Podbit · The Megyn Kelly Show
NPR's executive editor published the Alito story without any verification because Totenberg told him there had been a courtroom announcement. He called her the preeminent Supreme Court reporter and deferred completely. Taibbi compares it to the Rolling Stone UVA rape story disaster — a cautionary tale about placing too much stock in a single reporter.
Where this was said
At 28:50 · chapter starts 21:35
Kelly, a former Fox News Supreme Court correspondent herself, explains why a justice retirement scoop is the single most prized story in the court-reporting world — the 'motherlode' — which makes Totenberg's failure all the more inexplicable. [1] — Megyn Kelly "Nina Totenberg reported Justice Alito's retirement on NPR after mishearing the phrase 'retirement announcements' from an unidentified perso…" 21:35 She walks through Totenberg's on-air apology, read in full on NPR's All Things Considered: Totenberg says she rushed out of the courtroom, heard someone say 'retirement announcements,' missed the S on the word, and assumed it referred to Alito — with no one ever naming the justice. Kelly is floored: even if she had independently heard Alito was likely to retire, that wouldn't make a hallway overheard phrase publishable. Kelly's verdict — 'either she has dementia, she's making it up, or she needs to be fired for malfeasance' — is sharp and unambiguous. Taibbi draws the comparison to All the President's Men, noting that Woodward and Bernstein were afraid to publish with four confirmed sources, while Totenberg published with zero. He also cites Rolling Stone's UVA rape story disaster as the defining cautionary tale for editors about blind trust in reporters — a lesson NPR's executive editor apparently never learned.
Nina Totenberg reported Justice Alito's retirement on NPR after mishearing the phrase 'retirement announcements' from an unidentified person in a courthouse hallway. No one said Alito's name. No source confirmed it. She went straight to her intern and NPR's executive editor, who published it on blind trust. It immediately blew up.
Totenberg admitted she heard 'retirement announcement' from an unnamed person and assumed it referred to Alito — no name, no confirmation, no second source.
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