‘I am so, so sorry’: NPR reporter explains SCOTUS retirement error
By Brian Stelter, CNN
(CNN) — NPR’s eminent Supreme Court correspondent Nina Totenberg says she made a “rookie mistake” on Tuesday morning, and that’s why she reported that Justice Samuel Alito was retiring.
Totenberg’s story sent other newsrooms scrambling to confirm, leading a court spokesperson to deny the reporting.
Totenberg discussed the matter on “All Things Considered” Tuesday afternoon and read the text of the apology she sent to Alito.
The apology didn’t fully explain why NPR published the report without additional confirmation, however.
The embarrassing episode also amplified questions about whether, in fact, Alito is contemplating retirement, a possibility some court watchers had already been discussing.
“I scared everybody half to death for about five minutes,” Totenberg said on the radio. “It’s entirely on me. It’s not anybody else’s fault.”
Then she read the apology: “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 was going on inside, to which the answer was, ‘retirement announcements.’ I didn’t hear the ‘s’ on ‘announcements,’ and I assumed something no reporter should ever do, that you were retiring.”
Later in the segment, Totenberg indicated that she hurried out of the courtroom to join NPR’s special live coverage of the court’s rulings. She said she should have stayed at the court to hear the substance of what was being announced.
“It was the worst professional mistake of my more than 50 years in journalism,” she wrote to Alito. “I could go on, but I don’t know what else to say except that I am so, so sorry.”
Totenberg said she hasn’t heard back from the justice.
Totenberg had a complete story ready to go about Alito’s retirement, so when she called NPR executive editor Krishnadev Calamur with the apparent news, Calamur went ahead and published it, according to the public radio organization’s public editor, Kelly McBride.
News outlets frequently have so-called “prewrites” ready in advance of expected announcements.
But Tuesday’s incident sparked speculation that Totenberg, who has been well-sourced at the court for decades, might have had some advance knowledge that Alito was about to retire.
Totenberg did not address that during Tuesday’s mea culpa.
Thomas Evans, NPR’s editor-in-chief, said on air that “we do have systems in place” to avoid mistakes like Tuesday’s.
“We are trying to be a nimble news organization during breaking news and still be correct at all times, and this is something we should learn from,” Evans said.
McBride’s account of what Totenberg misheard, published on NPR’s website, is slightly different.
McBride wrote that “as she was leaving the court, Chief Justice John Roberts was announcing upcoming retirements. Totenberg misheard Roberts’ statement.”
McBride observed that Totenberg’s status as a reporter who has been covering the Supreme Court since 1975 “contributed to the error.”
Calamur told McBride, “She’s in the room. It’s like when we report opinions. I’m not waiting to see what the Times is reporting. It’s when Nina says, ‘here’s what happened,’ and we do it. That’s the trust you build up.”
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