Su­preme Court Justice Ant­on­in Scalia pays no mind to the shrill, lib­er­al me­dia. But he will hap­pily listen to con­ser­vat­ive ra­dio talk shows.

Which means that in his self-se­lect­ing me­dia diet, the Su­preme Court justice is just like the rest of us. Scalia is both a self-de­scribed con­ser­vat­ive and someone who evid­ently be­lieves that there is fer­vent lib­er­al bi­as in two of the coun­try’s most stor­ied news­pa­pers. Those views put him squarely among a group of people who pick and chose news sources that sup­port their ideo­lo­gic­al be­liefs.

Here’s the full rel­ev­ant quote from Scalia’s fas­cin­at­ing in­ter­view with New York Magazine:

What’s your me­dia diet? Where do you get your news? Well, we get news­pa­pers in the morn­ing. “We” mean­ing the justices? No! Maur­een and I. Oh, you and your wife “¦ I usu­ally skim them. We just get The Wall Street Journ­al and The Wash­ing­ton Times. We used to get The Wash­ing­ton Post, but it just “¦ went too far for me. I couldn’t handle it any­more. What tipped you over the edge? It was the treat­ment of al­most any con­ser­vat­ive is­sue. It was slanted and of­ten nasty. And, you know, why should I get up­set every morn­ing? I don’t think I’m the only one. I think they lost sub­scrip­tions partly be­cause they be­came so shrilly, shrilly lib­er­al. So no New York Times, either? No New York Times, no Post. And do you look at any­thing on­line? I get most of my news, prob­ably, driv­ing back and forth to work, on the ra­dio. Not NPR? Some­times NPR. But not usu­ally. Talk guys? Talk guys, usu­ally. Do you have a fa­vor­ite? You know who my fa­vor­ite is? My good friend Bill Ben­nett. He’s off the air by the time I’m driv­ing in, but I listen to him some­times when I’m shav­ing. He has a won­der­ful talk show. It’s very thought­ful. He has good callers. I think they keep off stu­pid people.

John Sides, a George Wash­ing­ton Uni­versity polit­ic­al sci­ence pro­fess­or and blog­ger over at The Mon­key Cage, broke down some 2010 Pew data on me­dia con­sump­tion to piece to­geth­er how people who dis­trust the me­dia are more likely to have a me­dia diet that con­firms their polit­ic­al be­liefs.

The data, in chart form:

The 2012 Pew me­dia con­sump­tion data finds that The New York Times may fit in here as well, with a lar­ger than av­er­age num­ber of lib­er­al read­ers and a lower than av­er­age num­ber of con­ser­vat­ive read­ers, with only very few Re­pub­lic­ans. Con­ser­vat­ive talk-ra­dio hosts such as Sean Han­nity and Rush Limbaugh have audi­ences dom­in­ated by Re­pub­lic­ans and con­ser­vat­ives.

While Scalia’s me­dia diet may be com­mon for people who think like he does, it’s not par­tic­u­larly up­lift­ing. No mat­ter what you think about me­dia bi­as in The Wash­ing­ton Post or The New York Times, they are two of the dom­in­ant sources of journ­al­ism in the world, as this (apolit­ic­al) Times story and this (apolit­ic­al) Post story from today demon­strate. And no mat­ter what you think about Ant­on­in Scalia, he’s pretty ob­vi­ously a massively smart hu­man be­ing. But when some of the smarter people out there re­fuse to read some of the smarter journ­al­ism out there, every­one loses.