The NPR editor whose job is to critique the network’s news department says she can’t justify the outlet falsely reporting that a Supreme Court justice was retiring.
“It’s inexplainable,” Kelly McBride said late Tuesday.
But McBride says someone needs to explain it.
McBride made her views on the gaffe known in a column while correspondent Nina Totenberg was apologizing to Samuel Alito for falsely reporting he was stepping down.
Totenberg, for whom the reporting error was just the latest in a career built on questionable cozy relationships with the high court’s justices, called it “the biggest mistake of my career” in a public apology she wrote to Alito.
NPR Executive Editor Krishnadev Calamur joined McBride in rejecting Totenberg’s lame explanation that she allegedly misheard a colleague claiming Alito was retiring.
“This shit shouldn’t happen,” Calamur was quoted by McBride.
Totenberg, 82, called her error “a rookie mistake,” but she’s been a court reporter for a half-century.
McBride said, “had a rookie made such a mistake, he or she would have been dismissed.”
New York Post columnist Miranda Devine speculated Alito may have planted the false story to catch a leaker.
“A reliable reporter does not say ‘oh I thought I heard something’ without double-checking with a source to confirm,” Devine said. “Ideally she would call Alito to confirm as well.”
Totenberg has come under fire several times in her career, most recently for falsely reporting four years ago the chief justice wanted his colleagues to wear masks during COVID.
She also raised conflict-of-interest questions 20 years ago when she asked justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to officiate at her wedding.
Then, after Ginsburg died six years ago, Totenberg disclosed that the two of them were close personal friends for nearly 50 years.
Totenberg’s reporting, aside from potential bias due to her friendships with liberal justices, first came under scrutiny before she joined NPR, when she was fired by National Observer for plagiarism.
Alito, 76, has been on the court for a little more than two decades, after President George W. Bush nominated him for the role. He is part of the court’s conservative bloc, alongside Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.
I can explain it. The mainstream media is corrupt and lazy. Capitalism – the very thing the MSM hates the most fosters competition and growth. With the MSM relegated to repeating what it is told to report quality suffers. Luckily for America capitalism and competition lacking in the MSM also lacks in the political party the MSM represents – damaging both in the eyes of the public.