Topic: NewsBusters
The death of right-wing activist Andrew Breitbart has sent NewsBusters into a frenzy of posthumous defense that ignores the facts.
In a March 1 post, Matthew Sheffield declares that "Breitbart did not falsely represent Shirley Sherrod, former U.S. Department of Agriculture director of Rural Development in Georgia in relaying a video of her discrimination against white applicants for a farm subsidy program in 2010," and that there is no evidence that Bfreitbart "selectively edited her remarks to take her out of context." Sheffield went on to lament that "Breitbart has been blamed for people not reading his work."
In fact, Breitbart did misrepresent Sherrod, and he did post edited clips of a Sherrod speech. The point of Breitbart posting the clips was not to exonerate Sherrod for, in Sheffield's words, "realizing that discrimination was wrong." Breitbart himself said that "The way she's talking about white people ... is conveying a present tense racism in my opinion." In other words, Breitbart's own declared intent was to present Sherrod as holding racist views.
Breitbart later insisted that the real point of the clips was to show that Sherrod's audience expressed "nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement" -- which is also false.
Further, whether Breitbart himself personally did the selective editing of Sherrod's speech is irrelevent; the fact remains that Breitbart posted the edited clips and made no apparent effort to find out the full and proper context of those remarks before posting them.
Hilariously, NewsBusters itself couldn't get that misleading talking point straight. A March 1 post by Matt Hadro stated that "Sherrod was hastily fired before it was discovered that the video of her was doctored and in fact she was speaking out against racism." This statement now has a strike-through line through it, followed by a correction appended that states: "We apologize for Mr. Hadro's error. The video was not doctored as we have previously noted and chastised the media for getting wrong. Our deepest apologies."
Meanwhile, Tom Blumer also stepped on the message in a March 1 post, declaring that "The sentiment uttered in the Breitbart video was racist, and the African-American audience clearly enjoyed it," adding: "I believe that Sherrod made a political calculation that she couldn't get away with what she was thinking about doing to the white farmer, and later decided to put her change of heart into a pretty outfit. Given the rest of her record and that of her husband, it's hard to see how I can be proven wrong."
Blumer went on to further denigrate Sherrod, claiming that "she could have avoided playing the martyr had she wished" and that her husband "was caught on video in a university speech advocating bizarre and clearly separatist ideas and racist whines."
Will NewsBusters offer its "deepest apologies" for Blumer's undermining of the right-wing narrative as well?
