ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: NPR ‘Founding Mother’ Unloads on Public Editor Over SCOTUS Story: ‘She’s Not Clarifying Anything!’

A spokesperson for NPR told The Daily Beast late Thursday that “we stand behind Nina Totenberg’s reporting.” The NPR offical added: “The public editor is independent and does not speak for NPR.”

McBride, for her part, told the Daily Beast on Thursday night that she stood by her recommendation, and that she does “think NPR should clarify the language in the story.”

But in her own telephone conversation with the Beast, Totenberg — a towering presence at NPR who has been there since 1975 — responded to McBride, the justices, and general criticism of her story.

“A non-denial denial from two of them doesn’t work,” Totenberg said, referring to the statement from Sotomayor and Gorsuch. As to Roberts, she said, “the other just refuses to accept the fact that I did not say that he requested that people do anything, but in some form did.”

“I have got nothing to say, except that I am sticking by my reporting,” Totenberg said while eating dinner. “I think it is absolutely valid.”

As Ed Morrissey wrote on yesterday:

It sounds suspiciously like NPR and Totenberg needed material for a narrative more than an accurate look at the inner workings of the court, especially as it chews on highly controversial topics like Roe v Wade and vaccine/test mandates.

And this last bit from [Robert Barnes of the Washington Post] more or less seals Totenberg’s fate on this report:

On the bench Wednesday, all of the justices again were masked, although a few took their face coverings off for brief periods. Sotomayor again participated remotely.

D’oh! So much for the NPR narrative.

Totenberg sounds like she’s entered into Dan Rather’s ”If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I’d like to break that story” territory.