NPR’s legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg went on “All Things Considered” Tuesday to take full accountability and apologize for falsely reporting that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was retiring.
“I scared everybody half to death for about five minutes, and it was — it’s entirely on me, it’s not anybody else’s fault,” Totenberg said.
NPR quickly retracted a story early Tuesday after mistakenly reporting that Justice Alito was retiring. The justice was nominated to the Supreme Court by President George W. Bush in October 2005.
The story has since been replaced by an editor’s note which states: “Earlier today we erroneously published a story saying that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was retiring. He has not announced his retirement and we have retracted the story.”
Totenberg, a tenured journalist who has worked at NPR for over 50 years, explained that she made an inaccurate assumption that the court was making retirement announcements after she rushed out early and misheard. She called the mistake the worst of her career.
She also revealed that she wrote directly to Justice Alito to apologize for the incident, and proceeded to read the full letter on air.
“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,” she wrote.
“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,” the 82-year-old reporter added. “This was a rookie mistake.”
Totenberg said that she had not heard back from the justice and did not expect to, but she believed it was important to own up to mistakes in the same way she would want the people she reports on to.
“We in the press corps always want people to own up to their mistakes, and they most of the time don’t,” she said. “So I’m not going to do that. This is on me, and only me.”
NPR editor-in-chief Thomas Evans was also brought on to address what went wrong in the editorial process that lead to the false report getting published.
“Nina was incredibly gracious there, but the truth is, it’s as editor in chief, I feel ultimate responsibility for anything that NPR is reporting,” Evans said. “We are trying to be a nimble news organization during breaking news and still be correct at all times, and this is something that we should learn from and go back and figure out where we could do better and be better.”
“I think most importantly, we need to be honest with our audience and honest with the listeners, that when we make a mistake. We own up to it,” he added.
The editor-in-chief did not further specify why the report went out without being checked by another member of the editorial staff. Totenberg then brought the attention back to herself saying she was the only person at the court, so she should fall on the sword.
“I’ve seen people make big mistakes because they weren’t sitting in the courtroom,” she said. “I knew we had a special, and I left early, and that is also on me. You should never leave these people early. It’s very gracious of the network and Tommy to get me off the hook, but there’s no getting me off the hook.”
