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.
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. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships.
Watch Nina Totenberg’s Goldsmith Career Award fireside chat with Nancy Gibbs starting at minute 39 of the ceremony:
Power Play: How utilities paid a consulting group that infiltrated local news media, attacked clean energy foes and intimidated public officials
A months-long investigation by NPR’s David Folkenflik and Floodlight’s Mario Ariza and Miranda Green uncovered just how far two major power companies went to try to make sure their political foes didn’t dampen their profits or hold them accountable. The reporting, building off of an earlier Floodlight investigation with the Orlando Sentinel, found that Alabama Power and Florida Power & Light paid consulting company Matrix LLC millions over a decade, resulting in undisclosed payments to news outlets that cast the utilities in a positive light and were critical of those who questioned their power. A freelance ABC News producer was also hired to misleadingly represent herself and confront politicians over controversies relevant to Matrix clients. These revelations were followed by leadership changes at both power companies, internal investigations into their work with Matrix, as well as broad calls for transparency and reform. ABC News also severed ties with the freelance journalist. The story offers a rare window into the way power companies and consultants manipulate the democratic system, and the pressure local regulators and lawmakers confront if they seek to hold those corporations accountable, and what happens when local news erodes.
Lost Mothers
The 2018 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School was awarded to Nina Martin of ProPublica and Renee Montagne of NPR for their investigative reporting series Lost Mothers.
The United States has the highest rate of maternal deaths in the developed world; NPR and ProPublica found at least half could be prevented with better care. The series tracked maternal deaths, saved lives by raising public awareness of post-birth complications, and prompted legislation in New Jersey and Texas.
“The mothers of America deserve the best medical care before, during, and after childbirth. We not only owe them that dignity—it is a moral imperative,” said Shorenstein Center Director Nicco Mele. “The state of that care, uncovered by Nina Martin and Renee Montagne’s reporting, deserves close scrutiny. The Goldsmith judges had the challenge of choosing one winner from a number of compelling, important stories this year. ‘Lost Mothers’ is undoubtedly deserving of this special recognition. An underreported story with a devastatingly human angle, their report shines a light on a problem all around us, but rarely told with such power and grace.”
The Red Cross’ Secret Disaster
ProPublica and NPR found that the Red Cross had put public relations ahead of relief services and had been serially misleading about its use of donations. The series showed how the charity had failed to deliver basic aid after several recent major disasters, including Superstorm Sandy, leaving victims in distress, even though it had received a deluge of support from Americans eager to help. After the series ran, the Red Cross had to withdraw its claims about its spending and Iowa Senator Charles Grassley initiated an investigation.
Poisoned Places: Toxic Air, Neglected Communities
“Poisoned Places” exposed the regulatory failures and political forces that cause millions of Americas to continue breathing unsafe air and, for the first time, publicly revealed the EPA’s internal “watch list” of the nation’s most troublesome air polluters. This report triggered immediate enforcement action in two states, a push for openness by the EPA and an avalanche of coverage across the U.S.
Betting Against the American Dream – The Wall Street Money Machine
ProPublica, in collaboration with NPR’s Planet Money and Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life, revealed how the recession of 2008 was significantly deepened by the machinations of Merrill Lynch, Citibank and Magnetar, a little-known hedge fund. As a result, the SEC is investigating deals referenced in the series, and new rules are being implemented from the financial reform bill
Behind the Bail Bond System
In a three-part series examining bail in the United States, National Public Radio’s Laura Sullivan illuminated the powerful bail-bond industry and found that it hurts defendants, their victims and taxpayers. NPR’s reporting has been cited in county commission meetings in Florida and in the Statehouses in Virginia, Florida and North Carolina.
Oruzgan Raid
National Public Radio exposed a misguided raid on a village in Afghanistan, with evidence so convincing that the U.S. military was forced to release all their prisoners.
