewing Jackson, for their lines of “vile questioning”. 

With this fierce defense of Judge Jackson, one cannot help but observe the difference in content produced by Vanity Fair when it came to Justice Amy Coney Barrett in 2020.

One article titled “Amy Coney Barrett’s Judgment Day”, attacks the woman’s voice, her confirmation,  her judgment, and the ethnicity of the audience at the nomination ceremony all in the first couple paragraphs.

“Watching the footage now, you can almost see the virus particles swirling in the air, an ominous cloud sprinkling the Supreme Court nomination ceremony in the White House Rose Garden, as Judge Amy Coney Barrett stands behind the podium and in her Jennifer Coolidge-on-helium voice tells Donald Trump that she’s “deeply honored by the confidence you have placed in me.” There they were, a mostly white crowd of Republicans packed together…” (emphasis ours).

This type of coverage continues ludicrously accusing Barrett of wanting to let “millions of Americans die” by not speaking on a decision immediately about the Affordable Care Act.  

Had any news outlet even come close to this awful coverage of Jackson, the outcry of sexism would have taken over the news cycle. Vanity Fairs not so fair coverage of the two Supreme Court ladies, just proves that the publication only supports women who hold their ideology.

Vanity Fair has been subject to multiple Accuracy in Media pieces over their criticism of Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s parenting, and struggles with staying neutral in the public square.