Drew Griffin, a special investigations reporter, is under fire for his use of a racial slur on air yesterday.
Griffin, who was reporting about a recent federal case where 3 Mississippi men were charged with a hate crime for running over a black man after brutally beating him, was repeating what one of the suspects was heard saying on his cell phone:
“At the end of this, Deryl Dedmon is laughing with his friends and actually called on a cell phone and, pardon my language but there’s no other way to say this — ‘I just ran over that f—ing nigger,’ that’s what he said. And it was a clear-cut case of pure racial-intent murder that took place there, which is why it was so easy to apply the hate crime legislation in this case,” Griffin said. “There was no question about it, unlike the circumstances involving the case in Florida.”
The case he is referring to is that of 17-year old Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed in February by a neighborhood watch captain who claimed that Martin looked “suspicious” and that he only shot in self-defense. The case has garnered national attention and speculation that the shooter, George Zimmerman, acted out of racial motivation.
Because the use of the word is an extremely sensitive subject, many are outraged that Griffin would use it on air but chose to censor himself with the use of the word f***ing.
Since he was quoting someone else and wasn’t directing the slur at someone, do you think he should have used the word or not? Let us know in the comments section.