Joan Walsh:The shame of right-wing "journalism"

[cal04]

video at link
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/politics/2010/07/20/the_tragedy_of_right_wing_journalism?source=newsletter
Andrew Breitbart and Tucker Carlson distort facts to smear liberals, and it works. What liberals should learn

It pains me to pay attention to the work of the Daily Caller, Tucker Carlson's vanity project, as Carlson vies to compete with Andrew Breitbart on the right-wing "investigative journalism" frontier. What Carlson's "journalism" has in common with Breitbart's (besides being ethics-free) is blowing up stories that purport to "expose" the left with what are supposed to be the left's own words — except that later, it will turn out that "the left's own words" will have been hyped, manipulated and selectively edited, and that the story was baloney.

Today a big Breitbart "scoop" blew up in his angry face, when it was shown that the Big Journalism proprietor selectively edited a clip of an African-American USDA official seeming to admit she treated a white farmer poorly out of her own racial bias. It turns out that Shirley Sherrod was actually telling the story to show how the issue of race often obscures the issue of class, and the fact that poor black farmers and poor white farmers had a lot in common (eventually, she helped and became close to the white farmer and his family) — but Breitbart left all of that out of the video (just as he selectively and unfairly edited his cartoonish ACORN tapes).

Unbelievably, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack fired Sherrod based on Breitbart's creative editing, which left out Sherrod's real point (and in fact, accused her of making the opposite point) and also made it seem as though she was talking about something she did while working for the USDA, when the experience in question took place 24 years ago, when she worked for a nonprofit. If Vilsack doesn't hire Sherrod back, I will personally contribute to her legal fund.

(snip)
Shirley Sherrod is right: A lot of people are spending a lot of energy to get folks like the Spooners and Sherrod to think they should be enemies, when the real issue is class. The left should remember that lesson, because the right is invested in making sure no one learns it.

[notadmblnd]

1. Ms. Sherrod should due the crap out of him

Put him and his little website out of business.

[Lugnut]

2. K&R n/t!

[Doctor_J]

3. This debacle should convince even the most optimistic Dem

that we are never going to fight back. The war is over, and we lost without taking a single casualty. Pathetic

[spiritual_gunfighter]

4. Yep

Like Cenk said today, "Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart own this White House". This has been infuriating watching this unfold. I remember when the Sharrod story broke a couple of days ago, even people here on DU were condemning her. They should be fucking ashamed of themselves, and so should this cowardly White House. Fuck them really.

[Enthusiast]

5. Too late to K&R.

But it's a great article by Joan. She is certainly one of the good ones.

The key point is that the media manipulator's agenda is to divide America's poor/middle class. In this way the lower and middle classes will continue to vote against their own best interests.

The greedy big money interests are finished if Americans ever figure this out, and they know it. This is the very reason that Fox News was created. And this is why the Tea Party was created - with the sole purpose of maintaining this division/illusion. Tea Party members have defended corporate interests, all the way, while they continue to deride any attempt to enact meaningful reforms. They can scream and shout and deny this all they want but this is their true purpose.