On July 19, 2010, Andrew Breitbart, commentator for the Washington Times, posted two short videos showing excerpts of a speech by Shirley Sherrod at an NAACP fundraising dinner in March 2010. The videos ensuing controversy resulted in Sherrod, Agriculture Department’s Georgia Director of Rural Development, being fired from the United States Department of Agriculture on July 19. After Breitbart was criticized for taking Sherrod’s words out of context, he posted the complete 40-minute video of the speech.
The NAACP stated that the video excerpts aired by Breitbart were deliberately deceptive and said that he had “snookered” the group.
The Los Angeles Times website, July 21, 2010:
Shirley Sherrod was forced to resign Monday after conservative activist Andrew Breitbart posted a video clip of Sherrod’s speech at an NAACP dinner on his website BigGovernment.com in which she appeared to say that she had once discriminated against a white farmer. The edited clip did not include the portion of the speech in which Sherrod said the episode had “taught her the importance of overcoming personal prejudices….”
[Bill] O’Reilly was the first on cable to air the video, calling for Sherrod’s resignation Monday night. (By the time his taped show aired, she in fact had already resigned, a fact Fox News noted on the screen.) On Wednesday, he said he should have gotten the full story first. ‘I owe Ms. Sherrod an apology for not doing my homework, for not putting her remarks into the proper context,’ he said on ‘The O’Reilly Factor,’ adding that his own words had been taken out of context by critics in the past. ‘I well understand the need for honest reporting.’
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack later apologized to Shirley Sherrod and offered her a higher position within the USDA. She is now leading one of three field programs that are intended to improve the relationship between the agency and minority farmers, Politico.com reported. In February 2011, Sherrod filed a $13 million lawsuit against Breitbart, who moved for its dismissal. That request is pending in federal court.
After learning of Breitbart’s death on March 1, 2012, Sherrod released the following statement: “The news of Mr. Breitbart’s death came as a surprise to me when I was informed of it this morning. My prayers go out to Mr. Breitbart’s family as they cope during this very difficult time.”
UrbanPopBlogosphere includes informative, thought provoking articles and media with the hopes that readers may come to realize they’ve been “snookered” or deceived as the NAACP claimed they had been. Miscellaneous topics are featured on this blog including race, politics, health, economics, pop culture, sexuality, religion, etc. My blog attempts to reveal the facts behind media sensationalism and false cultural myths. Even though our busy lives prohibit us from fact-checking every news story read or heard, there are crucial issues we must further investigate because of the impact they have on our quality of life, intellect, and emotional well being.
Thank you for visiting!!
- Kandid
TUMBLR SnookeredAndThenSome
UPopblog’s FACEBOOK
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/iRTLies
“The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth”. – John F. Kennedy