NPR’s Supreme Court correspondent Nina Totenberg explained that she made a “rookie mistake” on Tuesday by reporting that Justice Sam Alito had announced his retirement.
The article was soon retracted, but has left questions in its wake.
Totenberg, 82, who has more than 50 years of experience in covering the Supreme Court since 1975, explained on NPR’s “All Things Considered” how an unconfirmed report of Alito’s retirement happened, and that she had sent an unanswered apology 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. 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.”
Totenberg then said she left the courtroom to report on the rulings without staying longer to listen to the substance of the announcements.
NPR leadership explained that a long time correspondent’s experience and status built trust with the organization that “contributed to the error,” as editors made decisions based on trust to publish the pre-written article.
A backstop firewall was also crossed, according to NPR, when Totenberg’s article described an announcement, as opposed to a confidentially sourced report.
“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.”
News outlets have been known to pre-write reports ahead of expected announcements, but Totenberg’s actions on Tuesday raised speculation that she may have had advance knowledge. Totenberg did not address that aspect of the issue.