NPR retracts erroneous report claiming Justice Samuel Alito was retiring

National Public Radio (NPR) retracted a story June 30 after it incorrectly reported that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was retiring, attributing the error to a misunderstanding by veteran legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg. 

The article, which appeared on NPR’s website for about five minutes and was broadcast by some member stations, stated that Alito had announced his retirement on the final day of the Supreme Court’s term, according to an NPR statement explaining the error. 

The erroneous report was removed within minutes and replaced with an editor’s note: “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.”

NPR Editor-in-Chief Tommy Evans said in the statement that the report stemmed from Totenberg’s misunderstanding of an announcement at the courthouse. 

“Neither Justice Alito nor the Supreme Court Public Information Office has announced his retirement,” Evans said. “As soon as the error was realized, the story was retracted and removed from NPR's website and an on-air correction was broadcast.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.”

Evans said Totenberg misunderstood Chief Justice John Roberts’ announcement about retirements of court staff members. Totenberg then told her intern, who was at the court with her, and NPR Executive Editor Krishnadev Calamur what she believed she had heard, prompting Calamur to surface a prewritten retirement story. 

NPR later explained that the network had a “lengthy story about Alito’s retirement already written, because that’s what newsrooms do in anticipation of significant retirements and even deaths.” 

“Had it been true, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post and many other newsrooms all would have published their stories within minutes of each other,” NPR said. 

The incident drew swift attention across media outlets and prompted an on-air apology from Totenberg, who has covered the Supreme Court for NPR since 1975. She called the episode a “rookie mistake,” according to the statement.

NPR Public Editor Kelly McBride criticized the lapse in NPR’s statement on the error, saying the newsroom should have required stronger confirmation before publishing such a consequential report. 

“To make such an assumption is inexplainable,” McBride wrote in the statement. “Totenberg could have sent the intern back into the court to confirm the announcement. At the very least, when moving fast, the newsroom should require a second editor help the first one confirm information.”