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Henry Champ
The Sherrod affair and the U.S. media wars
Last Updated: Tuesday, July 27, 2010 | 5:46 PM ET
By Henry Champ, special to CBC News
Who would have thought that the chronology for the broadcast of a deceitful, dishonest videotape would become more important than the despicable act it seeks to hide.
But that is what's been happening here in the U.S. these past few days and it speaks volumes about the left-right media wars or culture wars or whatever you want to call them.
Conservative apologists say Fox News did not broadcast the videotape of Shirley Sherrod, a black woman falsely accused of racism, until after she was fired by the U.S. department of agriculture, a firing that was later rescinded when the full facts came to light.
Shirley Sherrod answers questions during an interview at her home on Friday, July 23, 2010 in Albany, Ga. Sherrod had been fired from her job at the U.S. agriculture department earlier in the week before officials realized she was the victim of a doctored web posting. (Steve Cannon/Associated Press) The announcement of Sherrod's firing came on Monday evening, July 19, following a long day of media buzz about her, bolstered by a video clip on a website that appeared to show her uttering racist remarks at a meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People a full month or so earlier.
According to Fox, which was all over this story and has been heavily criticized for its approach, its first mention of the Sherrod affair came at 8:50 in the evening when host Bill O'Reilly ran the unfairly edited clip and called for Sherrod's resignation.
In other words, Fox News claimed it was following the story, not promoting it.
But what Fox does not include in its timeline is the fact that its internet face, Foxnews.com had been carrying the story all that afternoon.
Nor does Fox note that the O'Reilly show is taped at five o'clock in the afternoon, well before Sherrod's firing.
Unwelcome fact
In fairness, O'Reilly's show is not part of the Fox news division, which may explain the leaking of a self-serving email this week from the news division's senior vice-president Michael Clemente, telling the Fox news staff: "Let's take our time and get the facts straight on this story.
"Can we get confirmation and comments from Sherrod before going to air. Let's make sure we do this right."
As young journalists say these days, that's the tick-tock, the timeline to a story. But step back and ask yourself: What difference does that make?
Surely there are bigger issues in this case, as I was trying to explain in my earlier column.
As Republican commentator David Frum says of this affair, "when people talk of the 'closing of the conservative mind' this is what they mean.
"Not that conservatives are more narrow-minded than other people, everyone can be narrow-minded, but that conservatives have a unique capacity to ignore unwelcome fact."
The unwelcome fact here is that an internet blogger played very loose with some videotape and gulled a major news outlet into dropping its standards and helping perpetuate a lie.
There is nothing that can be done about blogger Andrew Breitbart, the author of this escapade. The self-described conservative activist says he was given the tape several weeks earlier and posted it on his site because he was angry about racist charges being levelled at the Tea Party movement.
He's been involved in this kind of nonsense before; he will be again.
But what about the government firing an employee, based solely on the fear that it would be chastised by a 24-hour news organization.
Firing the employee without even asking for her side of the story, and telling that employee it was because she was going to be the prime subject of a television news program.
Media wars
You can also ask, what about the NAACP, itself a frequent victim of racism, turning on one of its own without any kind of due diligence before the full facts were known?
These are all important questions. But my concern here is very simple: What about basic journalism?
Other outlets besides the right-leaning Fox News — I'm thinking here of CBS News — also had a field day with the Sherrod story and again there was no contact with the woman at the centre of it.
In the U.S. media world today, stupidity, excess and the rush to judgment is by no means the exclusive domain of the right.
For example, you might remember the story of the group of liberal journalists, think-tankers and journalism professors who formed an internet chat group to talk about what they were doing and work together to advance what they saw as their cause. The group was called Journolist (very cute) and its membership did not attract many well-known practitioners, Joe Klein of Time magazine being the exception.
The media wars here being what they are, a Washington-based conservative got his hands on some of the group's emails and exposed them.
One email talked of a launching a campaign before the federal regulators to see if they could get Fox's broadcast licence lifted over its political coverage.
There were also email suggestions on how to curb Sarah Palin's popularity and so on.
The exposure cost a Washington Post reporter his job, while others at other agencies received reprimands. All those involved were professionally embarrassed and Journolist was abandoned.
But that is clearly not the end of the media wars here, which goes some way to explaining all the current yammering over what Fox knew about the Sherrod situation and how hard it was pushing that story.
For example, MSNBC, the liberal mirror of Fox News, spends inordinate time searching out posters and placards at Tea Party rallies that might indicate a racist bent.
Its anchors, particularly Keith Olbermann, run an almost nightly critique of Fox News and its prime-time host Bill O'Reilly, which seldom ever reaches the level of good satire.
Most of the mischief and worse is the work of those who believe that scaring people and playing to their fears is the way to advance a cause and improve ratings.
I am here to tell you it is the wrong strategy for journalism and those who succumb to it are the losers.
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