Breitbart's Sherrod/NAACP story disintegrates (MediaMatters)

[struggle4progress]

July 20, 2010 12:06 pm ET by Matt Gertz

Yesterday, Andrew Breitbart released heavily-edited video of a speech that Shirley Sherrod, then-USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development gave at the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Georgia this year. Breitbart writes that in the video, "this federally appointed executive bureaucrat lays out in stark detail, that her federal duties are managed through the prism of race and class distinctions."

But Breitbart's suggestion that Sherrod was describing actions that she recently took as an Obama administration official is clearly false.

In an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sherrod said that her comments had been taken out of context, and that the story she had described took place decades ago, when she worked for the Federation of Southern Cooperative/Land Assistance Fund ...

The facts corroborate Sherrod's statements about when the story she described took place. In the video, Sherrod describes her work helping a "white farmer save his farm." Sherrod says in the video that she took the farmer to a lawyer who "had attended some of the training that we had provided, because Chapter 12 bankruptcy had just been enacted for the family farm" ...

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201007200030

[Ozymanithrax]

1. Breitbart lie???

Oh, tell me it isn't so.

[MadMaddie]

2. This will be another story where someones career is

destroyed because Faux and other MSM outlets didn't perform basic fact checking. They take these modified videos, speeches etc and push them out.

Individuals need to start suing for defamation of character. This is wrong on many levels.

[kelly1mm]

3. I want to know why the administration forced her to resign? Are they

that afraid of breitbart/beck/fox that they force her resignation without even hearing her side?

I expect breitbart (especially) to heavily edit tapes, as that has been his MO. I don't expect the administration to roll over yet again. Someone needs to punch this bully in the nose or these witch hunts will continue.

[Celebration]

4. This reallly ticks me off

Please write to the White House and express your displeasure.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

I just did.

[struggle4progress]

6. Thank you!

[dem mba]

5. does it even matter?

the damage was done and the lady was fired. That's all that really matters to Breitbart.

It's not like he's going to issue a correction or apology or anything.

[t0rnado]

7. No credibility

That Breitbart guy has simply just lost any credibility he had. The journalists at Faux should have carefully inspected the video.