Nina Totenberg (born January 14, 1944) is an American Legal Affairs correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR) focusing primarily on the activities and politics of the United States Supreme Court. Her reports are broadcast regularly on NPR's newsmagazines All Things Considered, Morning Edition , and Weekend Edition . From 1992 to 2013, he was also a panelist on the syndicated TV political commentary show Inside Washington.
Newsweek magazine calls it "creme de la creme" from NPR, and Vanity Fair refers to her as "Queen of Leaks". He has won numerous broadcast journal awards for his explanatory pieces and spoons.
Among the spoons was a report of sexual harassment he had made against Clarence Thomas by Oklahoma University law professor Anita Hill, who headed the Senate Judiciary Committee to reopen the Supreme Court's confirmation hearing. Earlier, in 1986, he broke the story that Supreme Court nominee Douglas H. Ginsburg had sucked marijuana, leading Ginsburg to uproot his name. And in 1977, he reported on secret considerations of the Supreme Court relating to the Watergate scandal.
Video Nina Totenberg
Personal and family life
Nina Totenberg was born in New York, the eldest daughter of violinist Roman Totenberg, born in Poland, and Melanie (Shroder) Totenberg, who is a real estate broker. He is the widow of US Senator Floyd K. Haskell (D-Colorado), whom he married in 1979. He remarried in 2000 with H. David Reines, a trauma surgeon and Vice Chairman of Surgery at Inova Fairfax Hospital. On their honeymoon, she nursed him for a severe injury after he was hit by a ship's propeller while swimming. In March 2010, Totenberg's sister Amy Totenberg was nominated by President Barack Obama to the US District Court in Atlanta. Amy Totenberg confirmed next year. Another sister, Jill Totenberg, is an entrepreneur married to Brian Foreman. On August 6, 2015, Ames Stradivarius, who had been stolen from their father 35 years earlier, was returned to three sisters.
Maps Nina Totenberg
Initial career
Totenberg enrolled at Boston University in 1962, majoring in journalism, but dropped out less than three years later because, in his own words, he "did not do brilliantly." Soon after dropping out of college, Totenberg began his journalism career at Boston Record American, where he worked at the Women's Page and learned news journalism skills by volunteering in the news department. She moved to Peabody Times in Massachusetts and Roll Call in Washington, D.C.
At National Observer , Totenberg began covering legal issues. In 1971 he broke the story about the list of candidates for secret President Richard Nixon was considering for the Supreme Court. All candidates were subsequently rejected as unqualified by the American Bar Association and none were nominated.
After Totenberg wrote the Observer director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover, the latter wrote a long letter to the newspaper editor demanding he be fired. Instead, the editor prints a letter in Observer along with Hoover's complaint about the article.
He was fired from the paper for plagiarism in 1972 about the profile he wrote about the soon-to-be-published Speaker, Tip O'Neill which included, without attribution, a quote from a congressman previously appearing at The Washington Post Totenberg said the dismissal was also linked to his rejection of an editor's sexual offer. Many of Totenberg's colleagues defended him, noting that this was a case of the use of a previously reported citation, a common journalistic practice of the 1970s. In 1995, Totenberg told Columbia Journalism Review: "I have a strong feeling that a young reporter is entitled to one mistake and makes the holy bejeezus afraid of him never to do it again."
He next worked for New York-based news magazine New Times . In that publication, he wrote a famous article called "The Ten Most Congressmen," which prompted the senator at the top of the list, William L. Scott, to hold a press conference to deny that he was "the stupidest member of Congress.". "
National Public Radio
In 1975, Nina Totenberg was hired by Bob Zelnick to work on National Public Radio and has been there ever since.
Watergate appeal
In 1977, Totenberg broke the story of the Supreme Court's appeal from three men who had been convicted in the Watergate scandal: H.R. Haldeman, John N. Mitchell, and John D. Ehrlichman. Totenberg revealed the results of 5-3 of their secret votes against the review of the case and that the three disagreeable were appointed President Richard Nixon. Nixon resigned three years earlier, behind Watergate. Totenberg also revealed that Supreme Court judge appointed by Nixon Warren Burger delayed announcing the result of the vote, hoping to influence other judges. His reporting of private Supreme Court judgments was a new development in the Supreme Court reporting and led to speculation about who in the Court gave him information.
William Rehnquist Justice nominee
In 1986, Totenberg broke the story that William H. Rehnquist, nominated for US Justice Chief by Ronald Reagan, had written a memo in 1970 against the Equal Rights Amendment, in which he said that the amendment would "speed up the dissolution of the family" and it would "completely abolished all legal differences between men and women." The memo was written when Rehnquist was the head of the Justice Department Legal Counsel in Nixon Administration.
Supreme Court nomination Douglas Ginsburg
Totenberg broke the story that Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, who had been nominated to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan, had sucked marijuana "on several occasions" during his student days in the 1960s and when assistant professor at Harvard Law School in the 1970s , something that did not show up in the Ginsburg FBI background check. The disclosure caused Ginsburg to withdraw its name from consideration. Totenberg was awarded the Silver Baton Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University of 1988 for outstanding journalism broadcasting for his story.
Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill Hearings
In 1991, a few days before the confirmation vote was scheduled for Supreme Court nominee George H. W. Bush, Clarence Thomas, Totenberg revealed allegations of sexual harassment of Thomas by Oklahoma University law professor Anita Hill. Totenberg's report on Hill's allegations leads the Senate Judiciary Committee to reopen Court's Supreme Court confirmation hearing to consider Hill's allegations.
Totenberg was criticized by many of Thomas's supporters, including the Republican senator on the Judiciary Committee. The Senate appoints special adviser Peter E. Fleming Jr. to investigate the leak. Totenberg and Timothy Phelps's "Newsday ' were called by Fleming, but refused to answer questions about their secret source.
Totenberg was confronted by one supporter of Thomas, Republican Senator Alan K. Simpson, during and after the recording of the Nightline episode. On the show, Simpson criticized Totenberg, saying "What a tired politician is bias in a journalist.Let's not pretend your reporting is objective here. That would be absurd." After Totenberg defended his reporting and objectivity on the show, Simpson followed him out of the studio and continued to criticize him, even opening his limousine door so he could not leave. "He's really angry, he's out of control," said Totenberg. The account differs from Totenberg's answer, but he uses what he calls "choice nickname" and says: "I thought I told him to shut up."
Following Totenberg's allegations to The Washington Post, Howard Kurtz that he had been sexually abused at the National Observer, Al Hunt of The Wall Street Journal spawned an incident plagiarism in a column about media coverage and responses to the Thomas hearing. Some observers attribute Hunt's hunt to an incident nearly twenty years ago with the founding of the Journal, whose conservative editorial page had been "editorialally championed" by Thomas and had previously criticized Totenberg, but Hunt denied any ideology. motivation.
For NPR's report of gavel-to-gavel coverage, Totenberg received the George Foster Peabody Award. That same year, he won the George Polk Award for excellence in journalism and Joan S. Barone Award for excellence in Washington's national/reporting public policy (the latter partly for his coverage of Justice Thurgood Marshall's retirement). The American Library Association presents it with the James Madison Award, awarded to those "fighting for, protecting, and promoting public access to government information and the public's right to know". He also received the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for investigative reporting.
Differences and compliments
In addition to the awards mentioned above, and among other awards, Totenberg has been honored seven times by the American Bar Association for excellence in legal reporting and won the first Toni House award presented by the American Judicature Society for a career career agency, and was the first radio journalist who is honored by the National Press Foundation as the Broadcaster of the Year. He has written articles for the Harvard Law Review (including tributes for Judges William J. Brennan, Jr. and Lewis Powell when they retired); New York Times Magazine , New York ; Christian Science Monitor ; and many other public and legal circulation publications. She also contributed to the online exhibition of Jewish Women's Archives of Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution in connection with her report on Anita Hill's allegations against Clarence Thomas. In the 1990s, Totenberg was a regular contributor to ABC Nightline .
Totenberg played part of the anchor selection in the movie The Distinguished Gentleman (1992), and also appeared briefly as he did in the Kevin Kline movie Dave (1993). The image has also been used for items manufactured for NPR called "The Nina Totin 'Bag" ---- a name game and a stereotypical tote bag offered as a thank-you gift to be donated to the public broadcast drive.
Controversy and criticism
Totenberg has made friends with a number of politicians and lawyers in national politics, and his personal connections with these people sometimes result in discussion. The accusation that Totenberg received his post in an unwanted manner that was prevalent early in his career, a fact Bill Kovach, editor of The New York Times, is associated with sexism because he is one of the few women working in the majority male environment. Totenberg was criticized by some commentators for hugging his friend Lani Guinier during a press conference announcing Guinier's nomination by Bill Clinton for the position of Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. Media critic Howard Kurtz reported that while Totenberg said he did not intend to give special treatment to Guinier in his report, he embraced him because he had not seen it in some time. Then in 2000, some journalists expressed concern that judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg who inaugurated Totenberg's marriage could be seen as a conflict of interest. Totenberg replied that he did not consider it a conflict of interest because his friendship with the jurist was established long before Ginsburg was nominated to the Supreme Court. He has made the same observations about his friendship with Judge Antonin Scalia.
The Wall Street Journal editorialist Paul Gigot wrote in 1991 that Totenberg pointed to the alignments in his report. Washington Post reporter Thomas Edsall said in 1995 that he was cited as an example of liberal bias in public broadcasting because he reported two controversial Supreme Court nominations.
In 1995, responding to conservative Senator Jesse Helms (RN.C.), who characterized AIDS as "a disease transmitted by people who deliberately engaged in unnatural acts" in his attempt to cut government spending against him, Totenberg said: "I think he has to worry about what's going on in God's good mind, because if there's retributive justice, he'll get AIDS from a transfusion or one of his grandchildren." At the same event, conservative columns Charles Krauthammer and Tony Snow also criticized Helms, with Krauthammer calling Helms's statement "fanatical and cruel" and Snow accusing him of "hypocrisy". Totenberg later expressed regret over his choice of words, saying: "That is a stupid statement, I will pay for the rest of my life." After his October 2010 shoot from NPR for comments he made at FoxNews, Juan Williams said NPR's failure to discipline him for this statement is an example of NPR's double standard, a charge echoed by Fox News and conservative experts.
Bibliography
- Totenberg, Nina (1999). "In Memoriam: Lewis F. Powell, Jr." Harvard Law Review . 112 (3): 602-606.
- Totenberg, Nina (1994). "Harry A. Blackmun: A Careful Conscience". University of America Legal Review . 43 : 745.
- Totenberg, Nina (1990). "A Tribute to Justice William J. Brennan, Jr." Harvard Law Review . 104 (1): 33-39.
References
External links
- Nina Totenberg: Queen of Leaks
- Appearance in C-SPAN
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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