The lesson of the Shirley Sherrod story would seem to be a simple one: A conservative blogger with a history of promoting inaccurate, racially charged stories published another one, and people in the media (not to mention the White House) fell for it--again.

But New York Times reporter Matt Bai wrote a piece in the paper's Week in Review section (7/25/10) that sought to make things a lot more complicated. Under the headline, "Race: Still Too Hot to Touch," Bai laments that the country is still not having a meaningful discussion about race:

In many ways, Ms. Sherrod's ordeal followed a depressingly familiar pattern in American life, in which anyone who even tries to talk about race risks public outrage and humiliation.

We might have hoped that the election of a black president would somehow make the subject less sensitive and volatile, in the way that John F. Kennedy's election seemed to allay the last, lingering tension between American Catholics and the country’s Protestant establishment. But as the week's events made clear, Mr. Obama's presence alone isn't going to deliver us from a racial dialogue characterized by cable-TV conflagration--and it may even complicate the conversation.

It's hard to square Bai's story with reality. It seemed to me that the consensus view of her speech after Breitbart's lie was exposed was that it was a thoughtful examination of some potentially uncomfortable ideas. Even people like Bob Schieffer and Andersen Cooper--hardly ones to court controversy or throw elbows--were criticizing Breitbart's stunt.

The real lesson to be drawn is about a gullible corporate media--not some grand lesson about the problems in "American life." Perhaps that's why some writers try too hard to make it into something else.

Thankfully, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne does a good job today:

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.

And Dionne points to the manufactured "controversy" over the New Black Panther Party (which the Post's ombud believed deserved more media coverage): "It was aimed at doing what the doctored video Breitbart posted set out to do: convince Americans that the Obama administration favors blacks over whites."

That's the real story here--that right-wing outlets are eager to push these tall tales, and that centrist outlets often give them additional coverage for fear of being considered too left-wing.

E.J. Dionne has a good column in the Washington Post today (4/19/10) looking at the Tea Party movement, and pinning a fair amount of blame on the press: "The news media's incessant focus on the Tea Party is creating a badly distorted picture of what most Americans think and is warping our policy debates." Looking at the most recent poll of Tea Party supporters, Dionne concludes that racism is clearly a factor in motivating many of these activists.

And he makes this point:

This must be the first "populist" movement driven by a television network: Sixty-three percent of the Tea Party folks say they most watch Fox News "for information about politics and current events," compared with 23 percent of the country as a whole.

The right-wing fifth of America deserves news coverage like everyone else, and Fox is perfectly free to pander to its viewers. What makes no sense is allowing a sliver of opinion to dominate the media and distort our political discourse.

Sometimes iconoclastic Washington pundit E. J. Dionne Jr. comes up with a winner (Washington Post, 2/2/09) in this description of the crucial media role in political chicanery on the national level:

If achieving bipartisanship takes priority over the actual content of policy, Republicans are handed a powerful weapon. In theory, they can keep moving the bipartisan bar indefinitely. And each concession to their sensibilities threatens the solidarity in the president's own camp.

That's why last week's unanimous House Republican opposition to the stimulus plan was so important. For the most part, the Republicans escaped attack for rank partisanship. Instead, what should have been hailed as an administration victory was cast in large parts of the media as a kind of defeat: Obama had placed a heavy emphasis on bipartisanship, and he failed to achieve it.

This week's FAIR radio show discusses how,

after several weeks of media debate, the House passed a nearly $900 billion economic stimulus package. White House efforts to reach out to Republicans resulted in exactly zero GOP voters, leaving some in the media to wonder if Obama was failing to deliver on his promises of bipartisanship.

Hear "what about the stimulus debate was entirely off the mark" on CounterSpin: "Dean Baker on Stimulus Package" (1/30/09)