NPR “founding mother” Nina Totenberg unloads on public editor over SCOTUS mask story: “She can say any goddamn thing she wants”
on masks in the Supreme Court turned inward as a legendary reporter there blasted the broadcaster’s public editor for critiquing her work.
The public editor, Kelly McBride, who operates independently of the newsroom but takes a paycheck from the publication,for a “clarification, but not a correction” to an article about the Supreme Court written by one of the newsroom’s “founding mothers,” legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg. “She can write any goddam thing she wants, whether or not I think it’s true,” Totenberg told The Daily Beast on Thursday night. “She’s not clarifying anything!”
Totenberg laughed, and added: “I haven’t even looked at it, and I don’t care to look at it because I report to the news division, she does not report to the news division.”that Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is diabetic, had been working remotely, asking questions from a microphone in her chambers at a recent hearing and calling into the justices’ weekly conference, to avoid being near Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was the only justice not to wear a mask at that hearing.
In a statement, Gorsuch and Sotomayor, said that “Reporting that Justice Sotomayor asked Justice Gorsuch to wear a mask surprised us. It is false. While we may sometimes disagree about the law, we are warm colleagues and friends.” In his own statement, Roberts said, “I did not request Justice Gorsuch or any other Justice to wear a mask on the bench.”