NPR was forced to retract a story on Tuesday after it falsely reported that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was retiring. The story, headlined “Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, retires,” apparently started with a misheard announcement.
The outlet said NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg was reporting on the final day of the Supreme Court session when, as she was leaving the court, she misheard Chief Justice John Roberts’ announcement about upcoming retirements. NPR explained that it had a lengthy story about Alito’s career already prepared, a practice that is common in the news industry that is often done ahead of notable retirements and deaths of important figures.
Totenberg joined “All Things Considered” on Tuesday to explain what happened. The reporter said that the error was “entirely on me” and something she called a “rookie mistake.”
The reporter then read on-air a letter that she wrote to Alito apologizing for the mistake. She noted that she had not heard back from the justice, adding that she did not expect to.
NPR RETRACTS FALSE REPORT CLAIMING JUSTICE SAMUEL ALITO IS RETIRING FROM THE SUPREME COURT
“Dear Justice Alito, there are no words to adequately apologize for today’s error in reporting your retirement. It was entirely my fault,” she said.
“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. 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 added.
“We profoundly regret the error and the confusion that this has caused and Nina has reached out to Alito to apologize personally,” NPR Executive Editor Krishnadev Calamur told NPR Public Editor Kelly McBride.
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Calamur’s statement about Totenberg’s apologizing to Alito was echoed by top NPR editor Thomas Evans, who told Fox News Digital something similar on Tuesday.
“Due to a misunderstanding, NPR’s Supreme Court and Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg incorrectly reported that Justice Samuel Alito had retired. Neither Justice Alito nor the Supreme Court Public Information Office has announced his retirement,” Evans told Fox News Digital.
In April, a source told Fox News Digital that Alito “is not stepping down this term and is in the process of hiring the rest of his clerks for the next term.” Two other sources have told Fox News that Alito is not retiring this term, which lasts until the Supreme Court begins its new term in October.
Evans said that once the outlet realized the error, which had been published on NPR’s website and announced on its airwaves, there was a swift correction online and on the air.
McBride said that NPR published the story on its website at 10:51 a.m. ET and that it was “live for about 5 minutes,” though the outlet noted that the story remained live on some member station websites for longer periods of time.
“It was taken down and replaced with an editor’s note by 10:57 a.m. The error was corrected on the broadcast at 11:07 a.m. ET,” the outlet reported.
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Totenberg is a seasoned reporter who has been covering the Supreme Court for NPR since 1975. Calamur told NPR that Totenberg’s status led him to believe what she reported was accurate. However, following the incident, Calamur said he would be reviewing the breaking news process.
McBride admitted that “while there’s really no excuse for this kind of error, it was a result of an honest mistake and a rush to publish. Had it been true, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post and many other newsrooms all would have published their stories within minutes of each other.”
Alito, a 2005 appointee of then-President George W. Bush, has fueled speculation about his retirement because of two factors: his age and the length of his tenure on the bench. The 76-year-old justice has been part of the Court for more than 20 years. Some have suggested that he may be waiting to make sure a conservative successor is confirmed by the Republican-led Senate before the upcoming midterm elections.
Fox News Digital’s Julia Bonavita, Alec Schemmel and Ashley Oliver contributed to this report.
