In a court of law, witnesses are sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. To knowingly lie under oath is a crime called perjury. If Andrew Breitbart were in a court of law, he could be convicted of perjury if he knowingly misrepresented the facts of the Shirley Sherrod tape. Obviously, his acts did not occur in a court room nor was he under oath. Yet, we rely on journalists to tell the truth or at least to be accurate in their reporting. This past week of listening to the Sherrod tape, reading and seeing the incident unfold was like sheer madness. Did Andrew Breitbart intentionally and knowingly mislead the public?
Andrew Breitbart, according to E-mails released by the Huffington Post last week sought out information to attack the NAACP for its stance on the Tea Party. He apparently revels in antagonistic journalism. This led him to the now infamous Sherrod misleading words on tape at an NAACP event in Georgia. We now know the words left out of the tape reflect Ms. Sherrod’s true intention to help and not hinder the white farmer save his farm. Breitbart, a self proclaimed antagonist, used the brief blurp of the Sherrod NAACP tape as an attack on the NAACP for its assault on the Tea Party. The intended agenda was to show the NAACP is racist. Accepting the bait, the NAACP denounced Shirley Sherrod as a racist. It later retracted its statement. The White House also accepted the story as true and became embroiled in the controversy. The White House also apologized. The US Department of Agriculture fired and then offered her a job again. It was like playing follow the leader. The leader was Breitbart.
Breitbart claims it was not his intention to get Sherrod fired. Yet, if you fire a gun into a crowd of people to shoot someone, others are bound to be hurt in the process. This was not the first time that Breitbart fired into the crowd. He attempted to bring down ACORN by another misleading tape showing ACORN members taking applications from an alleged prostitute and pimp and allegedly giving illegal advice. Later, ACORN was cleared by prosecutors. The ACORN tape, like the Sherrod one, was severely edited to meet a specific agenda.
Andrew Breitbart’s work reminds me of Jayson Blair, the black journalist for the New York Times who plagiarized many of his stories during 2002-2003. He was fired and his career as a journalist was over. Blair did not hurt anyone in the process of his plagiarism other than the paper for whom he worked. Why shouldn’t the same thing happen to Breitbart. His career as a reliable source of news should be over for unreliable reporting of facts. There is no real difference between Andrew Breitbart and Jayson Blair, The only difference is Breitbart is white and a blogger. Blair is black and was a journalist for the New York Times. Their method of reporting is the same.
What Andrew Breitbart fans is the fire of racism. Racism is like a fire. It can spread without warning when fear is brought into the equation. That’s why Andrew Breitbart, is dangerous. There’s a lesson for everyone here from the White House, NAACP, down to everyone watching or reading reports on air or in print. Don’t believe everything you read or see in the media. The other lesson is improving race relations is as important as fixing the economy, getting jobs and having health care. Just like thread and a garment, race runs through every fabric of our society. In the words of Shirley Sherrod, “we’ve got to get beyond this {racial division}” “Let’s work together.”
Debbie Hines blogs on law, race, women and politics.
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Briana says
I think it’s terrible what happened with Shirley Sherrod. Her words were taken completely out of context. I was reading a post on Urban Belle Magazine, an online magazine for women of color, and it was saying how they manipulated her audio to be used against her (http://dallassouthblog.com/2010/07/28/shirley-sherrod-to-address-national-association-of-black-journalists-at-convention-san-diego/). I think it’s sad and people need to learn to do a little bit more investigating before throwing people under the bus like they did with her.