A social media community devoted to political news blew up Tuesday morning with reactions to a major scoop by NPR: Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito had retired.
The story wasn’t true, however, and it no longer exists on the web. Replacing the story by longtime legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg is an editor’s note from the network explaining that the story had been retracted.
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“Earlier today we erroneously published a story saying that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was retiring,” the editor’s note reads. “He has not announced his retirement.”
But we all know what they say: Everything on the internet is forever. The retraction illustrates how quickly misinformation can spread online — and, in some cases, be leveraged to stoke distrust in public institutions.
NPR didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Straight Arrow. The article was erroneously published “due to a misunderstanding,” NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik reported.
In a statement to Folkenflik, NPR Editor-in-Chief Tommy Evans said the story was retracted “as soon as the error was realized.”
“The story was retracted and removed from NPR’s website and an on-air correction was broadcast,” Evans said. “We regret the error and any confusion this may have caused.”
Totenberg will appear on NPR’s “All Things Considered” Tuesday afternoon to explain the error, Evans’ statement said. “She has reached out to Justice Alito to apologize.”
The internet reacts to false NPR article
On Reddit, commenters theorized a strategic play by President Donald Trump who, if the story were true, would get to nominate Alito’s replacement. One commenter called the news “just an amazing coincidence.”
The story also found an audience on X, generating shares from prominent reporters, policy wonks and, perhaps most alarming, NPR critics who used the error as a weapon. Conservative political adviser and podcaster Katie Miller, the wife of Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff, claimed the story was reflective of media outlets more broadly.
“This is why you can’t trust the Legacy Media,” Katie Miller wrote on X. “Published a totally fake story.”
In its original story, which was captured by the Wayback Machine, Totenberg wrote that Alito — who was nominated to the court by President George W. Bush in 2005 — is “indelibly linked” to the Supreme Court’s 2022 opinion “overturning a half century’s worth of decisions declaring that women have the right to abortion.”
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