Dinners With Ruth

As an NPR journalist with a decades-long career, Nina Totenberg is a well-known figure in the American press. The NPR audience follows her stories on NPR radio programs such as All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition. Having covered legal affairs, and in particular Supreme Court cases, since the 1970s, Totenberg draws on her wealth of legal knowledge, as well as personal observations and anecdotes, in Dinners with Ruth. Many of these anecdotes center around her close friendships with Supreme Court Justices, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, William Brennan, and Lewis F. Powell, Jr. While these close relationships make for interesting stories, they also raise the question of bias in Totenberg’s reporting, since it is unusual, and generally considered unprofessional, for journalists to be close friends with those who they are tasked with reporting on.

In her book, Totenberg frequently downplays the potentially problematic nature of her friendships with the Supreme Court Justices by insisting that they never broke the Court’s confidentiality about upcoming decisions, thus keeping their professional lives separate from their private socializing with Totenberg. The author explains that she and her husband never encouraged Justices to violate that confidentiality, writing, “We were always very firm on ground rules with guests; nothing about current cases before the Court” (184). She claims that her close friendship with Ginsburg was based on their mutual interests outside of work, and that they maintained boundaries between their personal and professional lives. She explains, “Through everything we could—and did—keep our boundaries. The irony is that while work introduced us, and work has defined each of us, in her own way, our friendship was never about work” (X).

However, Totenberg admits in her book that her friendship with Ginsburg sometimes influenced her work as a journalist. She recalls how, as a federal election date was looming, she wrote an opinion piece urging the government to move forward with Ginsburg’s nomination for the Supreme Court. She writes:

I stepped outside my reporter zone and wrote an op-ed for a legal publication. I called for Ruth’s nomination to be moved and voted on in the Senate, arguing that she was an extraordinary person who had done so much for women’s rights. I’m sure my op-ed had no impact, but I felt better writing it, even if in hindsight it was not a professional choice I should have made or would ever make again (71).

Moreover, while Totenberg fondly relays memories about enjoying dinners, parties, and theater with Ginsburg, she also shares stories about interviewing her for live, public events. These interviews, which centered around Ginsburg’s life and career, undermine the boundaries that Totenberg claims she and Ginsburg upheld to separate their personal and professional lives.

The issue of Totenberg’s objectivity and professionalism is raised by Politico writer Michael Schaffer in his 2022 article “Nina Totenberg Had a Beautiful Friendship with RBG. Her Book About It Is an Embarrassment.” In his article, Schaffer questions Totenberg’s decision to try to avoid learning the details of Ginsburg’s declining health while frequently visiting her and caring for her as a friend in the last months of her life. Schaffer suggests that it was Totenberg’s duty as a reporter to learn and share everything she could about Ginsburg’s health, as well as the inner workings of the Supreme Court’s surprising recent decision on abortion rights. While Totenberg argues that journalists should know the people they are reporting on, Schaffer argues that this does not include building friendships that create “emotional blind spots” (Schaffer, Michael. “Nina Totenberg Had a Beautiful Friendship with RBG. Her Book About it Is an Embarrassment.” Politico, 23 Sept. 2022). He writes, “But ‘know’ is a complicated concept, one that friendship can deepen but also occlude” (Schaffer).

Totenberg’s approach to her work has also been critiqued by writer Kelly McBride, who believes: “This coziness with sources is perplexing to other professional journalists and most importantly, to many NPR listeners and readers” (McBride, Kelly. “Nina Totenberg Is the Exception, Not the Rule, and NPR Leaders Should Say So.” Texas Public Radio, 2 Nov. 2022). McBride argues that Totenberg’s revelations in her book may erode trust between the journalist and her listeners, as well as people’s faith in the press in general. As such, she argues that Totenberg should be called a “legal commentator,” rather than a “correspondent” to reflect her unique and personal connection to the Court.