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skafather84
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22 Jul 2010, 4:48 pm

The latest Andrew-Breitbart-manufactured phony scandal is just one more nail in the coffin of Breitbart's already dismal credibility.

Breitbart was the first to post video falsely suggesting that Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod had discriminated against a white farmer -- allegations that are rapidly unraveling as they churn through the media.

The fact that Breitbart's poorly researched accusations are falling apart should be no surprise to those familiar with his handiwork. He's the one who coordinated and promoted the release of heavily edited videos purporting to show a pattern of illegal activity among ACORN employees -- but multiple investigations found no such pattern, and Breitbart, along with videographers James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, was repeatedly caught in lies and distortions about the videos. Undaunted by his initial failure to catch ACORN breaking the law, Breitbart later announced that "deeply sensitive and highly political" ACORN documents had been discovered in a dumpster and suggested that "obstruction of justice" might have occurred, yet he never offered evidence that the documents were anything other than trash.

Breitbart again hosted O'Keefe's fact-fuzzy work in June, posting a lackluster effort to "expose" Census workers allegedly being encouraged to falsify their time sheets. Unsurprisingly, even this less-than-shocking video turned out to be edited to exclude footage that inconveniently showed a Census leader telling workers that they must carefully and accurately report on their time sheets the number of miles they drive.

The litany continues: Breitbart also latched on to blogger Jim Hoft's blatantly false and homophobic attacks on Department of Education staffer Kevin Jennings, cross-posting Hoft's tirades on BigGovernment.com. He spearheaded wild distortions of the Kenneth Gladney case, accusing the White House of "directing" town hall violence. Breitbart's websites forwarded the unfounded claim that the National Endowment for the Arts broke the law, and the sites also published an "exclusive" purporting to expose a White House visit by ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis, which turned out to be false.

In September 2009, Breitbart embedded a "shocking" video, which he claimed showed the Gamaliel Foundation praying to President Obama with phrases like "Deliver us Obama" and "Hear our cry Obama." According to the organization, the video actually shows organizers saying "Deliver us, oh God" and "Hear our cry, oh God." When Christmas rolled around, Breitbart invented an absurd scandal in three ornaments on the White House Christmas tree.

So it's not surprising that Breitbart -- who has said that his strategy is to deprive people of information they would need to evaluate his allegations -- has peddled utterly false information once again.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201007210004


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23 Jul 2010, 1:40 am

The whole situation about that is just incredibly stupid.

An edited, out of context video clip made by a conservative nutjob gets peddled around Fox News and the Obama administration ups and fires the woman before even getting her side of things because Glen Beck might talk about her... Just utterly f*****g stupid. :roll:

I know they're talking about re-hiring her, but I wouldn't bother going back if I was her.
Can't anyone sue for libel these days?


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23 Jul 2010, 1:51 am

The only thing more pathetic than Breibart's editied video was the Obama administration's response to it. They really need to grow a pair.

I suspect Breibart will have a long career due to Fox News. Maybe he'll even get offered his own show.



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23 Jul 2010, 2:46 am

White House getting more and more paranoid it seems.

All the accusations of racism right now are bs. It's just noise to distract us from the real issues. Healthcare? Racism. Illegal Immigration? Racism. BP Oil Spill? Racism. Everything racism. The only people obsessed with race are the media.

Can't really blame Fox News either, they reported it like everyone else.

Here's an interesting article on Mediaite (which is ran by Dan Abrams, who use to be on MSNBC)

http://www.mediaite.com/online/examinin ... to-resign/

The comments are pretty funny since they're pissed they're "defending" FNC.



skafather84
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23 Jul 2010, 9:46 am

Jacoby wrote:
Can't really blame Fox News either, they reported it like everyone else.


ORLY?

I think you can.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fox News' response to Sherrod fallout: Ignore, whitewash, mislead
July 21, 2010 5:44 pm ET — 56 Comments

Fox News spent much of July 19 and 20 ginning up controversy about the false claim that Shirley Sherrod made racist remarks at a NAACP meeting earlier this year. As the claim unraveled, Fox media personalities disappeared their role in the story, continued to smear her as "descriminat[ory]" in the face of contradictory evidence, and boldly suggested the network did not contribute to the controversy.
Fox's initial reaction: "Racist" Sharrod "must resign"

O'Reilly: "Sherrod must resign," her remarks are "unacceptable." On the July 19 edition of his show, Bill O'Reilly played the edited portion of the tape and said "that is simply unacceptable. And Ms. Sherrod must resign immediately." He also falsely claimed that "the full transcript of Ms. Sherrod's remarks is posted on BigGovernment.com."

Hannity called Sherrod's remarks "[j]ust the latest in a series of racial incitents," called for the NAACP to be "held to account" to repudiate Sherrod. On the July 19 edition of his Fox News show, Sean Hannity asserted that Sherrod's comments were "[j]ust the latest in a series of racial incidents," and stated that "So it's interesting that it took the new media to expose this." He also asked Newt Gingrigh if, "in light of the NAACP accusing the Tea Party of being a racist movement last week," he thought "the NAACP should be held to account for the very standard they were demanding from the Tea Party."

Perino: "This video adds fuel to a growing controversy after the NAACP" asked the tea party to denounce racists. On the July 19 edition of On the Record, Dana Perino suggested Sherrod's remarks were racist, saying that "The video adds fuel to a growing controversy after the NAACP approved a resolution condemning the tea party movement for not denouncing racist members."

Doocy: Sherrod "sure sounded racist," is "[e]xhibit A" of "what racism looks like." On the July 19 edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy said that Sherrod made "a speech to the NAACP that sure sounded racist." Later, after guest-host Ailysn Camerota asserted that Sherrod's remarks are "outrageous and perhaps everybody needs a refresher course on what racism looks like," Doocy responded that Sherrod's comments are "Exhibit A."

Beck plays "videotape of USDA administration official discriminating against white farmers." On the July 20 edition of his radio show, Beck says that they "have videotape of a USDA administration official discriminating against white farmers." He then asks, "Have we suddenly transported into 1956 except it's the other way around? ... Does anybody else have a sense that there are some that just want revenge? Doesn't it feel that way?" After playing the audio of the tape, Beck says, "You tell me what part of the gospel is teaching that."
After the tide turned: Fox "didn't even do" the Sherrod story

Bret Baier absurdly claims Fox News "didn't even do" the Sherrod story. On the July 20 edition of Special Report, Bret Baier claimed "Fox News didn't even do the story, we didn't do it on Special Report, we posted it online."

Beck on Fox: "Based on the facts that we have right now, this is something that I wouldn't air and demand a resignation on." On the July 20 edition of this Fox News show, Beck stated: "I don't think Shirley should have been fired -- or, I'm sorry, forced to resign. Based on the facts that we have right now, this is something that I wouldn't air and demand a resignation on." He added that he "wouldn't air" the tape because "context matters."

Doocy on Sherrod: "What was the big hurry for them to condemn her in the first place?" On the July 21 edition of Fox & Friends, Dana Perino and Steve Doocy falsely asserted that, in Perino's words, "before the news even broke, she had resigned." Perino then stated that "everyone's nerves are raw and exposed on these racial questions, and I think we should all look before we leap." Doocy then stated: "What was the big hurry for them to condemn her in the first place? I don't get it, because the totality of what she said was out there."

Rosen: "Did the White House essentially railroad an innocent woman in this?" On the July 20 edition of Fox News' Happening Now, James Rosen reported that the additional context from Sherrod's speech "appeared to corroborate" her statement that she was telling the story of "how she came to see beyond race," and then asked: "Did the White House essentially railroad an innocent woman in this because they are on edge themselves because of the Van Jones controversy, the Black Panthers Party case, and other controversies?
The holdouts: Sherrod was still "discriminating" against the farmer

Hannity doubles down, says Sherrod "still admits discriminating," suggested he's unfairly "getting blamed." On the July 20 edition of his show Hannity asserted that "She still admits that she was discriminating against this white farmer." He added that "I'm getting blamed and Fox News is getting blamed, but it's the White House that made the decision before we ever aired the tape."

O'Reilly's ignores context, still claims "What [Sherrod] said is ridiculous." On the July 20 edition of his show, O'Reilly was still claiming that "What [Sherrod] said is ridiculous," and stated the real story is "the news blackout" on the Sherrod story, and how "the establishment press tilts left and is reluctant to do damage to a very liberal president."


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Jacoby
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23 Jul 2010, 12:29 pm

Well if you take Media Matters seriously. :roll: They have just as much of an agenda as Andrew Breitbart.



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24 Jul 2010, 4:16 pm

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k6tTyRiXME[/youtube]

From 29 September 2009.
Breitbart should have been finished after that.



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24 Jul 2010, 8:27 pm

Apple_in_my_Eye wrote:
The only thing more pathetic than Breibart's editied video was the Obama administration's response to it. They really need to grow a pair.

I suspect Breibart will have a long career due to Fox News. Maybe he'll even get offered his own show.

QFT



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24 Jul 2010, 11:21 pm

Rahm Emanuel, veteran of the Israeli army, sets the tone and he can be quite fierce when he wants to. It was his idea to water down the stimulus, it was his idea to fire Sherrod. and he said that the people at MoveOn were "f*****g ret*ds" - when it's the Left he bares his fangs as fiercely as anyone.



skafather84
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25 Jul 2010, 2:37 am

xenon13 wrote:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k6tTyRiXME[/youtube]

From 29 September 2009.
Breitbart should have been finished after that.


White people should have been finished after that, too. How stupid do you have to be to believe the suggestion of "hear us obama" when they're clearly saying "hear us, oh god."

More racism.


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25 Jul 2010, 8:15 am

You can see the video of the speaker in question here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_xCeItxbQY

Since the NAACP likes to throw around accusations of "racism", they should hardly be surprised that this meaningless boo-word has come and bitten one of their own acquaintances on the backside.

This seems to be one of the functions of the "right-wing media": while the "left-wing media" loves to throw accusations of "racism" at whites, the "right-wing media" occasionally throws accusations of "racism" at non-whites too.

What those who whine about the "right-wing media" don't seem to appreciate is that the "right-wing media" is usually operating under the same liberal assumptions as the "left-wing media", and that there is an alternative point of view: the view that what is pathologised as "racism" (ie, preference for one's own race) is simply normal and natural.
Still, some sort of balance is better than none I suppose.



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25 Jul 2010, 8:20 am

That goddam right-wing media! The liberal media would never stoop so low!

Oh, erm...

Quote:
Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright
By Jonathan Strong - The Daily Caller


http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/20/docum ... ah-wright/

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.

The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”

Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”

Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian, also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: “Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”

“Richard Kim got this right above: ‘a horrible glimpse of general election press strategy.’ He’s dead on,” Tomasky continued. “We need to throw chairs now, try as hard as we can to get the call next time. Otherwise the questions in October will be exactly like this. This is just a disease.”...

Thomas Schaller, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun as well as a political science professor, upped the ante from there. In a post with the subject header, “why don’t we use the power of this list to do something about the debate?” Schaller proposed coordinating a “smart statement expressing disgust” at the questions Gibson and Stephanopoulos had posed to Obama.

“It would create quite a stir, I bet, and be a warning against future behavior of the sort,” Schaller wrote....

The members began collaborating on their open letter. Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones rejected an early draft, saying, “I’d say too short. In my opinion, it doesn’t go far enough in highlighting the inanity of some of [Gibson's] and [Stephanopoulos’s] questions. And it doesn’t point out their factual inaccuracies …Our friends at Media Matters probably have tons of experience with this sort of thing, if we want their input.” [I bet they do!]

Jared Bernstein, who would go on to be Vice President Joe Biden’s top economist when Obama took office, helped, too. The letter should be “Short, punchy and solely focused on vapidity of gotcha,” Bernstein wrote.

In the midst of this collaborative enterprise, Holly Yeager, now of the Columbia Journalism Review, dropped into the conversation to say “be sure to read” a column in that day’s Washington Post that attacked the debate.

Columnist Joe Conason weighed in with suggestions. So did Slate contributor David Greenberg, and David Roberts of the website Grist. Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, helped too.

Journolist members signed the statement and released it April 18, calling the debate “a revolting descent into tabloid journalism and a gross disservice to Americans concerned about the great issues facing the nation and the world.”

The letter caused a brief splash and won the attention of the New York Times. But only a week later, Obama – and the journalists who were helping him – were on the defensive once again.

Jeremiah Wright was back in the news after making a series of media appearances. At the National Press Club, Wright claimed Obama had only repudiated his beliefs for “political reasons.” Wright also reiterated his charge that the U.S. federal government had created AIDS as a means of committing genocide against African Americans.

It was another crisis, and members of Journolist again rose to help Obama.

Chris Hayes of the Nation posted on April 29, 2008, urging his colleagues to ignore Wright. Hayes directed his message to “particularly those in the ostensible mainstream media” who were members of the list. [Emphasis mine.]

The Wright controversy, Hayes argued, was not about Wright at all. Instead, “It has everything to do with the attempts of the right to maintain control of the country.”

Hayes castigated his fellow liberals for criticizing Wright. “All this hand wringing about just how awful and odious Rev. Wright remarks are just keeps the hustle going.”...

Hayes urged his colleagues – especially the straight news reporters who were charged with covering the campaign in a neutral way – to bury the Wright scandal. “I’m not saying we should all rush en masse to defend Wright. If you don’t think he’s worthy of defense, don’t defend him! What I’m saying is that there is no earthly reason to use our various platforms to discuss what about Wright we find objectionable,” Hayes said.

...“Part of me doesn’t like this s**t either,” agreed Spencer Ackerman, then of the Washington Independent. “But what I like less is being governed by racists and warmongers and criminals.” Ackerman went on:

I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.

And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.


Ackerman did allow there were some Republicans who weren’t racists. “We’ll know who doesn’t deserve this treatment — Ross Douthat, for instance — but the others need to get it.”

He also said he had begun to implement his plan. “I previewed it a bit on my blog last week after Commentary wildly distorted a comment Joe Cirincione made to make him appear like (what else) an antisemite. So I said: why is it that so many on the right have such a problem with the first viable prospective African-American president?”

Several members of the list disagreed with Ackerman – but only on strategic grounds.

... Kevin Drum, then of Washington Monthly, also disagreed with Ackerman’s strategy. “I think it’s worth keeping in mind that Obama is trying (or says he’s trying) to run a campaign that avoids precisely the kind of thing Spencer is talking about, and turning this into a gutter brawl would probably hurt the Obama brand pretty strongly. After all, why vote for him if it turns out he’s not going change the way politics works?”

But it was Ackerman who had the last word. “Kevin, I’m not saying OBAMA should do this. I’m saying WE should do this.”



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25 Jul 2010, 8:23 am

skafather84 wrote:

White people should have been finished after that, too.


What the hell does this mean?
Perhaps this is the sort of stuff I should expect from proud "anti-racists".



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25 Jul 2010, 5:16 pm

I hope Shirley Sherrod sues Breitbart's ass off. Say what you will about the current administration's lack of testicular fortitude when it comes to accusations of reverse racism from the right, it was this tea bagging flimflam man who invented the lie, then got the ball rolling.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer



skafather84
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25 Jul 2010, 5:56 pm

codarac wrote:
skafather84 wrote:

White people should have been finished after that, too.


What the hell does this mean?
Perhaps this is the sort of stuff I should expect from proud "anti-racists".



To believe such idiocy implies a want to believe it beforehand. This preconditioned want can only be filled under a racist preconception that a black crowd is so superstitious that they'd pray to Obama and that they'd blindly support Obama because they're black.

You could never pin that on a white crowd. If you made the same video implying that the whites were saying "save us, obama" instead of "save us, oh god", the white majority wouldn't think twice about it and would dismiss it as garbage. It's only put forward because it's racist and so are most white people.


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25 Jul 2010, 6:44 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:
I hope Shirley Sherrod sues Breitbart's ass off. Say what you will about the current administration's lack of testicular fortitude when it comes to accusations of reverse racism from the right, it was this tea bagging flimflam man who invented the lie, then got the ball rolling.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer


How about she sues the people who actually fired her?