The coverage of Bakke and Webster illustrates network performance when television news programs are taking their “best shot” at covering the Court's decisions. The careful examination of these two prominent cases has provided a detailed look into how the three major television network news programs reported the events leading up to the decisions in these cases, as well as the decisions themselves and their aftermath. Clearly, coverage of Bakke and Webster demonstrates that there are litigation settings that lead network news producers and reporters to invest substantial resources in covering the Court, despite much criticism to the contrary. Certainly, the evidence suggests that inattention is not a predetermined condition of the networks' relationship to the Court. Additionally, the analysis of Bakke and Webster has illuminated several structural and substantive components of television's coverage of the Court that may be important indicators of the nature of that coverage and, consequently, are suggestive of the public's opportunities to learn about the Court.

Armed, then, with the knowledge that television is limited in a number of ways that can potentially impact the nature of the coverage afforded the Court, but also with the knowledge that television is certainly capable of conveying important and useful information about the Court's activities, in this chapter we analyze network news coverage of two Court terms in their entirety, 1989–90 and 1994–95.