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. 

NPR is one of the only news orgs in the nation with a public editor or ombudsman.

Her latest:

When the facts are right, but the story is wrong : NPR Public Editor https://t.co/73tPiaMcAE

— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) October 3, 2024

The headline 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."

Hearing the clip of Lowry speaking, it’s easy to see why people did a double-take. But we replayed it many times and heard what others eventually concluded: that Lowry bungled “migrants” and “immigrants” together. In fact, NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik tweeted out exactly that conclusion two and half hours before the NPR story was published, although his colleague who wrote the story did not see it.

We wondered: Why run a story at all?

NPR Vice President and Executive Editor Eva Rodriguez said C Mandler, the reporter who wrote the NPR story, pitched it after noticing a swirl of discussion about it on social media. “This was a moment that was garnering intense audience focus on social media,” Rodriguez told us in an email. “The purpose of this story was to respond to that audience interest with the relevant facts and context for them to better understand it.”

C Mandler didn't put it in context. "C" identifies as non-binary, and was for two years a social-media operative at the leftist lobby GLAAD. She ("They") repeated a hot story among the leftist Twitterati. NPR messed up because they were "pouncing" on a potentially conservative-wrecking narrative. Lowry suffered harm: two speeches canceled on campus, at Indiana State and the University of Wisconsin. 

McBride continued:

Folkenflik told us he didn’t think there was a story there.

“I think people should be dinged for and reported on what they actually do,” Folkenflik said, adding that he decided to acknowledge the incident on social media because it was in the media space and gained a fair amount of attention.

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."