Mistakes Happen

No one is perfect, and everyone makes mistakes.

But, NPR made a whopper of a mistake when NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg misheard an announcement about retirements as she was leaving the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. As a result, an NPR headline erroneously claimed that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was retiring.

The headline sat atop a lengthy story that recapped the conservative justice's tenure. The error was also reported on NPR's airwaves.

The problem was, Alito is not retiring, at least not yet.

The story was wrong, and it will likely give NPR a credibility hit for quite some time. I can see them reporting a big story, and someone will inevitably say, “Yeah, but they also wrongly reported that Justice Alito was retiring.”

That mistake will follow them, but I will still give NPR credit for owning the mistake and facing it dead on.

I will also give Totenberg credit for not hiding from the mistake and for the note that she sent Alito.

"Dear Justice Alito, there are no words to adequately apologize for today's error in reporting your retirement. It was entirely my fault. I rushed out of the courtroom after the opinion announcements, and when I realized that the usual rush of folks after a few minutes had not happened, I asked somebody who was going on inside, to which the answer was, 'retirement announcements.' I didn't hear the 's' on 'announcements,' and I assumed something no reporter should ever do, that you were retiring. It was the worst professional mistake of my more than 50 years in journalism. I could go on, but I don't know what else to say, except that I am so, so sorry."

No one likes making mistakes, and it really stings when the mistake is a huge one like this.

But, NPR handled it the best they can. It will not stop the critics, and honestly, I’m not sure it should. The fact that NPR and Totenberg were forthright and upfront about their screw-up should be worth something.