National “Public” Radio legal reporter Nina Totenberg turned 82 in January, and she may be losing a step. On Tuesday, as the Supreme Court put out its final opinions of the term, she posted a false report on NPR’s website (and then repeated on air) that Justice Samuel Alito, 76, was calling it quits.
“Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the Supreme Court’s opinion reversing Roe v. Wade, is retiring, the court announced Tuesday,” the article began. The court did not announce that.
Totenberg had a pre-written analysis of Alito’s tenure on the top court ready to go, but the shocking part is she never called Alito’s office to confirm, which is Journalism 101. The fake news came down within minutes, and on Tuesday night’s All Things Considered, she confessed:
TOTENBERG: I did to my boss, and I scared everybody half to death for about five minutes, and it's entirely on me. It's not anybody else's fault. And I've written to Justice Alito to apologize, and I thought I would read you most of this letter, 'cause it tells you everything.
(Reading) “Dear Justice Alito, there are no words to adequately apologize for today's error in reporting your retirement. It was entirely my fault. I rushed out of the courtroom after the opinion announcements, and when I realized that the usual rush of folks, after a few minutes, had not happened, I asked somebody what was going on inside, to which the answer was retirement announcements. I didn't hear the S on announcements and assumed - something no reporter should ever do - that you were retiring. It was the worst professional mistake of my more than 50 years in journalism. I could go on, but I don't know what else to say, except that I am so, so sorry.”
And I am, eternally. You know, this was a rookie mistake.
That's true. In a response, NPR Public Editor Kelly McBride correctly suggested a rookie would be fired for this kind of elementary mistake. One reason Totenberg’s reporting was accepted without any real attempt at NPR to double-check her is the assumption that she is an NPR Legend, and so it must be accurate. She noted that many people began speculating that maybe Alito's retiring later in the week or something, and she just jumped the gun. It's harder to imagine she was just this incompetent.
McBride also suggested: “For most news consumers, the error is a blip, something that flashed across their feed or they heard on their radio. It was corrected quickly and will not have lasting consequences.”
Totenberg usually plans on reporting that has "lasting consequences," like ruining conservative Douglas Ginsburg's Supreme Court nomination in 1987, and attempting to ruin Clarence Thomas's nomination in 1991 with Anita Hill's unproven claims of sexual harassment. Totenberg was "tick tight" with leftist Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for decades, and even wrote a book about it (Dinners With Ruth) after Ginsburg died. Totenberg is Exhibit A in how NPR is a thoroughly ideological outlet that should never have been funded by the taxpayers.
