In Howard Kurtz’s latest column (8/2/10), the Washington Post media reporter bemoans the new media atmosphere as a "search-and-destroy culture"  that is "as likely to vilify journalists as political and corporate leaders." Kurtz counts himself among those vilified journalists, citing recent criticism over his defense (7/22/10) of Fox News' handling of the Shirley Sherrod debacle:

I know what it's like to be caught in the crossfire. When I reported that Fox News did not air the Sherrod video until after she had been fired, I got hammered by the left, and some commentators just ignored the chronology. (And conspiracy theorists pounced when I left out that a Fox online story had run an hour or so before the firing--hardly the reason that Sherrod was canned.)

Those "conspiracy theorists" apparently include FAIR, which pointed out Kurtz's oversight on this blog two weeks ago (7/23/10). But FAIR is not alone; the L.A. Times (7/24/10) and Media Matters (7/29/10) made similar points.

Do you really have to be a "conspiracy theorist," though, to think that a White House that's worried that a story will appear on Fox News would keep an eye on Fox's websites? As FAIR noted in its original criticism:

If the question is whether Sherrod was "done in" by Fox, you have to ask a question that doesn't seem to concern Kurtz: How did the doctored videotape come to the attention of the Obama administration? As the Media Matters timeline discloses, many blogs and conservative websites, including Foxnews.com and Fox  Nation, were discussing Sherrod's "racism" hours before her resignation. Isn't it likely that the Fox News website was among the most prominent of these; and, in turn, isn't it possible that that's where the White House learned about the story?

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.

Reporting on Andrew Breitbart's latest bit of deceit--using a selectively edited video to paint a low-level USDA official Shirley Sherrod as a racist--has given the media a chance to resurrect one of their favorite myths: Breitbart's triumphant takedown of the community-organizing group ACORN.

In September 2009, Breitbart's website BigGovernment.com posted videos, made by conservative activists Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe, supposedly showing ACORN employees counseling the pair--ostensibly pretending to be a prostitute and a pimp--on how to avoid paying taxes and other illegal activities.  The videos were later found to be completely misleading. Among other things, it was revealed that O'Keefe never dressed as a pimp in ACORN's offices, and in many cases he pretended to be Giles concerned boyfriend protecting her from abuse.

In covering the Shirley Sherrod story, many outlets have mentioned the videos--not as an example of Breitbart's established incredibility, but rather as a vindication of his heroic muckraking track record.

Answering for viewers the question, "Just who is Andrew Breitbart?," CNN American Morning anchors Kiran Chetry and John Roberts (7/21/10) said Breitbart "built a brand around his 'big' websites, and that includes BigGovernment.com, the site that first posted the video of Sherrod. There is also BigHollywood.com, BigJournalism.com, BigPeace.com." Roberts then reminded viewers that BigGovernment.com "was also the first site to post those undercover ACORN videos featuring the pimp and prostitute."

In their initial report on the Sherrod story, AP's Ben Evans and Mary Clare Jalonick (7/20/10) applauded BigGovernment.com as the site that "gained fame after releasing video of workers for the community organizing group ACORN counseling actors posing as a pimp and prostitute." Later versions of the story were changed to read "prostitute and her boyfriend." However, in a more recent article (7/21/10), Evans and Jalonick reverted to the less accurate "prostitute and her pimp."

Slate (7/22/10) even saw Breitbart's latest smear as reason to "recycle" Christopher Beam's fawning profile of Breitbart, where he praises him as the one who posted "the now-famous videos that showed two young conservatives, James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, entering several offices of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, better known as ACORN, posing as a pimp and a prostitute looking to open a brothel for underage, illegal immigrant girls."  This statement is made even stranger by the fact that, much further down in the profile, Beam quietly relents that O'Keefe was actually wearing "business casual" clothing. Beam also repeats the lie that Giles and O'Keefe "had been instructed to, among other things, bury their sex money in a tin in their back yard."

Again, O'Keefe never wore his ludicrous "pimp" out fit in the ACORN offices. Most times he was asking employees how to protect his girlfriend from an abusive pimp. The "tin in the backyard" suggestion was in response to a question from Giles on how to hide her money from the same fictitious pimp.  Also, it is now clear the videos were heavily edited to make employees appear to be answering questions in more sinister ways. In fact, Juan Carlos Vera, a San Diego ACORN employee who was fired as a result of the videos, was found to have called his cousin, a police detective, after the pair left to report their activities. Furthermore, ACORN has now been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing by three separate independent investigations.

All of this has been noted numerous times by FAIR (Action Alert, 3/11/10) and others (Brad Blog, 3/3/10). But considering the pervasiveness of this myth within the corporate media, it apparently needs to be pointed out again.

Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz  (7/22/10) defends  Fox News against charges it promoted Andrew Breitbart's fraudulent Shirley Sherrod story--because, he says, Fox's news division didn't even address the story until after Sherrod resigned. In an extensive defense of Fox, Kurtz also cites an e-mail circulated by a Fox executive to the channel's news division, cautioning news staff to be careful with the story. Here's Kurtz:

But for all the chatter--some of it from Sherrod herself--that she was done in by Fox News, the network didn't touch the story until her forced resignation was made public Monday evening, with the exception of brief comments by O'Reilly. After a news meeting Monday afternoon, an e-mail directive was sent to the news staff in which Fox senior vice president Michael Clemente said: "Let's take our time and get the facts straight on this story. Can we get confirmation and comments from Sherrod before going on-air. Let's make sure we do this right."

In fact, as a Media Matters time line of Sherrod coverage clearly reveals, Fox did "touch the story" before Sherrod's resignation. Before the resignation, FoxNews.com published a report stating,  "Days after the NAACP clashed with Tea Party members over allegations of racism, a video has surfaced showing an Agriculture Department official regaling an NAACP audience with a story about how she withheld help to a white farmer facing bankruptcy."

Though not part of the news division, Fox Nation, an activist arm of the cable channel owned and operated by Fox News, hosted discussions smearing Sherrod--and by association, the Obama administration--as racist prior to Sherrod's resignation. So O'Reilly was not the only facet of Fox News advancing the smears before Sherrod was forced to step down.

By limiting himself to Fox stories and segments appearing before the resignation, Kurtz sets up an artificial time frame that discounts Fox programming that continued to smear Sherrod well afterwards: O'Reilly was joined by a virtual chorus of Fox News hosts (e.g., Sean Hannity, 7/19/10), substitute hosts (e.g., Dana Perino, On the Record With Greta Van Susteren, 7/19/10) and contributors (Monica Crowley and Alan Colmes on O'Reilly--see MediaMatters, 7/20/10) advancing the Breitbart smears. Why such stories aren't worthy of Kurtz's scrutiny is not explained.

If the question is whether Sherrod was "done in" by Fox, you have to ask a question that doesn't seem to concern Kurtz: How did the doctored videotape come to the attention of the Obama administration? As the Media Matters timeline discloses, many blogs and conservative websites, including Foxnews.com and Fox  Nation, were discussing Sherrod's "racism" hours before her resignation. Isn't it likely that the Fox News website was among the most prominent of these; and, in turn, isn't it possible that that's where the White House learned about the story? The fact that Sherrod claims somebody from the administration told her she was going to be on Glenn Beck's show on Monday night suggest that the White House believed, correctly, that Fox News was on the story.

In another passage, Kurtz mentions Andrew Breitbart's promotion of the notorious undercover ACORN video tapes:

Breitbart has worked closely with Fox opinion hosts in the past, most notably when he posted videos of two young activists ostensibly posing as a pimp and prostitute and seeking help from ACORN offices. Breitbart promoted those tapes on Sean Hannity's Fox program and the network gave them heavy play.

A reader who was learning about this story from Kurtz's reporting would be unaware that the  ACORN tapes, like the Sherrod video, were also a hoax, misleadingly edited to suggest things that never happened. For instance, the man Kurtz refers to as "ostensibly posing as a pimp...and seeking help from ACORN offices," never wore the pimp outfit into ACORN offices, and generally presented himself as trying to protect his "girlfriend" from a pimp (Extra!, 4/10).

Kurtz has a history of defending Fox News against self-evident claims that the cable channel harbors pro-conservative and pro-GOP biases. To be fair, Kurtz has distinguished Fox's news shows from its opinion programs, which he once said (Washington Post, 2/5/01) "may cast an unwarranted cloud on the news reporting which tends to be straightforward."

However, the evidence of Fox's right-wing bias, even on its news shows--which earn relatively low ratings next to the opinion shows the network is actually famous for--is extensive. (See here and here.)

In fact, earlier this month, Kurtz (Washington Post, 7/12/10) backed off from his defense of Fox news programs, reporting that the daytime news show Fox's America's Newsroom had a lopsidedly conservative guest list.

But Kurtz's brush with reality has apparently passed, as he reverts to his previous position in defense of Fox News.

The lesson of Shirley Sherrod's disgraceful treatment by right-wing and not-so-right-wing media (followed by her equally squalid dismissal by an administration that took that media at face value) boils down to a single question: When will journalists see Andrew Breitbart as the serial promoter of journalistic frauds that he is, rather than as a legitimate source for story ideas?

FAIR readers will remember Breitbart's dissemination of videos that purported to show ACORN employees advising a "prostitute" and her "pimp" -- conservative activists Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe--on how to avoid paying taxes. The videos have since been heavily debunked. As FAIR has noted before (Action Alert, 3/11/10), O'Keefe didn't "pose" as a pimp--he didn't wear his ridiculous  "pimp" outfit inside ACORN offices, and in almost every case pretended to be a concerned boyfriend trying to get his girlfriend away from an abusive pimp. He also did not receive advice on how to "cheat" on his taxes. Additionally,  ACORN has been cleared of wrongdoing by three separate independent investigations.

Breitbart's latest fraud--posting a selectively edited video in which Sherrod appears to make some overtly racist statements to a local NAACP chapter--led to the forced resignation of the USDA employee.

That video went viral in the right-wing media and beyond, as accusations of Sherrod's racism were tossed about, along with the larger implication that the Obama administration harbored racists. As Sherrod tells it, she soon received three separate calls telling her the White House was asking for her resignation, with one official telling her she would be on Glenn Beck that night.

The Sherrod story didn’t actually make it on Beck that night, but it was all over Fox News. Bill O'Reilly (7/19/10) called Sherrod's comments "unacceptable" and called for her to "resign immediately."  Sean Hannity (7/19/10) called the comments "racist" and praised Breitbart for exposing them.

The next day, as details of Sherrod's entire speech emerged, it became clear she was describing her experience of struggling with and surmounting bias. Her point was an anti-racist one. Even the white farmer who was allegedly wronged by Sherrod appeared on CNN (7/20/10), along with his wife, to defend her.

Predictably, many right-wing media personalities stood by Breitbart even as the truth was being revealed. Rush Limbaugh (7/20/10) said Breitbart did "great work getting this video of Ms. Sherrod at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and her supposed racism."  Hannity (7/20/10) invited Breitbart on his show to defend himself.  Meanwhile, O'Reilly (7/20/10) stood by his demand for Sherrod's resignation, and even chastised the rest of the media for not reporting on Breitbart's heavily edited video--adding it to a long list of invented right-wing controversies he believes have been ignored by the mainstream media, including the aforementioned ACORN hoax, as well as the  New Black Panther voter intimidation "scandal" and the Van Jones resignation--both of which were wildly overblown (Counterspin, 7/16/10; Extra!, 11/09), but were, contrary to O'Reilly's protestations, picked up by more centrist media after amplification in the right-wing echo chamber.

The same is true of the Sherrod resignation, which some outlets continued to frame as a he said/she said controversy even after the truth began to emerge--outlets such as AP (7/20/10), which also took the opportunity to laud Breitbart's BigGovernment.com as the site that "gained fame after releasing video of workers for the community organizing group ACORN counseling actors posing as a pimp and prostitute."

In the Washington Post (7/21/10), Karen Tumulty and Krissah Thompson were still lending credence to Breitbart's video even after the entire speech was released, reporting on the episode as a controversy between Sherrod and "her critics" as well as one that reinforces the right-wing narrative "that the administration of the first African-American to occupy the White House practices its own brand of racism."

It isn't surprising that right-wing media continue to exalt Breitbart, but when will the rest of the corporate media learn that he can't be trusted?