NPR’s Supreme Court reporter went on national radio Tuesday afternoon to beg Justice Samuel Alito for forgiveness.
Nina Totenberg, 82, appeared on “All Things Considered” to apologize for her stunning – and fake — Tuesday morning report claiming Alito had stepped down from the Supreme Court.
The story was false. It was published at 10:51 a.m. ET and retracted later. Totenberg took full responsibility, and read a personal apology she had sent directly to Alito.
“Dear Justice Alito, there are no words to adequately apologize for today’s error in reporting your retirement. It was entirely my fault,” Totenberg said on air. “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 I 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.”
She told listeners she had not heard back from the justice. She did not expect to.
“I scared everybody half to death for about five minutes,” Totenberg said. “It’s entirely on me. It’s not anybody else’s fault.”
She called it a “rookie mistake.” That word choice did not land well.
NPR Public Editor Kelly McBride, who had already published her own account of how the error happened before Totenberg went on air, was blunt.
“As Totenberg said on air later in the day, ‘It was a rookie mistake,'” McBride wrote. “But had a rookie made such a mistake, he or she would have been dismissed. To make such an assumption is inexplainable.”
The reaction outside NPR was harsher still.
“That is not an explanation. It’s either a lie or unforgivable incompetence for which she must be fired,” journalist Miranda Devine wrote. Former CBS News reporter Scott MacFarlane called it “staggering. Just… gobsmacking.” “The Press Box” host Bryan Curtis put a finer point on it: “This is a different level of screw-up than a pre-write accidentally getting pubbed.”
Alito, 76, is not retiring. Fox News confirmed through multiple sources that the justice is not stepping down this term and is actively hiring clerks for next year.
The Supreme Court’s own spokeswoman, Patricia McCabe, was clear Tuesday morning: “NPR’s reporting regarding Justice Alito is inaccurate. And their reporting that there was any kind of court statement is inaccurate.”