To paraphrase Mark Twain, Justice Samuel Alito’s retirement has been “much exaggerated.” Yesterday, my phone exploded with calls from reporters about the scoop by NPR’s Nina Totenberg that Alito had retired. As someone who has covered the Court for 30 years and was in the midst of covering yesterday’s opinions for Fox News, it was enough to trigger a panic attack. I had been told that Alito had selected his clerks for the next term and was not retiring. Then NPR issued a retraction that Totenberg was wrong and Alito was still showing signs of judicial life. It turns out that it came down to the perils of pluralization for the press.
NPR issued a retraction stating:
“Earlier today, we erroneously published a story saying that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was retiring. Neither Alito nor the court’s public information office has announced his retirement, and we have retracted the story.”
To her credit, Totenberg later went on “All Things Considered” to apologize for what she called a “rookie mistake.”
The explanation was even more surprising than the mistake itself. I had assumed that Totenberg had gotten a mistaken account from a justice or high-ranking court official. Instead, she explained in a letter to Justice Alito that
“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.”
So it came down to the mistaken pluralization from an account of a third party leaving the chamber?
It is particularly bizarre that Totenberg would run with a story without confirming not only the retirement but also the actual justice. There has also been speculation that Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Sonia Sotomayor might retire. The story came across as more wishful thinking than loose reporting.
While it may be what Totenberg considers “the worst professional mistake of my more than 50 years in journalism,” it is not the first such controversy.
I previously wrote about another challenged Totenberg scoop. As is often the case with Totenberg, the conservative was the villain.
After striking down the Biden vaccine mandate for workplaces, Totenberg triggered a frenzy over Gorsuch not wearing a mask at oral arguments:
“Chief Justice John Roberts, understanding that, in some form asked the other justices to mask up. They all did. Except Gorsuch, who, as it happens, sits next to Sotomayor on the bench. His continued refusal since then has also meant that Sotomayor has not attended the justices’ weekly conference in person, joining instead by telephone.”
It did not matter that Totenberg had previously attacked Gorsuch. The media showed the same hair-triggered response in taking the story viral.
Gorsuch did appear in the last argument in the term without a mask. Ironically, if he had simply worn a commonly used cloth mask, there would have been no outcry, even though the masks do not appear to block the virus, and even CNN’s experts were calling them “little more than facial decorations.”
It is also unclear whether Sotomayor even knew whether anyone or everyone would wear masks during the argument. She had previously stated an intention to participate remotely. Given the lack of protection from most masks (including reused or contaminated N95 masks), Sotomayor likely felt the risk was not worth taking. Yet, Totenberg stated as a fact that Gorsuch’s “continued refusal since then has … meant that Sotomayor has not attended the justices’ weekly conference in person, joining instead by telephone.”
Her story led to a torrent of criticism from other liberal outlets. MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace declared Gorsuch guilty of “anti-mask insanity.” Her colleague Joy Reid accused Gorsuch of virtually standing Sotomayor up in front of a COVID firing squad for his personal enjoyment. Rolling Stone ran with the story “Neil Gorsuch Stands Up for His Right to Endanger Sonia Sotomayor’s Health,” and added “the liberal Supreme Court justice is diabetic and didn’t want to sit next to justices who weren’t wearing masks. Her conservative colleague didn’t care.”
Former senator Claire McCaskill tweeted:
So glad I voted no on this jerk. What kind of guy does this? I could tell in my meeting with him that he thought he was better than everyone else, more important, smarter. Ugh. #Gorsuch
The Daily Kos declared
“it is hard to imagine a bigger shit. But we should not be surprised…Most Americans will find his selfishness incredible, but it is typical of his kind. One trait common to every conservative is a sociopathic lack of empathy.”
Elie Mystal, who has written for Above the Law and the Nation, tweeted
Confirmation of what we all already knew. Whatever you think about masks, Gorsuch, who sits next to Sotomayor at work, just decided to be a dick to a colleague.
Then came the denial of all three justices.
Chief Justice John Roberts also issued a statement that it was false, as claimed, that he asked any of his colleagues to wear masks on the bench. Indeed, previously the justices did not wear masks during arguments. Moreover, Gorsuch is routinely shown wearing a mask around the courthouse.
The joint statement of the two justices insists that Totenberg’s account is entirely false:
“Reporting that Justice Sotomayor asked Justice Gorsuch to wear a mask surprised us. It is false. While we may sometimes disagree about the law, we are warm colleagues and friends.”
Yet when NPR’s ombudsman, Kelly McBride, merely suggested that Totenberg clarify the facts of her story, Totenberg attacked her. Totenberg responded to The Daily Beast and declared that McBride “can write any goddamn thing she wants, whether or not I think it’s true.”
Nina Totenberg has alzheimers? Why do we have literal corpses for ‘journalists’? Retire, and let someone else have their say nina!
and they wonder why MSM is dead.
If Caitlin was trans or an immigrant here without legal backing, Wok would shut down the WNBA and demand criminal conspiracy charges be leveled against the owners, the players, the refs and coaches and Trump, of course.
Because she is white, non-violent and focused on playing basketball, she’s a nothing, a nobody, deserving of the fists slamming her airway shut, crushing her neck, when they assumed it wouldn’t be caught on camera, and being body slammed live during a game. She is ignored like Laken Riley
It was a story too good to be bothered to be fact checked! Verified! Confirmed as true! Just run with it!
Yeah, where else have we seen this kind of thing?
Russian collusion.
Pee tape.
Alpha bank.
All the COVID nonsense.
Joe Biden, “Sharp as a tack!” “Laser focused!”
The border is secure!
Gender affirming care.
Keep on, keeping on NPR/MSM. And you wonder why your ratings are in the toilet.
Rottenberg’s “mistake” is typical of what passes for thinking on the left: such a strong urge to replace reality with a universe that works as she thinks it should that she spun a cryptic sentence fragment IN HER OWN MIND into a reflection of that internal fantasy world. How can she expect anyone to regard anything she “reports” as possessing any degree of credibility? I’m just thankful that we as taxpayers are no longer funding the cauldron of cattle feces that is NPR.
The way that Totenberg treated the ombudsman is exactly how leftist elites treat people that work under them or have less “stature”. They love the masses…it’s just people they hate.
Im no spring chicken, but how do you report a story which you didn’t even hear second hand or see? Time to hang it up.
One way to look at this is Ms. Totenburg is defunded along with NPR from the public fisc. We no longer have to pay for the little boy to cry wolf.
When will the court announce that it was Sotomayor that leaked the Dobbs decision?
Nina Totenberg is not a journalist, she is a urinalist. Plain and simple.
Pluralization? She just wanted It to be true. I would imagine she was more disappointed than embarrassed when she found out It was false
” it was enough to trigger a panic attack”
The problem appears to be that NPR has been so reliable as to be unquestioningly believed and, as a demonstration of that reliability, when an error occurred, they immediately made strong efforts to alert their listeners as to the error.
This is unlike, for example, Fox News, which not only lied about voting machine suppliers, but went to court to lose a case that cost them nearly $1B and a weak apology that did nothing to restore the belief of their viewers in the voting process.
Clearly Turley wants all outlets to be as unreliable as the organization that frequently features him. Which raises the question – If the Fox News platform is known to be unreliable, isn’t the corrosion of unreliability passed to those who appear to speak on that platform?
Nina Totenberg is 80. I’ve known a number solid performers who get to that age and begin making odd errors, errors that are discovered and corrected by their employer. Except for Trump. The Heritage Foundation hasn’t done anything to correct Trump’s frequent errors. Perhaps the voters will start a correction at the midterms.
—
“even though the masks do not appear to block the virus”
Masks don’t have to block the virus. Only plastic wrap would do that, and there are more than a few I think should have tried that.
Filter masks capture larger liquid particles that are carrying the largest amount of the virus and slow the exit velocity of all the air.
The virus doesn’t survive long in open air, as measured in time, not distance, and the cloth masks reduce the distance the virus can travel in a given amount of time from the person who exhales them. Try to blow out a birthday candle while wearing a non-vented mask to see the reduction. The more slowly they travel the less distance the viral particles can cover before the virus particles break down. If they didn’t break down rapidly, then one infected person could infect a building days or weeks or months later. Instead it appears to only happen within seconds of exhalation, though it may take many exhalations to happen.
What is 100% known is that masks don’t work for the majority of Republicans because the majority of Republicans wouldn’t wear them. It’s also 100% known that simultaneous outbreaks among people who only shared a common location immediately prior to becoming ill also 100% were among those people not wearing masks of any kind.
What, no inclusion of CNN, or CBS proven accusations and monetary settlements?
“The Heritage Foundation hasn’t done anything to correct Trump’s frequent errors…” Well, don’t forget, the radical, violence pushing, and communist traitors comprising the vast majority of the Big Media, didn’t condemn him 24/7 for everything and anything for a decade, they may have raised that issue.
Poor wok.
Dear Mr. Turley, I am still waiting for Ms. Tottenberg to apologize to Clarence Thomas. However, I am not holding my breath. She is a known liar, and I am thankful Justice Alito called her out on it.
Still seeking the big scoop, Nina, herself being 82 years old, makes a strong case that reporters, not SCOTUS justices, exceeding the age of 65 should retire.
Retirement is up to the individual. Cronkite lamented that if he knew he was going to live as long as he did he wouldn’t retire so early.
The lack of historic perspective in so many of our younger commentators and citizens prove the need for those who lived through recent history. Different jobs require different retirement norms. Whatever they are, it should be up to the indivdual and the value of their work.
I stopped listening to NPR many years ago so I wasn’t aware that Nina Totenberg was even alive, much less still writing her nonsense. I can’t in good faith suggest that she retire because for me and most sentient beings she is of no consequence and her opinions are her right but no one should care about them.
Never let facts get in the way of a good story or bad argument, regardless of how stubborn they are.
You made the colossal mistake of believing anything coming out of Leftwing media could be true. Live and learn.
Seems like Nina’s last name should be Totenkopf – German for Dead Head. Fits 99% of her worthless reporting for NPR. Her sources are obviously Gen Z half-wits skulking around in the SCOTUS building as Wokie Interns. Let’s hope the news was a plant to ferret out any leakers!!! Bust’em and then Kick’em to the curb!
Totenkopf is a German term that translates to “death’s head” and refers to a symbol depicting a human skull, often associated with danger, death, or piracy.