On Tuesday, AP reporter Jesse Washington ran a story on the Phantom ‘N-Word,’ accusing Andrew Breitbart and this site of misleading viewers by running a video of the March 20 protest at Capitol Hill that did not show anyone screaming a racial epithet at the Congressional Black Caucus, as had been widely reported. And, Washington included a new eye-witness to the supposed hate-speech, Rep. Heath Shuler (D, N.C.):
A fourth Democrat, Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina, who is white, backed up his colleagues, telling the Hendersonville (N.C.) Times-News that he heard the slurs.

Yesterday, James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal actually did some reporting and called Rep. Shuler’s office. He got a different story:
But when we phoned Shuler’s office this afternoon, press secretary Julie Fishman told us the local reporter misunderstood. According to Fishman, Shuler’s comments to the Times-News referred to the general tenor of the protests, not to the black congressmen’s specific allegations. Fishman said that Shuler was not walking with Cleaver and did not hear the “N-word.”






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