The cast of Irresponsibles in the Shirley Sherrod scandal is a big one, so let me start my rant with the obvious. And I don't mean conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, who first posted the doctored Sherrod video, or Fox News, which picked it up.
First on my list is Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who swallowed the Breitbart story whole and insisted on Sherrod's firing.
A presumably valued employee is smeared by right-wing cranks and nobody asked for her side of the story? Nobody looked into her record? Given the source of the video, didn't it occur to anybody in the White House or the ag department to question its legitimacy?
Next on my list: The NAACP, whose initial reaction to Sherrod's forced resignation was to cheer. The NAACP has now apologized, but it insists that it was "snookered" by the tape.
Snookered? Oh, come on.
Andrew Breitbart and the Fox radicals didn't prevent the NAACP from questioning the legitimacy of the tape. They didn't prevent the NAACP from calling Sherrod to get her side of the story. They didn't prevent it from calling the local NAACP chapter at which Sherrod's speech took place.
Nobody was snookered in this thing. Too many people in responsible positions didn't do their job. Too many people trusted sources that are famously unreliable and biased.
I thought Maureen Dowd provided an interesting insight in her Sunday Times column: the Obama administration, she wrote, is too white. The president isn't getting the perspective of grassroots African Americans, so his administration overreacts on issues related to race - panicking in the face of right-wing threats.
"The West Wing white guys who pushed to ditch Shirley Sherrod before Glenn Beck could pounce not only didn't bother to Google, they weren't familiar enough with civil rights history to recognize the name Sherrod. And they didn't return the calls and e-mail of prominent blacks who tried to alert them that something was wrong."
Some of the mainstream media latched onto the story without checking it out, too. This is a big media issue right now, with the internet upping the pressure to be first with the news.
In addition, as the Washington Post's EJ Dionne noted on Monday, too much of mainstream journalism is "looking timorously over its right shoulder and believing that ‘balance' demands taking seriously whatever sludge the far right is pumping into the political waters."
"The traditional media are so petrified of being called ‘liberal' that they are prepared to allow the Breitbarts of the world to become their assignment editors," wrote Dionne.
At the core of the problem, though, are all of us. If we were better media consumers - better citizens - no media would have the power that we assume Fox News has. Politicians wouldn't cower in the face of Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck and bloggers like Andrew Breitbart if they weren't convinced that tens of thousands of voters succumbed to their rhetoric.
On the journalism website Poynter.org, Steve Myers notes that Andrew Breitbart, who started the whole thing, eventually corrected his original post.
But, writes Myers, by the time he did that, his original video on YouTube had been seen about 400,000 times. No one knows, of course, how many of those people learned about the correction, either from Breitbart's blog or elsewhere.
The work of citizenship takes time, and it takes effort - and conservatives are by no means the only lazy citizens abroad in the land. Too many of us turn only to news sources and commentators we agree with, ignoring the work of those we don't. And the left has its own one-sided commentators: Olbermann, Maddow, Stewart, Colbert.
In the end, our complaints - whether about the "liberal" press or the power of Fox News - are pretty shallow. No media and no individual commentators have any power that we don't give to them.
And few of us are ever really snookered.
Comments for "URBAN JOURNAL: Lessons from the Shirley Sherrod story" (8)
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Tim Shea said on Jul. 29, 2010 at 8:14am
Ms. Towler
In your "Lessons from The Story of Shirley Sherrod", there is much to agree with , however one statement " "The Left has its own one sided commentators:Olberman, Maddow,Stewart and Colbert". is a type I see more frequently as either a defense of right wing ideologues as they spread wilder and wilder rumors and out right lies or a weak attempt at proving the authors unbiased, thoughtful consideration of statements such as these:
" Obama has a "deep-seated hatred for white people." from Glenn Beck.
" The Obama Justice Department is motivated by a lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law." from a Republican activist pushing the new Black Panthers story. How much thoughtful consideration is required ?
Please Ms. Towler when you attempt to make 2 equal 3 be sure to show your work.
Show me the Left's equal in tone, temperament and platform to Limbaugh. the Left’s Lee Atwater? The Left’s Ann Coulter? Hannity?OReilly? As for The Left’s Glen Beck the only answer I would accept is Jerry Lewis in his prime.
As for the undoubtedly partisan Olberman, Maddow, Stewart and Colbert check your dictionary for the meanings and differences of ridicule ,sarcasm,mockery , slander, rumor, innuendo and lies,
I appreciate and sometimes even admire your work but this struck me as a bit of laziness on your part.
There has never been in the history of this country as loud, varied and large a platform given to the left. Attention is paid to the left only when one from the right screams" Fire! I don't have any proof but there's the guy who started it!"
Tim Shea
Rochester
J said on Jul. 29, 2010 at 11:17am
Really Tim?
Olberman: "Al Qaeda really hurt us, but not as much as Rupert Murdoch has hurt us, particularly in the case of FOX News. Fox news is worse than Al Qaeda â€" worse for our society. It's as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan ever was."
Or this Olberman gem: "Well, the teabagging is all over, except for the cleanup. And that will be my last intentional double entendre on this one at least until the end of this segment... Congratulations, Pensacola teabaggers. You got spunked. And despite the hatred on display, a few of you actually violated the penal code. But teabagging is now petered out, taint what it used to be. And when you co-opt the next holiday, Fourth of July, try to adopt a holiday food that does not invite the double entendres like, you know, franks and beans." - classy.
Janeane Garofalo: "You know, there's nothing more interesting than seeing a bunch of racists become confused and angry at a speech they're not quite certain what he's saying... This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks."
Matthews: "I forgot he was black tonight for an hour"
Maddow: and the attempted slandering of Rand Paul: www.dailypaul.com/node/135280
Wake up Tim. The left has no shortage of disingenuous kooks.
Bill N said on Jul. 29, 2010 at 2:11pm
Sadly, Keith Olbermann is pretty much a clown, even though I may agree with some things he says. But as Greg Sargent pointed out on the Washington Post's Plum Line blog, one important aspect of the Sherrod mess is going largely ignored: The race-baiting that marks Breitbart’s misleadingly edited video smears of Sherrod and Acorn, and the similar race-baiting that is nearly constant on Fox, show that right wing media are willing to engage in tactics that simply have no equivalent on the left.
According to Sargent, “it's true that ‘both sides,’ to one degree or another, let their ideological and political preferences dictate some editorial decisions, such as what stories to pursue, how to approach them, who to interview, etc. But what's under-appreciated is the degree to which the Breitbart-Fox axis goes far beyond this, openly employing techniques of political opposition researchers and operatives to drive the media narrative.
Breitbart is on a self-declared mission of destruction; he doesn't care about truth or accuracy. And Fox is happy to promote his smears until the truth comes out, or longer, knowing its audience is only too ready to believe anything bad about people of color whether it's true or not.
Tim Shea said on Jul. 29, 2010 at 8:19pm
Really J ?
or is it really Jay? Really J, I must thank you. Really, really thank you. Those things you cite are a perfect illustration of my criticism of a statement in the article. A type of "everybody does it" or in this case more of the" I'm rubber you're glue" defense which only holds if you consider mockery, sarcasm or ridicule equal to bald faced lies, vicious rumors, and tapes edited to discredit an organization or individual. I see no name other than Murdoch in your apples are oranges comparisons,nor any thing that a court would examine for veracity. Maybe if Olberman said Murdoch was adopted and raised by wolves, you could press the point.
What i was addressing in my post was a matter of a equating two very unequal things. You have to make false equivalencies because there are no equal opportunity destroyers on the Left . Anonymous blog posts don't count unless you get all your informed news from blog posts. If so Please go argue with your dog if he's still talking to you. That's sarcasm J ...so sue me. Oh... you can't can you?
NKC said on Jul. 30, 2010 at 9:16am
Dear Ms. Towler,
Black, white? I'm not sure whether this incident with Shirley Sherrod is about racism, or just plain bad management. Whatever happened to getting all parties concerned in one room and TALKING about issues and incidents? Having her pull over to the side of the road to submit her resignation on her Blackberry? RIDICULOUS!
Nowadays, anybody can put anything out anywhere at any time pretty much, thanks to technology, the very same of which Ms. Sherrod was notified of her fate without HER side of the story being told. "Holy Truman Show Batman", there's a lot of snookering going on these days from Washington to the Jersey shore!
It's called jumping on the band wagon of bad information. A simple fix really. Get people in one room and hash it out before misinformation hits our lightening speed forms of communication. What good is the information if not substantiated and credible?
This subject hits a sore spot with me as last year I was unjustly fired from a national non-profit organization after 15 years of service in similar fashion over a misrepresented incident to which I had no chance to face my supposed accusers. Taken out by a bad "cast of characters" NOT held accountable for THEIR own questionable actions. That's OK though. The "Spitzer" effect seems to be catching on these days. As has been the case in recent "outings" of public personas FINALLY being held accountable. Or sort of. Tony Hayward getting kicked out of BP with a whopping pension isn't exactly my idea of holding bad leadership accountable.
There's a great little book out there..."The Good Citizen's Handbook", by Jennifer McKnight-Trontz, a compilation of information from civic text, citizenship, government and scouting manuals from the 1920's to 1960's. An interesting look at the way things used to be. Might be just the fix we need for our broken society. A simple book with simple rules and a lot of good old fashioned common sense.
You're right about the core of the problem. "Us" giving our power away. Let us not forget the first line of our constitution..."we the people". Thank you for bringing awareness to a topic that needs attention.
J said on Jul. 30, 2010 at 10:13am
Equal opportunity destroyers? Please elaborate.
Do not mistake my post as being in defense of Glenn Beck (a self-admitted rodeo clown), Breitbart, or FOX. Unfortunately though, as you stated, "everybody does it". And everybody DOES do it - I'm not saying it's OK. It's a shame. But to deny that left-wing commentators selectively edit, or report partial stories to deliberately skew the facts and cast their opponents in a bad light, is to bury your head in the sand.
Tim said on Jul. 30, 2010 at 12:04pm
J -
I'm sorry I couldn't hear you - I'm still cleaning the sand out of my ears , I trying to hear your examples that match your vivid prose.
J said on Aug. 02, 2010 at 8:23am
Tim,
You must have missed the example in my first post regarding the attempted and intentional slandering of Rand Paul by Rachel Maddow.
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