NPR 'Founding Mother' Unloads on Public Editor Over SCOTUS Story: 'She's Not Clarifying Anything!'

[demmiblue]

“She can say any goddamn thing she wants,” Nina Totenberg said of NPR’s Public Editor before letting out a deep laugh.

The widening controversy over an NPR story 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, called 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 goddamn 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.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/npr-founding-mother-nina-totenberg-unloads-on-public-editor-kelly-mcbride-over-scotus-story-clarification

[Botany]

1. Oh for the love of Bob Edwards do we have a NPR family fight?

Let me get my kombucha tea and veggie fritters and tune in for the spat.

[hlthe2b]

6. Nah... go for the Schwetty balls.

[Tetrachloride]

2. A request for a change of verb is reasonable.

The fact is that “ask” has multiple meanings.

Why a professional can’t oblige this request is beyond me.

[happy feet]

4. No credence

“in some form asked the other justices to mask up,”

This was clear to me when I first read and also very clear to me that the supreme court refutation was refuting a strawman that Nina never said. It was a dodge response to a strawman they created in order to save face for the supremes. Full top.

I'm with Nina and call "baloney".

[Submariner]

3. It could be a much worse situation

The Horror: I tuned in NPR back in the early to mid-2,000's only to find I was listening to the Tucker Carlson Show.

I don't know who he killed to get on NPR to get his own show, but the world is not right when ghastly stuff like a fascist trust fund baby can get on (what used to be) Liberal radio.

[SharonClark]

8. Tucker never had a show on NPR and

what does he have to do with the NPR spat?

[Submariner]

9. His PBS show was broadcast on NPR in 2004

"A decade later Tucker Carlson would briefly call PBS home. Between his first foray into television at CNN and subsequent programs on MSNBC and FoxNews he hosted a 2004 PBS program, Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered, produced by WETA in Washington, D.C."

https://www.wnyc.org/story/tucker-carlsons-dad-defended-npr-and-then-helped-save-wnyc/

The NPR spat strikes me as little about nothing, when the real threat to press freedom for me was to see Bob Edwards dismissed from NPR, followed by trust fund fascist on the NPR airwaves.

[SharonClark]

10. PBS and NPR are two different organizations.

PBS is tv and NPR is radio. I think you’ve confused the two.

[hlthe2b]

5. Does no one ever pick up the phone and talk through such issues with each other any more?

I am really tired of seeing respected figures get embroiled in these "back and forth" via the media confrontations.

[rurallib]

7. I did not hear this story, but as a decades long listener I believe

whatever Nina Totenberg says. Her and Bob Edwards.