Why Is The NY Times Helping Andrew Breitbart Lie?
June 27, 2011 11:09 am ET by Matt Gertz
In today's New York Times profile, Jeremy Peters writes of Andrew Breitbart's smear of Shirley Sherrod (emphasis added):
The most notorious video he put up -- one that almost ruined his career -- was a two-minute clip of Ms. Sherrod, a black Agriculture Department official, telling an N.A.A.C.P. gathering that she did not help a white man as much as she could have with his failing farm. The headline said "NAACP Awards Racism."
But when the N.A.A.C.P. released a longer version of the video, it showed clearly that Ms. Sherrod's story was about overcoming racial prejudice, and that she did indeed go to great lengths to help the farmer. Defending himself, Mr. Breitbart said that the video came to him already edited, and that the crowd applauded when Ms. Sherrod said she did not help the man.
Critics seized on it as evidence that Mr. Breitbart selectively chooses content that reflects poorly on political opponents. But the episode only seemed to help bolster his status as a rising star on the political right.
Let's ignore how pathetic it is that part of Breitbart's defense is that he didn't care enough about the facts to find the full context of that video clip before he posted it on his website. Instead, let's focus on the way that the Times' Peters allows Breitbart to lie about the content of that clip.
Whether "the crowd applauded when Ms. Sherrod said she did not help the man" is not an opinion; it is an assertion of fact that can easily verified. One can go to Breitbart's website, find that clip, and listen for the alleged applause that Breitbart is citing to defend himself. It doesn't take long to do this bare minimum of fact-checking; the out-of-context clip is only 2 minutes 36 seconds long. Go ahead and watch it. I'll wait.
Did you hear the applause? Of course not: It doesn't exist. But rather than actually attempting to verify Breitbart's claims, Peters simply reports them. Which is a smart thing to do when you're profiling a known liar.
This is not a new defense for Breitbart; he literally has been lying about this for 11 months. In interviews on July 20 and July 21 of last year, after his Sherrod smear had been completely debunked, Breitbart desperately tried to maintain his credibility by making up the applause story. As media began uncritically reporting his new claim, we did the due diligence that they (and Peters) did not, and actually reviewed the tape.
We found that, contrary to Breitbart's claim, the audience does not applaud at any point during Sherrod's story about her interaction with the farmer. We weren't the only ones to come to this conclusion. CNN's Anderson Cooper and NBC's Chuck Todd also checked the video and reported that Breitbart's claim was false.
You know who else debunked Andrew Breitbart's claim? Andrew Breitbart! In his initial post on the Sherrod clip, the one he says was supposed to definitively prove that the "NAACP Awards Racism," Breitbart didn't report that "the crowd applauded when Ms. Sherrod said she did not help the man"; he instead said that their reaction was one of "nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement" (reactions explained by the fact that the clip leaves out that Sherrod previewed her story by explaining that it was one of redemption). If he really thought they were applauding, why didn't he mention that?
Because he's lying. And so we ask again: Why is the NY Times helping him lie?
I'm going to email the NYTimes about this fact on the Sherrod video.
shows how desperate the NYT is for circulation today....
Because they're not 'liberal' at all, nor is the media 'liberal'.
Because the media does not have a 'liberal bias'. In fact it's quite the opposite.
Because the media now lives on gossip and thrills and turgid little socialite lives. It does this because people don't give a good god-damn about politics or truth or philosophy or debate or substance. People now care about instant gratification and shock and distractions to drag them away from contemplating anything at all.
People ask me why I define myself as a misanthrope. I counter by asking them how they can possibly not be, given all the crap that goes on daily demonstrating just how utterly worthless and staggeringly stupid the vast majority of people seem to be.
I wouldn't call the average person a "freak" either. Freak implies an aberration or someone out of the mainstream, dkylep describes what's become of mainstream American society. I can only agree with him.
Dumbed down and clinging to comfortable mythologies. What we may be experiencing is in reality the end of an era. An educated and just society seems to be the aberration throughout history. It took a lot of breaking tradition and yes, strong liberal ideals for America to get where it is. Now the same forces of greed, avarice, and aristocracy are pushing hard to undo so much of what we've achieved.
I found nothing in the story to support mmfa's claim that Jeremy Peters and the NYT was "helping Andrew Breitbart lie".
In fact, the storyline was clear:
-- If you agree with him, you think what he does is citizen journalism. If you don’t, his work is little more than crowd-sourced political sabotage that freely distorts the facts. --
mmfa's response is little more than an excuse by Gertz to rehash the Sherrod episode...while using a Drudge-like headline that they so often rail against.
It's not journalism at all, whether I "agree" with him or not. It IS political sabotage, whether you agree or not. Facts are facts. Greenhouse gases are warming the earth, whethere you agree or not.
Breitbart deliberately falsified the story about Sherrod. Even the current scandal about Weiner, which turned out to be true, was made public by Breitbart without any checking, which he admitted himself in the first interviews. He said he did not know the person who sent him the photos of Weiner, and he had no way to know if they were genuine. He looks for dirt on Democrats, not Republicans, and he doesn't care about the truth.
Gertz took the low road when he decided on a completely misleading headline about the NYT's abetting Breitbart. It was a shallow excuse to bash Breitbart (a bashing that would not be out of line) over Sherrod.
You get it...unlike the big whiff by Gertz, who should have echoed your reaction. The story was about the supporters and detractors of Breitbart's tactics...not the NYT's helping Breitbart lie.
Did you miss this part?
"Defending himself, Mr. Breitbart said that the video came to him already edited, and that the crowd applauded when Ms. Sherrod said she did not help the man."
It's amazing how selective the wingnuts' vision is. They're constantly "not finding" and "failing to see" things that are very clearly laid out right in front of their eyes.
Poor Wesley, he's been at this for years, doing his little MMFA watchdog act, always with hilarious results.
-- The damage Mr. Breitbart suffered to his credibility after he posted a tipster’s edited video that showed an Agriculture Department official, Shirley Sherrod, making what appeared to be prejudiced remarks seems not to matter as far as his fans are concerned. --
You want to paddle Breitbart for crappy reporting? Have at it...but I'm not interested because I'm not a fan or supporter of his efforts.
You want to support the Drudge/Breitbart approach to headline writing by mmfa? Go ahead...Gertz was counting on sycophants with this thinly veiled effort.
I didn't miss anything. You're the one who said 'I found nothing in the story to support mmfa's claim that Jeremy Peters and the NYT was "helping Andrew Breitbart lie".' It's right there in plain sight.
"You want to paddle Breitbart for crappy reporting? Have at it...but I'm not interested because I'm not a fan or supporter of his efforts."
He said people applauded. This was a lie. Period. A lie. Purposeful and consequential. (I think calling him a crappy reporter is an insult to all crappy reporters.)
"You want to support the Drudge/Breitbart approach to headline writing by mmfa?"
you are confused. It would be comparable to drudge/breitbart if it was not based in truth. That is not the case.
Ah no, they probably even knew brainwashed morons like YOUwould be comitted to MISSING THE OBVIOUS POINT. MMFA was right and you are a moron who at this point is just lying
That's because you didn't read the whole MMFA article in full apparently. They do point out specifically which of Breitbart's deceptive statements were propagated.
This article wasn't about how favorable or unfavorable the depiction of Breitbart was in the NY Times article, it was about repeating Breitbart's misinformation.
You are becoming PATHETIC. If you dont see where they were helping him LIE, then you were avoiding it strenuously. Breitbart SAID the crowd applauded when Sherrod said she didnt help the man. That is a LIE. A LIE that the NYTimes repeated uncritically. That is helping him lie. It is, as MMFA pointed out NOT an opinions but a FACT they did not applaud. Your post is NOTHING but more of your snivelling that you dont LIKE when the right is PROVEN to be LIARS.
The Times did in fact uncritically pass on the lie. They also, in their "balanced" way, include quotes from people who positively assert that Breitbart doesn't distort.
But this comes right after a description of how Breitbart is willing to distort.
Bad journalism by the Times.
I'm sure he'll end up with a job as a contributor on CNN or something.
significantly sadder is the fact that his career was never threatened. This was another feather in his cap. I too would like to see him have to do honest work for a living, but that ain't gonna happen.
He "stirs controversy", and in our saturated and redundant news and media environment, that's far more important then being accurate or ethical.
NY Times was delinquent in omitting this disgraceful fact.
I'm tired of seeing the NY Times, Time, the New Yorker, CBS, etc., etc., treat Breitbart, Limbaugh, Beck, Coulter, et al, as legitimate voices on the "other side". They are not legitimate and they are not on the "other side": they are lying subversives, who should be granted no respect. There is nothing to balance here.
I have to make what sounds like a fussy complaint, that the sentence "...and undercover video [Andrew Breitbart] released of Acorn workers offering advice on how to evade taxes and conceal child prostitution" should have made it clear that ACORN had been completely cleared of all charges by California Attorney General Jerry Brown in April 2010. In other words, Breitbart first came to public notice by offering videotape that only appeared to implicate ACORN in crimes, the videotapes didn't actually lead to any convictions. Reporter Jeremy Peters is correct in saying that "Congress ended grants to Acorn, and federal agencies severed ties with the group," but it still would have been more truthful (As opposed to merely being accurate) to have included those extra facts.
Yes, the Shirley Sherrod video has her "making what appeared to be prejudiced remarks," but more to the point, I saw the video on the recommendation of a right-winger on the comments section to an article, so I saw it without any preconceptions and it was clear to me right away that her comments were a small part of a much lengthier speech. Many right-wing bloggers reached the same conclusion, that we were only seeing an excerpt of what Sherrod had said at that gathering. At best, Breitbart demonstrated what the Uniform Code of Military Justice refers to as "Dereliction of Duty" by failing to inform viewers that he was presenting a highly edited snippet of a lengthy speech.
Peters includes a very puzzling statement: "...the crowd applauded when Ms. Sherrod said she did not help the man." Really? Did Peters actually review the less-than-three-minute clip himself? I did and I most certainly didn't hear any sounds of applause. There were, at most, murmurs of recognition "Yeah, I've been there, I've done that," but certainly nothing that suggested "Yeah! You go, girl! Stick it to the man!"
It also would have helped to have mentioned the official reason that left-wing bloggers were able to properly and legally toss Breitbart out of Netroots Nation, he didn't go to the trouble of even attempting to obtain a press pass. When you just show up with a camera, there are many gatherings where you can just start filming anyway and nobody will mind, but had Breitbart tried to obtain a press pass to NN11, he probably would have had to agree to several conditions that would have seen to it that he would have been a well-behaved, non-distruptive presence.
Corporations already own America, folks. Get used to it.
The NYT has been helping bigger liars than not-so BreitBulb for quite some time, and some of those were on the payroll.
Irrespective of a certain Florida Court of Appeals ruling, surely it is important that there be a Supreme Court of the United States ruling on the duty of care of the privileged profession of journalist to his/her audience and whether that includes a duty not to intentionally or negligently misinform (the usual allowances to be made for satire and parody).
Every privilege should come with a corresponding obligation and the relationship between journalist and audience should entail certain obligations - including respect for copyright and not to misrepresent the journalist's report as well as the requirement of a journalist to take reasonable steps to establish the accuracy of any given statement before publishing it.