Sherrod unloads on Breitbart and Fox News: ‘racist, biased’

July 21, 2010 · Posted in Andrew Breitbart, News and Current Affairs, People, Scandals, Shirley Sherrod 

Despite lame attempts by many on the right, including Glenn Beck and even Andrew Breitbart himself, to pretend that they sympathize with Shirley Sherrod, and that they had noooo intention of smearing her as a racist (it was that evil White House that did all that…) and in Breitbart’s case, to outright lie about what he was up to, clearly, she’s too smart to be drafted into their revision of history. Ms. Sherrod let Breitbart and his associated news network, Fox, have it with both barrels, in an interview with Media Matters:

Shirley Sherrod, the former Agriculture Department Georgia Director of Rural Development, says she is a victim. A victim of poor reporting and, as she contends, clear bias and racist coverage from both Andrew Breitbart and Fox News.

“When you look at their reporting, this is just another way of seeing that they are (racist),” Sherrod told me about Fox in a lengthy interview Tuesday night. “But I have seen that before now. I saw their reporting as biased during the Bush Administration and the Clinton Administration.”

How long before they go from “supporting” to attacking her again? Answer: not long.

Breitbart is back at it, again accusing Sherrod of being a racist, using snippets of the very same video, her March 27 speech before a Georgia NAACP chapter, to smear her again.

Sherrod also told Media Matters how her firing unfolded:

But after Breitbart posted the video clip, Sherrod said the lack of context and explanation sparked anger against her. She said she found out about the clip when someone e-mailed a link to her and asked about it.

“I couldn’t believe it. I found this out when someone sent me (a link to) the tape, people who follow him, who put it out there,” Sherrod said about Breitbart. “I got crank calls right away. Someone sent me an e-mail and link and said ‘shame on you’ and other stuff. I was sitting in a meeting and I was really upset.

“I texted back that they were so wrong and that they need to know the message and they got it wrong.”

Sherrod said Cheryl Cook, USDA deputy undersecretary, called her Monday and said she had to be on administrative leave.”

She adds: “People were calling and writing the Department of Agriculture in Athens, Ga., and Washington to tell them about it. That I needed to be fired. That a racist like me had no business working for the department. That is the way they intimidate people and it worked.”

By the end of the day Monday, she was forced to resign.

Sherrod, 62, said her first reaction was shock that, after a career working for civil rights and as the daughter of a father murdered by racists, she would be seen in such a terrible light.

“To have people say that I was such a racist was unbelievable,” she said of the fallout from the video and Fox coverage. “My whole life, if you look into what I have done, my father was murdered in 1965. If you look at all of us, we all hurt with that and we got involved into the movement and channeled our effort into good, instead of hating.

“I am getting hate calls and e-mails at this point. I got one call last night at my house at 12:30 a.m. that said ‘you lost your job, good for you’ and ‘bitch’ There are people out there who will believe that I am a racist person, even though the story is getting out there.”

And she said neither Breitbart (who she’d never heard of) nor anyone at Fox News ever contacted her to get her side of the story before running with Breitbarts smear. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t called at all…

“Not before they reported it,” she said of Fox’s negligence. “They have called me today and initially I had said yes (to an interview), but I thought about it and I did not think they intended to be fair in their reporting. They are going to say what they want to say regardless of what I say.”

She said Fox showed no professionalism in continuing to bother her for an interview, but failing to correct their coverage.

“I think they should but they won’t. They intended exactly what they did. They were looking for the result they got yesterday,” she said of Fox. “I am just a pawn. I was just here. They are after a bigger thing, they would love to take us back to where we were many years ago. Back to where black people were looking down, not looking white folks in the face, not being able to compete for a job out there and not be a whole person.”

Still, Fox continued to push for an interview with her, Sherrod said.

“It was unbelievable. I am refusing to be on there. They have been calling me and calling me. I have refused to do an interview because they are biased,” she explained. “I don’t think Fox News does it fairly. It is worse so now. I have sat and listened to the way they cover the news even before this administration and I saw what was going on.”

Sherrod said this situation has worsened her view of racism in media coverage.

“I think it is race. You think we have come a long way in terms of race relations in this country, but we keep going backwards,” she said. “We have become more racist. This was their doing, Breitbart put that together misrepresenting what I was saying and Fox carried it.”

Sherrod did have praise for other news outlets, notably CNN, NPR and ABC’s “Good Morning America,” whom she said gave her an opportunity to explain her side of the story. She said Fox is the only network she won’t go on. And good for her.

More on the Gibbs apology and Sherrod’s life before the conflagration from CNN.

Bill O’Reilly apologizes to Sherrod for not doing his homework.

The AJC asks whether libel charges against Breitbart could follow.

The WaPo storylab asks why more journalists didn’t just interview the farmers.

Not to be missed: Carville and Matalin fight on the air over Breitbart.

And Slate’s Tom Scocca kills:

Breitbart is rapidly perfecting the 21st-century mau-mau: Conservative white people are so afraid of being discriminated against that if you mention the fact that sometimes black people don’t like white people—even if you are telling a story about why racism is bad—you are automatically committing a hate crime against white conservatives. After three or four decades of whining about reverse racism, America now has achieved full-blown white victimology. The most powerful and dangerous groups in the nation are ACORN and the New Black Panther Party.

By 2013, Andrew Breitbart will be stuffing himself inside a trash bag, smearing himself with feces, and scrawling “honky” on his body.

Brilliant.

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Comments

One Response to “Sherrod unloads on Breitbart and Fox News: ‘racist, biased’”

  1. larry on November 10th, 2010 7:55 pm

    bias

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