page_title: Nina Totenberg
section_title: Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings
hierarchical_section_title: Nina Totenberg / National Public Radio / Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings
caption_attribution_description: English: Nina Totenberg, legal affairs correspondent for NPR, serves as master of ceremonies during a tribute to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 30, 2020.
context_page_description: Nina Totenberg is an American legal affairs correspondent for National Public Radio focusing primarily on the activities and politics of the Supreme Court of the United States. Her reports air regularly on NPR's newsmagazines All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition. From 1992 to 2013, she was also a panelist on the syndicated TV political commentary show Inside Washington.
  Newsweek magazine called her "the creme de la creme" of NPR, and Vanity Fair refers to her as "Queen of the Leaks". She has won many broadcast journalism awards for both her explanatory pieces and her scoops.
  Among her scoops was her groundbreaking report of sexual harassment allegations made against Clarence Thomas by University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill, leading the Senate Judiciary Committee to re-open Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Previously, in 1986, she broke the story that Supreme Court nominee Douglas H. Ginsburg had smoked marijuana, leading Ginsburg to withdraw his name. And in 1977, she reported on secret Supreme Court deliberations relating to the Watergate scandal.
context_section_description: In 1991, a few days before a confirmation vote was scheduled for Republican George H. W. Bush's Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, Totenberg disclosed allegations of sexual harassment lodged against Thomas by University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill. Totenberg's report about Hill's allegations led the Senate Judiciary Committee to re-open Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings to consider Hill's charges.
  Totenberg was criticized by many of Thomas' supporters, including Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee.  The Senate appointed special counsel Peter E. Fleming Jr. to investigate the leak. Totenberg and Newsday's Timothy Phelps were subpoenaed by Fleming, but refused to answer questions about their confidential sources.
  Totenberg was confronted by one Thomas supporter, Republican Senator Alan K. Simpson, during and after the taping of an episode of Nightline.  On the show, Simpson criticized Totenberg, saying "What politicians get tired of is bias in reporters. Let's not pretend your reporting is objective here.  That would be absurd."  After Totenberg defended her reporting and objectivity on the show, Simpson followed her out of the studio and continued to criticize her, even holding open the door of her limousine so she could not leave. "He was in a complete rage. He was out of control," Totenberg said.  Accounts differ on Totenberg's response, but she used what she called "choice epithets" and said: "I think I told him to shut the fuck up."
  Following Totenberg's allegation to The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz that she had been sexually harassed at the National Observer, Al Hunt of The Wall Street Journal brought up the plagiarism incident in a column about media coverage of and responses to the Thomas hearings.  Some observers connected Hunt's rehashing of a then nearly 20-year-old incident to the stance of the Journal, whose conservative editorial pages had "editorially championed" Thomas and had previously criticized Totenberg, but Hunt denied any ideological motivation.
  For the report and NPR's gavel-to-gavel coverage, Totenberg received the George Foster Peabody Award. The same year, she won the George Polk Award for excellence in journalism and the Joan S. Barone Award for excellence in Washington-based national affairs/public policy reporting (the latter also in part for her coverage of the retirement of Justice Thurgood Marshall). The American Library Association presented her with its James Madison Award, given to those who "championed, protected, and promoted public access to government information and the public’s right to know".  She also earned the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for investigative reporting.
caption: Totenberg in 2020
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