NPR on Tuesday retracted an article that said that Samuel Alito, an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, had retired.
The article, written by the veteran Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg, said that Justice Alito had announced his retirement. He has made no such announcement about his role, and a Supreme Court spokesman on Tuesday called NPR’s article “inaccurate.”
By midmorning Tuesday, the article had been replaced with a taciturn editor’s note: “Earlier 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.”
NPR’s error on Tuesday was a frenzied day at the Supreme Court, which released a spate of major decisions. Media outlets swarmed to cover the rulings, including a rejection of President Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, a decision allowing states to bar transgender athletes from girls’ sports, and another lifting spending limits on political parties.
Though NPR issued its retraction quickly, the article was nonetheless published on other public radio member sites that syndicate the network’s coverage. The retraction on NPR’s site caused a chain reaction across the country, causing those stations to remove the article and issue their own retractions.
Thomas Evans, NPR’s editor in chief, said in a statement that the article was published because of a “misunderstanding.”
“Neither Justice Alito nor the Supreme Court Public Information Office has announced his retirement,” Mr. Evans said. “As soon as the error was realized, the story was retracted and removed from NPR’s website and an on-air correction was broadcast.”
Mr. Evans said in the statement that Mrs. Totenberg would appear on the radio program “All Things Considered” Tuesday afternoon to explain what had happened and that she had reached out to Justice Alito to apologize.
The article, which was more than 1,000 words, was a retrospective on Justice Alito’s career. It focused on his majority opinion for the 2022 case that overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion-rights case. Calling Justice Alito “a consequential conservative,” the article said that Mr. Alito had played a key role on the court on issues including religious and voting rights.
Abbie VanSickle contributed reporting.
