Nina Totenberg
Nina Totenberg is NPR's award-winning legal affairs correspondent. Her reports air regularly on NPR's critically acclaimed newsmagazines All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition.
Totenberg's coverage of the Supreme Court and legal affairs has won her widespread recognition. She is often featured in documentaries — most recently RBG — that deal with issues before the court. As Newsweek put it, "The mainstays [of NPR] are Morning Edition and All Things Considered. But the creme de la creme is Nina Totenberg."
In 1991, her ground-breaking report about University of Oklahoma Law Professor Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment by Judge Clarence Thomas led the Senate Judiciary Committee to re-open Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings to consider Hill's charges. NPR received the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for its gavel-to-gavel coverage — anchored by Totenberg — of both the original hearings and the inquiry into Anita Hill's allegations, and for Totenberg's reports and exclusive interview with Hill.
That same coverage earned Totenberg additional awards, including the Long Island University George Polk Award for excellence in journalism; the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for investigative reporting; the Carr Van Anda Award from the Scripps School of Journalism; and the prestigious Joan S. Barone Award for excellence in Washington-based national affairs/public policy reporting, which also acknowledged her coverage of Justice Thurgood Marshall's retirement.
Totenberg was named Broadcaster of the Year and honored with the 1998 Sol Taishoff Award for Excellence in Broadcasting from the National Press Foundation. She is the first radio journalist to receive the award. She is also the recipient of the American Judicature Society's first-ever award honoring a career body of work in the field of journalism and the law. In 1988, Totenberg won the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for her coverage of Supreme Court nominations. The jurors of the award stated, "Ms. Totenberg broke the story of Judge (Douglas) Ginsburg's use of marijuana, raising issues of changing social values and credibility with careful perspective under deadline pressure."
Totenberg has been honored seven times by the American Bar Association for continued excellence in legal reporting and has received more than two dozen honorary degrees. On a lighter note, Esquire magazine twice named her one of the "Women We Love."
A frequent contributor on TV shows, she has also written for major newspapers and periodicals — among them, The New York Times Magazine, The Harvard Law Review, The Christian Science Monitor, and New York Magazine, and others.
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With the Supreme Court's term opening, and the Kavanaugh confirmation drama ongoing, a look into the political and legal stakes of the week ahead.
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Another dramatic day in the battle over Judge Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court unfolded on Friday.
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We review yesterday's historic testimony from Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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In a remarkable moment in American political history, a Supreme Court nominee faces an accuser who alleges a sexual assault occurred when they were in high school.
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The Senate Judiciary Committee will hear testimony from Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, the woman accusing Kavanaugh of sexual assault, this morning.
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It's going to be high drama and high stakes Thursday in the hearings on Capitol Hill, a measure of the credibility of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused him of sexual assault.
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As another Supreme Court nominee faces allegations of sexual misconduct, what can be learned from the handling of the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill controversy? -
Should the FBI investigate Christine Blasey Ford's allegation of sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh from when they were both in high school?
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The accusation may delay Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation vote. The Washington Post named the woman who says Kavanaugh tried to sexually assault her when they were both teenagers.
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President Trump's pick for the high court successfully parried questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Democratic complaints that they had seen just 10 percent of his government record didn't seem to raise much public ire.
