National Public Radio’s public relations fiasco is hilarious for many reasons, not least because they just can’t admit it. The outlet published yesterday that Justice Samuel Alito was retiring. Two issues: first, it would’ve been good to double-check with the Public Information Office; second, Nina Totenberg, who wrote the piece, knew she screwed up when no one was running with it, leading the Supreme Court PIO to call her out.
Spoke with NPR's Nina Totenberg about the birthright citizenship decision. The longtime SCOTUS reporter also cleared up what happened today with the story about Justice Alito retiring that was quickly retracted. @livenowfox pic.twitter.com/mSeRKVpYez
— Andy Mac (@ItsAndyMac_) June 30, 2026
"Nina Totenberg misheard an announcement about retirements as she was leaving the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. As she was leaving the court, Chief Justice John Roberts was announcing upcoming retirements. Totenberg misheard Roberts' statement" https://t.co/fOAsq5r7ne
— Nick Field (@nick_field90) June 30, 2026
Alito is not retiring; they’re still in the rumor phase. It’s not a crime to pre-write the story, but Lord God, people, what the hell happened? They can’t say we were wrong, and it was published by accident. We get rationalizations and other excuses. No, sit there and be wrong.
Totenberg said she misheard retirement announcements from Chief Justice Roberts or something, which was the narrative for most of yesterday afternoon and evening. Now, we learn she was present for that part, despite going on All Things Considered to explain this trainwreck moment. They can’t even get the correction right—is this a simulation?
The NPR situation gets weirder...@kellymcb initially wrote that Nina Totenberg "misheard Roberts' statement" about Supreme Court-related retirements.
— Matthew Keys (@MatthewKeysLive) July 1, 2026
Then after Totenberg appeared on NPR, the post was amended with a correction. pic.twitter.com/Tu1iidytWi
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So, to recap: NPR published an erroneous story about Samuel Alito retiring from the Supreme Court, then published an erroneous blog post about how the erroneous story was published in the first place.
— Matthew Keys (@MatthewKeysLive) July 1, 2026
Can't make this up.
Just a fiasco, and no one will be punished over this. Also, as you all know, this isn’t the first time Nina has been wrong, and it’s certainly not the first time she has allegedly made an error while rushing. She was fired in 1972 for plagiarism, claiming she was in a hurry and that it was a lapse in judgment.
Most reporters don’t face this “nightmare situation,” because they aren’t dumb enough to report a massive bombshell like that based on second-hand, unverified information like Totenberg did. https://t.co/8OpKPaIIUg
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) June 30, 2026
Totenberg was fired by the National Observer in 1972 for plagiarism. She later said:
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) June 30, 2026
"I was in a hurry. I used terrible judgment."
"A young reporter is entitled to one mistake and to have the holy bejeezus scared out of her to never do it again."https://t.co/ziG0boYDXa pic.twitter.com/60IZ7FY4JV
Wow, is this @NPR headline wrong!
— Neal McCluskey (@NealMcCluskey) April 22, 2025
SCOTUS will not be hearing a case about who determines public school curricula.
It is about whether parents can opt their kids out of lessons at odds with their religious beliefs. pic.twitter.com/pt9k5qoEr6
I also love how Mark Halperin, now being devoid of network ties, started off his segment about the error by saying Nina is liberal as hell. Not that we didn’t know, but ‘hey, maybe this error happened because Nina, like most in the SCOTUS press corps, hates the conservative wing.’
“Like most Supreme Court reporters who work for Washington DC-based organizations, she’s a huge liberal,” says @MarkHalperin about NPR’s Nina Totenberg. “That’s just the way Washington works.” The New York Times’ Linda Greenhouse “covered the Supreme Court… for years, posing as… pic.twitter.com/iJxM67UpKt
— 2WAY (@2waytvapp) July 1, 2026
Maybe that's why they can't even get the correction right. What a circus.
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