In September, during a TV discussion of Haitian migrants, National Review editor Rich Lowry said something that sounded very much like the N-word. There was a lot of backpedaling afterward from Lowry and his apologists, framing it as a mispronunciation and denying he would ever deliberately say such a thing. Regardless of intent, though, what Lowry did say is more important than what he meant to say, and all one has to do is listen to the audio.
Strangely, the Media Research Center made no effort to defend Lowry, even though it usually rushes to the defense of any conservative even slightly justly accused. It wasn’t until two weeks later — when the situation could be used to bash someone in the “liberal media” that the situation was first broached, in an Oct. 5 post by Tim Graham:
National Public Radio still has an ombudsman, a “Public Editor,” to respond to public complaints. That’s appropriate, since the public pays for NPR. Often the liberals who dominate the NPR audience complain when they feel NPR is insufficiently “progressive.”
So it was a little shocking when Public Editor Kelly McBride admitted on October 4 that they botched an online story on September 17 attacking National Review editor Rich Lowry as bumbling into the N-word in Megyn Kelly’s podcast as they discussed Haitians in Springfield, Ohio.
NPR media reporter David Folkenflik wanted to boast that NPR ultimately came around to his sense that Lowry’s stumble over the word “immigrant” wasn’t a news story.
[…]The headline [“When the facts are right, but the story is wrong”] is strange. The “facts” were not right in this story. McBride declared “We disagree with NPR on two points. First, the story as originally published wasn’t just unfair. It was inaccurate. The story told readers that Lowry ‘appeared to use’ the racial slur.”
The first headline smeared Lowry: “Conservative editor-in-chief appears to use racial slur to refer to Haitian migrants.” It currently reads: “Conservative editor-in-chief says mispronunciation led to accusations of using slur.”
Graham is being disingenuous here. The audio clearly backs up what the story said, that Lowry “appeared to use” the racial slur, so there was no actual smear. And Graham didn’t explain why Lowry deserved the benefit of the doubt when he would never do the same for a non-conservative in the same situation. He then attacked the reporter of the original story for being nonbinary, raging that they “repeated a hot story among the leftist Twitterati” and that “NPR messed up because they were ‘pouncing’ on a potentially conservative-wrecking narrative.”
Graham concluded by taking a shot at his employer’s better-run competition: “A leftist activist at that group that goes by ‘MMFA’ was the manure spreader that NPR joined. Never let the Left imply they don’t fall into ‘misinformation.'” He didn’t explain why he and his employer waited so long to come to Lowry’s defense — is it because they heard what everyone else did and didn’t want to be seen as defending it until others were able to explain it away?