NPR’s Nina Totenberg has explained the mistake that led her to misreport that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was retiring, prompting a swift retraction from the outlet.
Speaking on NPR’s All Things Considered, Totenberg, 82, took full responsibility for the debacle.
“It’s entirely on me. It’s not anybody else’s fault,” she said.
She also offered an apology to Alito, 76, who has not announced his retirement, although he has long been viewed as one of the next justices likely to retire.
“There are no words to adequately apologize for today’s error in reporting your retirement. It was entirely my fault,“ she said.
She explained that during Tuesday’s landmark opinion releases, she “rushed out of the courtroom” but then realized that “the usual rush of folks after a few minutes had not happened.” When she asked someone else what was happening, she says she heard them say “retirement announcements.”
“I didn’t hear the ‘s’ on ‘announcements,’ and I assumed something no reporter should ever do, that you were retiring,” Totenberg admitted. “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 that it was a “rookie mistake” and that she hadn’t heard back from Alito and wasn’t expecting to either.
NPR’s editor-in-chief Thomas Evans, who joined Totenberg on All Things Considered, said he feels “ultimate responsibility for anything that NPR is reporting.”
“We are trying to be a nimble news organization doing 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,” he said.
Totenberg’s report was online for only a few minutes before it was replaced by an editor’s note.
“Editor’s Note: 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,” the story now reads.
NPR ran the false report after Totenberg misheard that Alito was retiring and passed on that incorrect information to chief Washington editor Krishnadev Calamur, who then published a prewritten article, according to a detailed account by Kelly McBride, NPR’s public editor. The erroneous report was also broadcast on NPR’s airwaves.
Totenberg has covered the Supreme Court for NPR since 1975, and her status “contributed to the error,” according to the public editor’s account.
“She’s the preeminent Supreme Court reporter in the courtroom,” Calamur told McBride. “So I’m assuming that’s what she heard. … She’s in the room. It’s like when we report opinions. I’m not waiting to see what the Times is reporting. It’s when Nina says, ‘Here’s what happened,’ and we do it. That’s the trust you build up.”
The retracted article went through an extra step in the editing process, known at NPR as “the backstop,” The New York Times reported. The extra layer was added in 2024 as a final measure to ensure errors were not published.
But because Totenberg’s article cited an announcement rather than a source, the network did not take further steps to verify the information’s accuracy, according to the Times.
Calamur told NPR’s public editor that he would review the process for posting breaking news. “This sort of s--t should not happen,” he said.
Speculation about aging justices is a constant feature of Washington politics, as even a single vacancy can shift the Court’s ideological balance for decades since justices enjoy lifetime tenure.
President Donald Trump solidified a conservative majority on the court by appointing Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, and later Amy Coney Barrett in 2020 following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Alito is the court’s second-oldest justice and has not made any indication that he is retiring. Earlier this year, however, he was secretly rushed to a hospital after falling ill during a Federalist Society dinner. He was evaluated and given fluids for dehydration before returning to his home in Virginia that night, CNN reported at the time.
The Supreme Court’s Public Information Office did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
He has long been seen as one of the next justices to retire. If he were to step down, Trump would be given his fourth opportunity to nominate someone to the high court.
In April, Trump suggested that the court’s most senior conservative justices should step aside because of their age.
“You make the case that, at a certain time, you give it up so that you can have a justice (on the same side)… so that your ideology, your policies, your everything, would be of the kind that we like,” Trump, himself the oldest person ever inaugurated as president, told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo.
When reached for comment, NPR provided the Daily Beast with a statement from Evans: “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. As soon as the error was realized, the story was retracted and removed from NPR’s website and an on-air correction was broadcast. We regret the error and any confusion this may have caused.”
