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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In a twist, one case before the U.S. Supreme Court this term involves Andy Warhol and 1981 photo of the musician Prince.
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When the FBI recovered virtuoso violinist Roman Totenberg's stolen Stradivarius after his death, his daughters wanted the instrument to be played everywhere. Ensuring that was not so simple. -
Songs about the life and career of the Supreme Court justice, written in secret by her daughter-in-law, now make their debut on a very personal album called Notorious RBG in Song.
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Nina Totenberg speaks with the new musical director of The National Symphony Orchestra, as the ensemble gears up to mark the centennial of Leonard Bernstein.
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Mira Wang, protege of the late virtuoso violinist Roman Totenberg, this week debuted his Ames Stradivarius, stolen 37 years ago and reclaimed in 2015. "It's like meeting a new stranger," she says.
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John F. Kennedy helped boost American interest in the arts when he asked poet laureate Robert Frost to speak at his inauguration 50 years ago this month — and soon after asked cellist Pablo Casals to play the White House. Now, the Kennedy Center honors that legacy with a star-studded arts festival.
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A long-awaited biography examines the life of Justice William J. Brennan Jr. and his influence during 34 years on the Supreme Court. Stephen Wermiel's interviews with Brennan during his lifetime reveal a man who defies the stereotype of the liberal justice trying to impose personal views on the law.
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Torture Team, a book by lawyer and author Philippe Sands, pulls together the results of interviews with the people in the United States government who decided to use harsh tactics in detainee interrogations.
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NPR's Scott Simon chats with former Bozo clown Joey D'Auria, author of My Favorite Comedy Sketches. And NPR's Nina Totenberg pelts Simon with a shaving-cream pie.
