Tuesday, NPR had to retract a story and issue an apology after Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg reported that Justice Sam Alito is retiring. He is not. At least not today.
At first it seemed like a timing mistake. Totenberg is so well sourced at the Supreme Court that her closeness to members of the court has occasionally led to questions of conflict of interest. It is easy to imagine that Totenberg had been given a heads up that Alito is retiring – by Alito himself – but that he is not ready to make the news public. This scenario makes sense, but Totenberg’s on-air explanation and apology during Tuesday’s All Things Considered raises more questions than it answers.
According to Totenberg, she and her editors simply assumed facts not in evidence and went online with a huge story – a Supreme Court retirement – based on less than a wisp of hearsay.
While Totenberg says she wants to set herself apart from those who don’t own up to their mistakes, in her on-air apology she did the one thing many people in public life do when they screw up: She apologized and then told the audience it’s time to move on. She called it “a rookie mistake,” but if you read the full explanation(linked at the top), it’s much worse than that.
