Kelly McBride, NPR’s public editor, has issued a statement tripling down on reporting from legal-affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg claiming that Justice Neil Gorsuch was asked to don a mask at oral arguments by Chief Justice John Roberts at the behest of Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Gorsuch has been unmasked and Sotomayor has not been physically present for recent oral arguments.
This reporting was refuted once, in a joint statement from Gorsuch and Sotomayor:
NEW: A statement from Justices Sotomayor and Gorsuch:
"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."
— Adam Liptak (@adamliptak) January 19, 2022
Then again by Roberts:
New statement from Chief Justice Roberts:
"I did not request Justice Gorsuch or any other Justice to wear a mask on the bench.”— Greg Stohr (@GregStohr) January 19, 2022
Still, NPR stood by the story, with Totenberg writing:
On Wednesday, Sotomayor and Gorsuch issued a statement saying that she did not ask him to wear a mask. NPR’s report did not say that she did. Then, the chief justice issued a statement saying he ‘did not request Justice Gorsuch or any other justice to wear a mask on the bench.’ The NPR report said the chief justice’s ask to the justices had come ‘in some form.’ NPR stands by its reporting.
Then on Thursday, McBride weighed in, asserting that “Totenberg’s story merits a clarification, but not a correction. After talking to Totenberg and reading all justices’ statements, I believe her reporting was solid, but her word choice was misleading.”
“Totenberg and her editors should have chosen a word other than ‘asked'” to describe Roberts’ mask messaging, added McBride. “And she could have been clear about how she knew there was subtle pressure to wear masks (the nature or even exact number of her anonymous sources) and what she didn’t know (exactly how Roberts was communicating).”
And besides, she goes on to argue, the details are of secondary importance, since “no one has challenged the broader focus of Totenberg’s original story, which asserts that the justices in general are not getting along well. The controversy over the anecdotal lead, which was intended to be illustrative, has overwhelmed the uncontested premise of the story.”
No one . . . except Justices Sotomayor and Gorsuch, whose statement, quoted by McBride just a few paragraphs before she calls the premise uncontested, explicitly addresses the idea that the Court is plagued by interpersonal turmoil.
Totenberg and McBride believe they’ve exposed institutional dysfunction. In that regard, this entire episode has been an unqualified success.