[See Author’s Note added at the end of this post.]
In my post the other day titled “Lessons Learned?“, I noted the rather stark difference in the way liberals and conservatives have responded to the opportunity for learning and self-reflection that the Andrew Breitbart/NAACP/Shirley Sherrod video fiasco provides. Although both supporters and opponents of the current administration have criticized Pres. Obama and USDA Director Tom Vilsack for jumping the gun on a video published by Andrew Breitbart that, because of malicious editing, appeared to show Sherrod admitting to favoring black over white clients, Breitbart himself has not only refused to apologize or take responsibility for what he did (in sharp contrast to the way the Obama administration chose to handle their unjust decision to fire Sherrod before knowing the facts), but has been ostentatiously supported — even lionized — by much of the conservative media for using the veneer of journalism to advance his own partisan political agenda.
Now, I want to tell you something. Between the last words of the preceding paragraph and the first words of this one, I watched the two edited clips that Breitbart posted on Big Government on the afternoon of Monday, July 19. And then I watched the complete, full, unedited video. Although I had read all the media coverage of the aftermath of the video posting, I had not actually seen either Breitbart’s truncated, chopped-up version or the unedited original.
Now, having seen both, my own eyes and ears have confirmed for me that (a) Breitbart had to have known the two clips he published were incomplete; and that (b) there is no way to overstate the heinousness of what he did in publishing those clips when he knew there was missing material. Nothing in his description of Sherrod’s speech was accurate except her name and the fact she was speaking at an NAACP event. Everything else was totally fabricated, and the way the clips were edited gave an utterly false impression both of the content and meaning of Sherrod’s speech, and of the much-ballyhooed audience reaction. And so my sense of outrage at the soft-soap treatment given to Breitbart, not just among conservative and right-wing bloggers but also by most of the traditional news organizations whose reports I have read, has only deepened. At best, the media coverage after Breitbart’s deception was made public has been shallow and unserious. At worst, it’s been scandalously unprofessional, unethical, and almost completely lacking in any understanding of, or concern for, the truth. Indeed, in my view it is not going too far to say that in some quarters the media is actually guilty of colluding with Breitbart in his despicable willingness to lie and distort reality in order to ‘prove’ that his preconceived partisan beliefs and prejudices are truthful.
Within minutes of the video’s appearance on Big Government, the port side of blogtopia exploded. This post at Townhall.com is one of the earliest examples:
Sure enough, Andrew Breitbart has made good on his word and produced evidence of pure racism–not from the tea party like the NAACP claims, but from inside the NAACP itself[.]
[…]
Just hours after Breitbart released the video of Sherrod speaking to the NAACP, the Department of Agriculture bureaucrat has resigned.
[…]
Still waiting for a comment from the NAACP…
[…]
The NAACP has sounded off, reportedly “appalled” by Sherrod’s actions, just as they are with “abuses of power against farmers of color and female farmers.” Further, the statement says:The reaction from many in the audience is disturbing. We will be looking into the behavior of NAACP representatives at this local event and take any appropriate action.
Nothing here about any possibility that the video had been edited or that the clip shown might have removed crucial context. Quite the reverse, in fact. Many bloggers were sarcastically pointing to the supposed lack of response from the Obama administration and from the NAACP minutes or only a few hours after the video was published. When Sherrod’s resignation was announced, some bloggers erupted into cheers.
Most of this conservative reaction occurred within the hours the Breitbart video first appeared on his Big Government site on Monday, July 19, and the very early morning hours of July 20. FOX News picked up the story around 9 pm on July 19 (or, at least, that’s when it showed up on Memeorandum). Between then and the late morning of July 20, when Memeorandum picked up the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article — which revealed that the video Breitbart published had been severely edited (from 43 minutes to three minutes); that the white couple Sherrod mentioned in the video had spoken up in her defense, saying she saved their farm from foreclosure; and that Tom Vilsack was reconsidering her forced resignation in light of this new information — this news item dropped off Memeorandum’s top news rung, and essentially disappeared from view.
After the AJC piece appeared on Memeorandum, the story began to move up again. By 5 pm on July 20, it was once more at the top of Meme’s home page, where it stayed for days, albeit ebbing a bit by Saturday, but then gathering steam again. It continued through today, and as I type these words.
If you look back at these snapshots, you don’t have to be a genius to see that the coverage and commentary follows a pattern, beginning with the conservative media leaping — with all four feet and claws extended — on a totally false story put out by a far right blogger with a long and well-earned reputation for shaping the narrative to fit his desired political message, and with no attempt whatsoever to find out if the story was true. The pattern continued with many hours of crickets until one venerable newspaper with its own well-earned and well-deserved reputation for solid, responsible journalism broke the news that Andrew Breitbart made the whole “scandal” up. From there, we got roughly 24 hours of sheepish apologies mixed with indignant censuring of Vilsack and the White House for acting in such haste to destroy a fine public servant’s career by accepting the legitimacy of a smear story that the aforesaid sheeple had been so eagerly and joyously helping to spread just a day earlier. After Pres. Obama and Tom Vilsack personally apologized to Ms. Sherrod, offered her another, better position within the USDA, and urged her sincerely to take it so she could continue to do the good work she had been doing all her adult life, that phase evolved into a lengthy period of ‘explaining,’ justifying, excusing, and defending Breitbart’s actions; positing false “both sides do it” equivalencies; and/or concern trolling about how sad and unfortunate it is that conservatives are being forced into such disgusting and repulsive behavior by the liberals and leftists, because They Did It First. All of this, of course, ignored the fact that those liberals, leftists, progressives, and horrid Democratic partisans were the only ones who actually held themselves accountable for their assumptions and actions in this matter. Which, in my view, was the point. When you see that the other guy realizes he did wrong and is genuinely trying to make amends for that, and you do not wish to do the same even though you are equally at fault, if not even more at fault, you start yelling as loud as you can so maybe no one will notice that contrast.
Now, I (quite naively) thought this particular outbreak of right-wing journalistic malpractice would continue for a while in this phase of conservatives acting as apologists for Breitbart, and would then gradually fade away, until the next outbreak.
I was wrong. We have now moved one step further, from the apologist phase to actual revisionism.
Obviously, the need to cut through the bulls**t is still very real. But my continued efforts in that direction will have to wait for a future post.
Author’s note: One sentence in the third paragraph of this post has been slightly edited. Thank you to Leonidas in Comments, whose eagle eyes can be counted upon to always spot the central point of any news story.
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