The controversy continues over a video of Georgia director of Rural Development Shirley Sherrod at the NAACP. Sherrod, and many supporters, have objected that the tape from the NAACP event was clearly edited to cut off her comments to mislead the viewers. Andrew Breitbart released the video but insists that he did not edit it. The question is whether Sherrod can sue over the video. Most criticism is focusing on Andrew Breitbart who released the video on his media sites. Raw Story released the full video without the editing. In response, Breitbart told Fox News “this is not about Shirley and Andrew.” He appears half right given the growing condemnations directed at him.
The video itself is certainly misleading as edited.
Sherrod immediately objected that the remarks were “misconstrued.” Nevertheless, she resigned after the video was made public and was denounced by both the NAACP and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. She claims that she was forced to resign by the White House. The White House later issued an apology to Sherrod.
UPDATE: Vilsack has apologized to Sherrod and offered her a “unique position.”
The NAACP has now retracted the original statement below.
This video shows Sherrod recounted “the first time I was faced with having to help a white farmer save his farm” and how she viewed the farmer as trying to be “superior” to her while she controlled the money for such farmers.
“He had to come to me for help. What he didn’t know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me was I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him . . . I was struggling with the fact that so many black people have lost their farmland and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land — so I didn’t give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough.”
She notes that, to avoid any later complaints, she said she took him to see “one of his own” — a white lawyer” “I figured that if I take him to one of them, that his own kind would take care of him.”
Media Matters has responded to the story and accused Breitbart of misleading people on the story. They note that Sherrod was telling a story she had described took place decades ago when she worked for the Federation of Southern Cooperative/Land Assistance Fund. The video reportedly excluded the fact that Sherrod spoke of how she went on to work with and befriend the man. She is quoted as saying at the end of the story: “And I went on to work with many more white farmers,” she said. “The story helped me realize that race is not the issue, it’s about the people who have and the people who don’t. When I speak to groups, I try to speak about getting beyond the issue of race.”
This account is supported by the farmer’s wife who credited Sherrod with saving their land. For the video interview, click here.
There is no question that the edited material left a false impression as to the point of the speech. Before getting to the possible legal consequences of such editing, it is important to note that the added material is redeeming but still leaves some disturbing racial elements in the speech. First, the video appears to show a few members of the audience responding positively to the racially-loaded portions of the speech, though that is subject to interpretation. Moreover, these audience comments are not made by Sherrod. However, it is disturbing to hear positive reactions to that portion of the speech. One possible interpretation is that the audience understood where she was going with the speech or was simply encouraging her in a build up to the crescendo of the speech. Second, Sherrod clearly states that roughly 20-25 years ago, she was viewing individuals in strikingly racial terms. That would put this story around the late 1980s and 1990s. It is pretty shocking to hear that Sherrod was still thinking of that white should work with their “own kind” and viewed the case in largely racial terms. The ultimate result of Sherrod overcoming race is commendable, but I have to say that I do not agree that it fully answers the concerns about this story. I would be very disturbed to hear that a white politician was in 1986 uncomfortable with fully assisting black people and actively sought to have “one of their kind” help them. It may be a sign of my age, but 1986 doesn’t feel that long ago and I would have been appalled to hear such views at that time. Moreover, the racial elements of the speech seemed to in part explain the earlier view in light of how black farmers were being treated. In defense of Sherrod, it has been noted that she was working for the Federation of Southern Cooperative/Land Assistance Fund, which specifically aids black farmers.
Putting aside this issue, the editing was clearly intended to make the story worse than it was. She uses the racially loaded story to explain that “That’s when it was revealed to me that it’s about poor versus those who have.” That is a very different story where she was trying to explain how she learned to overcome racial sentiments. Other leaders like the late Henry Byrd Jr., made similar redemptive speeches. While I am still bothered by the fact that this was a revelation in the 1980s or 1990s (as opposed to the 1950s or 1960s), it is still a very different story than shown on the video released by Breitbart.
The question is whether there is legal recourse for such editing. There is but it is not easy. An employment action based on being pressured to resign is doubtful. Company and government lawyers often prefer employees to resign because it effectively waives a host of statutory and common law protections. Sherrod herself has stated that she is not sure she even wants her job back. It would have been a far stronger case if she had forced termination proceedings. However, at least one expert thinks she might have a case under employment law.
John Dean wrote a terrific piece on this issue.
The most obvious claims would be false light and defamation.
The Restatement Second defines the tort of false light:
652E. Publicity Placing Person in False Light
One who gives publicity to a matter concerning another that places the other before the public in a false light is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy, if
(a) the false light in which the other was placed would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, and
(b) the actor had knowledge of or acted in reckless disregard as to the falsity of the publicized matter and the false light in which the other would be placed.
This would certainly seem to be a case of intentional or reckless act. It could also be claimed to be highly offensive to a reasonable person. However, the editor can claim that the tape was meant to show not just the racially loaded comments of a speaker but the reaction of the audience to that portion of the speech. Moreover, Sherrod is still admitting to pretty disturbing racial views in her earlier view of white farmers from the 1980s or 1990s. That is not an entirely complete defense, however, because it still does not explain why the editor would cut out the point of the story.
False light cases have resulted in high damages against news organizations as in this case. However, this verdict was later overturned, which rejected the very use of false light as a tort action.
Some states have curtailed or abandoned false light because such cases can be properly heard in defamation cases. In this case, Sherrod would be considered a public figure or limited public figure. As such, she would need to prove that the editor or people like Breitbart acted with knowledge of the falsity or reckless disregard of the falsity. The question is whether it was false in terms of what was intended to be shown. The editor could claim that he or she was seeking to show the racial elements at the NAACP in response to that organization’s criticism of the Tea Party. That is the position taken by Breitbart in interviews in response to outrage over his role in the controversy,here
Of course, if Sherrod were to sue, she would likely make it past initial motions to dismiss and could secure embarrassing discovery in the case, including possible internal emails and communications on the purpose of the editing and release of the video.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/opinion/25rich.html?_r=1&ref=frankrich “The casualty count spikes in the Fox News race war.”
BIL:
Thought that you would like to know,that over the week-end NPR gave a nice tribute to the late Daniel Schorr.
On web and cable, speed and competition trump accuracy and objectivity
Published: Sunday, July 25, 2010, 6:25 AM
John Farmer
AP Photo/NAACPIn this image from video provided by the NAACP, Shirley Sherrod is shown speaking in March, 2010, at a local NAACP banquet in Georgia. A conservative website posted video of Sherrod’s remarks, causing a furor which led to her condemnation by the NAACP and her ouster by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack before both reversed themselves.
Back when American political journalism was in full flower (without the weed of cable television) newcomers to the trade were lectured sternly about the need to treat every story, every nugget of information, with an informed skepticism.
In its most picaresque form it was expressed thusly: “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”
A lot of the best that characterized the old journalism has been lost in this brave new electronic world, including the admonition to be wary even of mom, and to verify everything. Just more nostalgia, you say? Not really.
The latest evidence of this slippage in standards is the mistreatment of Shirley Sherrod, a rural development director for the Agriculture Department in Georgia. An African-American, Sherrod was the victim of a politically edited tape recording that made her appear biased against a white farmer whom she supposedly denied help.
Just about every individual or institution involved did her wrong — Andrew Breitbart, the conservative blogger who put the tampered tape into circulation; the NAACP, which denounced her before backtracking, and the Obama administration, which fired her before trying to rehire her. But the bulk of the blame belongs to the media — specifically cable television led by Fox, infamous for faux and biased news.
Our friends at Fox swallowed Breitbart’s concoction hook, line and misrepresentation, flogging it almost hourly. There appears to have been no serious effort to check the tape or Breitbart’s motivation. Other cable and internet outlets compounded the damage by simply repeating the tale before taking the time to examine it.
Once CNN and other news organizations did begin to look closer, they discovered that Sherrod had actually intervened to help the white farmer, Roger Spooner, as Spooner and his wife rushed to attest. And once the full tape of Sherrod’s remarks came out, it became clear they had been taken completely out of context.
Why is this sordid story such a big deal? Because it illustrates the extent to which cable TV news threatens to erode the credibility of all political journalism since it’s now a dominant force in political reportage.
The imperatives that drive cable television — speed and the struggle for revenue in a highly competitive news environment — have pushed accuracy and objectivity off stage for the most part.
That same kind of cut-throat competition once existed in print journalism. But it perished for the most part with the demise of the afternoon papers, where speed in meeting recurring P.M. deadlines sometimes compromised accuracy. Today there’s less real competition in the print field and thus less need for speed.
Most newspapers, especially local papers, enjoy a near monopoly and can take some time to evaluate breaking news and submit stories to the judgment of more than one editor. TV, with its all-news, all-the-time format has too little time for such scrutiny. That’s especially true of cable TV, but has also hurt broadcast television; the rush to judgment with a bogus story about George W. Bush’s military service cost even the iconic Dan Rather his job.
TV’s other great drawback in covering politics and public policy is its inability to clearly separate news from opinion. The two get blurred. A newspaper can designate the editorial pages that stake out its stand on issues and the Op-Ed pages that provide a sampling of opinion on a range of issues. TV, especially cable, hasn’t figured out how to do that yet.
All this, dear reader, may seem like a lot of inside journalistic baseball — and it is. But it’s especially important today, as issues become more complex and contentious, that the public understands how the rendering of news has changed and the difference between the print and electronic media. It’s best to view them both, but especially cable TV and the blogosphere as well, the way we were advised to all those years ago to treat what mother said.
“Check it out.”
BiL; here is my ‘spambucket’:
If you get spam email that you think is deceptive, forward it to spam@uce.gov.
The FTC uses the spam stored in this database to pursue law enforcement actions against people who send deceptive email.
A related lawsuit was just filed in San Diego where Breitbart employee James O’Keefe is being sued for exactly the same type of misleading editing.
Former ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera is suing O’Keefe and unnamed “John Does” who helped O’Keefe publicize the narrative that Vera wanted to help commit crimes. The San Diego videos showed Vera in a false context as well, claiming he was helping O’Keefe’s pimp character when it is not proven – Vera says he was playing along to humor O’Keefe.
But O’Keefe never mentioned Vera called the police. FOX and Hannity ran with the story, again without checking it, without contacting the subject for a statement and without independent corroboration.
This lack of basic journalistic due diligence should become the lesson of the Sherrod scandal. With FOX, Hannity and Breitbart, we have activist broadcasters with a bitterly partisan point of view. While they should continue to enjoy their free speech, they must be shamed into including all relevant facts in these reports.
Hannity has been caught editing crowd scenes so he also has established a pattern of deception and never replies to articles that fact-check his fraudulent claims. Recently convicted on federal charges, O’Keefe has another ACORN worker suing him in Philadelphia as well.
But Breitbart is the conduit for O’Keefe’s reporting, encouraging illegal activities in the pursuit of partisan narratives.
Tony,
All interesting possibilities. We’ll see if they try again.
@Buddha: This actually looks like a study, to me. Notice the one sentence of very bad English grammar (“Still interested to use our services,”) plus “please filling the space below for verification purpose.”)
But the other sentences use a more fluent grammar than that shown in the above sentence. That makes me think the above sentence is purposely crafted to have bad grammar or sound like it is spoken by a foreigner. And if that is done ON PURPOSE, then the sender isn’t striving to actually GET your information, they just want to see if you respond!
That sounds like a study; some sociology student or psychology student trying to see how many people will fall for a message that is obviously not sent by a professional firm.
You may have been counted as one of the gullible; or maybe not. It depends on whether they just counted responses, or had a computer program read the messages. For ethical reasons the researcher could not personally read the responses (or test if they were real); but they COULD both count the responses, and have a computer program check to see if the elements were actually filled in, before deleting the responses.
Or, I suppose it could be truly incompetent criminals.
Curiouser and curiouser.
I got some interesting “spam” to my e-mail blind today from somebody trying to impersonate Google employees. It’s from address pwwadxcv@gmail.com. Let’s see if you all can guess what’s wrong with this picture:
“There is an on going email congestion due to anonymous registration of our service so we are shutting down some accounts and your account will be automatically deleted. Still interested to use our services, please filling the space below for verification purpose.Your email address needs verification for user safety.
Full name: …………………….
Password: ……………………..
Date Of Birth:………………..
Country:…………………………..
Your account will not be interrupted after following the instructions and your service will continue as normal.We apologize for any inconveniences
Thank you for using Gmail.”
My response was to the point:
“Oh, I’m still interested in the service alright.
What I’m not interested in is providing my personal information and access data for this account to some anonymous douche bag pretending to represent Google.
You see, I know quite a bit about computers – much more than you apparently – and this doesn’t pass the smell test in the slightest. Google would handle congestion issues much differently from a technical standpoint.
You smell like a hacker, so fuck you.”
Gee, I wonder who’d try to do something ham-handed like that? And why?
Any speculation regulars?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MHEuudJ-o0&hl=en_US&fs=1]
“Gotta find a scapegoat when things are going bad, don’t we? Gee, has anything like that ever happen before in history?????”
Yes, but to really get the flavor of it, one needs to be able to read and/or speak German.
Correction: Breitbart and Limbaugh and their ilk understand this and are doing THEIR best to stoke the fire of racism and resentment in the 21st century.
Isabel,
I wonder how you would have felt if you were a young black woman whose father was killed by a white farmer who was never prosecuted for his crime. Do you think racism in the US was a thing of the past in the 1980s and 1990s? It’s still with us today. I believe it was the election of Obama that brought the racism simmering under under the surface out into the open. Breitbart and Limbaugh and their ilk understand this and are doing the best to stoke the fire of racism and resentment in the 21st century. Gotta find a scapegoat when things are going bad, don’t we? Gee, has anything like that ever happen before in history?????
Isabel:
She was not IN the government when the incident she was talking about occurred, she was working for a non-profit agency that was formed to assist BLACK FARMERS, and she was approached by a white farmer looking for her help. At first she referred him to a white lawyer, but when the white lawyer was telling the white farmers to give up, she actually DID step in and help them save their farm. She says that it was THEN she realized it was about poor versus rich, not black versus white.
And the Neocon trolls circle their wagons around Brietbigot.
Almost as if on cue . . .
Like someone was pulling their strings . . .
You wrote”She uses the racially loaded story to explain that “That’s when it was revealed to me that it’s about poor versus those who have.””
The discussion should be about media liability. They re-edited Breitbart’s tapes and dropped 56 very important seconds. O’Reilly admitted that he had not listened to the entire tape before he aired the reedited tape on Monday. He changed his views after he did.
The statement that you quoted was in Breitbart’s video. I saw the video Monday morning and immediately identified it as a tale of redemption. They are commonly told by members of the congregation in Southern churches. The complete tape elaborates the story, but does not change the gist of it. If you start the tape at 1:44, you will see it:
http://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2010/07/19/video-proof-the-naacp-awards-racism2010/
He has added a correction at the top and a blurb on the video to correct the date. Otherwise, the site is the same as I remember from Monday.
O’Reilly said he was misled by Breitbart’s calling her a racist in his introduction. However, that seems to be due to his poor wording. He said, “Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement.” I first read it to mean that the whole clip was racist and could not reconcile it with what I had viewed. However, in the context, he clearly referring to the racist portion. In the previous paragraph, he said, “Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help.”
From Media Matters for America
Circling the wagons: Right-wing media figures rush to defend Breitbart
July 23, 2010
http://mediamatters.org/research/201007230019
Elaine M.,
And a dollar short.
AY–
You’re a day late with this news. Check out my comment at 9:24am yesterday. That said, this is a long thread and some folks might have missed it. I’ve referred to Breitbart as a scumbag at the Turley blawg. I like your pejorative better!
Timeline of Breitbart’s Sherrod smear
Media Matters has documented a timeline of Andrew Breitbart’s smear of Shirley Sherrod, from Breitbart’s initial posting of his deceptively edited clip of Sherrod — which was amplified by Fox News and other right-wing media — through the release of the full video of Sherrod’s comments, which made clear the context of her remarks.
http://mediamatters.org/research/201007220004
It appears that she may have a case against this asswipe…