NPR Refuses to Correct Misreport on SCOTUS, Even After Judges Give Serious Refusal

Despite claims from three Supreme Court justices that their report claiming dissent is stalking Supreme Court chambers on the subject of masks is false, National Public Radio asserts that it is true and that the judge is, therefore, false.

Initial report from NPR, yes since edited, claiming that Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor declined to participate in public sessions because Conservative Judge Neil Gorsuch was not wearing a mask and Chief Justice John Roberts had “in some way required other judges to wear masks.”

Then, Sotomayor and Gorsuch issued a joint statement tried to set the record right away.

“Reporting that Justice Sotomayor asked Justice Gorsuch to wear a mask surprised us. It’s wrong. Although we may sometimes disagree on the law, we are warm colleagues and friends,” the statement said.

Then came a statement from Roberts.

“I am not asking Justice Gorsuch or any other Justice to wear a mask on the bench,” it said, according to Articles washington.

Sotomayor, the Post noted, has a personal reason to fear the coronavirus because she was diagnosed with diabetes as a child.

Although all of the judges are vaccinated and given boosters, Sotomayor remains reticent about any activity that could put her at risk, the Post reported.

The NPR story, an apparent attempt to smear the “conservative” Justice, was brutally refuted by the main sources, the Judges themselves. Poor reporting under NPR. https://t.co/FoyWzA8hzw

– Craig Parshall (@CraigParshall) January 19, 2022

Faced with judges saying what NPR reported was false, NPR’s Kelly McBride gave discourse about why the report is “solid” in its reporting even if there is a misleading choice of words using the word “asked”.

NPR legal affairs reporter Nina Totenberg is hiding in the wording that Roberts “in some form” asked judges to wear masks. In a later interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” she admitted she would reduce that by changing the word “asked” to “recommended.”

Totenberg was asked how Roberts came up with that proposal.

“If I knew exactly how he conveyed this, I would say it. Instead, I say ‘in some form,’ she said.

Totenberg said her sources, who were not named, made it clear in their accounts that Roberts wanted the judges wearing a mask for the sake of Sotomayor.

“The discrepancy between the story and Chief Justice Roberts’ statement concerns many of the listeners and NPR readers who wrote to us,” McBride wrote.

Then she made a big leap.

I was locked @Twitter to post an accurate tweet about #HydroxyChloroquine. Meanwhile, @NPR remains on Twitter despite statements from the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court and two other judges suggesting it lied about covid, masks and the Supreme Court! https://t.co/46Jn9ympXT

– Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) January 21, 2022

“No one challenges the broader focus of Totenberg’s origin story, which asserts that judges generally don’t get along. The controversy over the anecdotal lead, which was used for illustration, overwhelms the story’s untestable premise,” wrote McBride.

She then delivered her verdict: “Improving clarity in the choice of verbs that describe the inner workings of the court would resolve that dilemma.”

But the statement from Sotomayor and Gorsuch seems to believe in what McBride calls the “untestable premise.”

“Although we may occasionally disagree on the law, we are warm colleagues and friends,” the statement said.

That’s almost the opposite of “not getting along”.