\n<\/p>\n
The US public broadcasting organization National Public Radio (NPR) on Tuesday took the unusual step of formally retracting a major news story, after it published what seemed like a bombshell scoop that the supreme court justice Samuel Alito was retiring.<\/p>\n
The story was written by Nina Totenberg, one of the most prominent chroniclers of the supreme court in American media.<\/p>\n
The nearly 1,200-word story was completely removed and replaced with the following editor\u2019s note: \u201cEarlier 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The opening paragraph of the story cited a \u201ccourt announcement\u201d that Alito was retiring, but no announcement had been made at the time of publication.<\/p>\n
Patricia McCabe, a spokesperson for the court, told NBC News that \u201cNPR\u2019s reporting regarding Justice Alito is inaccurate\u201d and that \u201ctheir reporting that there was any kind of court statement is inaccurate\u201d.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday afternoon, NPR\u2019s top editor, Thomas Evans, chalked the errant publication up to a \u201cmisunderstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDue to a misunderstanding, NPR\u2019s Supreme Court and Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg incorrectly reported that Justice Samuel Alito had retired,\u201d Evans said in a statement. \u201cNeither 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 As soon as the error was realized, the story was retracted and removed from NPR\u2019s website and an on-air correction was broadcast. We regret the error and any confusion this may have caused. This afternoon, Mrs. Totenberg will appear on All Things Considered to explain what happened. She has reached out to Justice Alito to apologize.\u201d<\/p>\n
Totenberg\u2019s story is a sprawling account of Alito\u2019s career on the court. \u201cThroughout his tenure, he played a key role on the court, often leading the conservative charge, not just on abortion, but for expanded religious rights, against LGBTQ+ rights, against expanded voting rights, for the death penalty, against labor unions, and more,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
The story notes prominently that Alito wrote the opinion in the court\u2019s historic 2022 decision overturning Roe v Wade.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the history of the Supreme Court, the names of just a few justices are linked with a single very famous, or infamous, decision,\u201d Totenberg, who has worked at NPR since 1975, wrote. \u201cChief Justice John Marshall for his groundbreaking decision in 1803, declaring that courts have the power to strike down laws that violate the Constitution. Chief Justice Roger Taney for his infamous decision in the Dred Scott case declaring that no African American, enslaved or free, could be a citizen of the United states, a decision that led in part to the Civil War; Chief Justice Earl Warren for his 1954 decision declaring racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd in our own times, Alito\u2019s name is indelibly linked with the court\u2019s opinion overturning a half century\u2019s worth of decisions declaring that women have a right to abortion.\u201d<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s also evidence that the story was still a work in progress. In the second-to-last paragraph, a Yale University law professor is quoted as saying that Alito \u201ctook sown [sic] Roe versus Wade. So that\u2019s how he he [sic] will be forever remembered.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Guardian has contacted NPR\u2019s media relations team for further comment on the retraction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US public broadcasting organization National Public Radio (NPR) on Tuesday took the unusual step of formally retracting a major news story, after it published what seemed like a bombshell scoop that the supreme court justice Samuel Alito was retiring. The story was written by Nina Totenberg, one of the most prominent chroniclers of the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[24883,160,24097,2282,4581,13687,20213,4313,1522,159],"class_list":{"0":"post-50789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-alito","9":"tag-court","10":"tag-inaccurate","11":"tag-justice","12":"tag-npr","13":"tag-retiring","14":"tag-retracts","15":"tag-samuel","16":"tag-story","17":"tag-supreme"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}