Media Extremism
Shirley Sherrod and the Right: A Day That Will Live in Infamy
originally posted by Mark Potok for Hatewatch | Southern Poverty Law Center [click here]
Jul 21st
The entire Shirley Sherrod affair is so disgusting, such a stomach-churning episode of right-wing lies, propagandists posing as “journalists,” and craven political cowardice and gullibility, that it’s hard to know who to be most enraged at.
Andrew Breitbart, a particularly vile propagandist of the American right who presented a severely edited videotape of a speech by the Agriculture Department official to falsely label her an anti-white racist? Fox News, several of whose miserable excuses for journalists relentlessly plugged the entirely false story before and after Sherrod was fired? Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who had a minion call Sherrod on a cell phone and insist that she pull over to the side of the road and text in her resignation before any of the relevant background facts about the “scandal” emerged? The White House, which, apparently frightened of appearing in any way linked to black racism, stood by the forced resignation even when it became clear that Sherrod’s speech was nothing like what Breitbart suggested? Even the NAACP acted poorly in this sorry episode, saying it was “appalled” by Sherrod’s words and later “concurring” with her firing. (To its credit, the civil rights group quickly recognized its error, retracting its comments yesterday and saying it had been “snookered” by Breitbart and Fox’s falsehoods.)
Here’s the story in brief, for those few people who still don’t know about it. On Monday, Breitbart — the same loathsome character who publicly called Ted Kennedy a “pile of human excrement” a few hours after the senator’s death — aired a video of Sherrod speaking to an NAACP banquet in Georgia last March. In his edited version, Sherrod is shown talking about initially not wanting to help a white man who was facing the loss of his farm because of her anger toward white racists. But the tape presented by Breitbart, who was furious about the NAACP’s recent criticism of racism within the ranks of the Tea Parties, left out the crucial conclusion of what was really Sherrod’s tale of redemption — that in the course of the 1986 case she was discussing, she came to realize that “the struggle is really about poor people,” and that her anti-white feelings were wrong. She said the case changed her entire outlook. (And in fact the farmer and his wife were all over the media yesterday, saying that Sherrod had saved their farm, was a fine and caring woman, and should get her job back.)
FoxNews.com and Fox Nation, both parts of Fox News, immediately picked up Breitbart’s fairy tale and began plugging it, as did Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly (who demanded Sherrod’s resignation in taped comments run after she quit) and a number of other right-wing media outlets. (Many of these reports, following Breitbart, claimed that Sherrod’s actions in the 1986 case had occurred while she was an Agriculture employee — a complete falsehood.) That prompted Vilsack to have her thrown out of her job as the department’s director of rural development in Georgia (to the applause of an array of Fox hosts and guests) — an act that Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen rightly described today as pure political “cowardice.” Vilsack didn’t bother to hear Sherrod’s side of the story first, and he didn’t watch the full videotape. Incredibly, even as the true story began to emerge, Vilsack said he was sticking by Sherrod’s ouster, because, “rightly or wrongly,” perceptions about her comments could make her job more difficult. Then, early this morning, the Associated Press quoted an unnamed White House official saying President Obama had been briefed on the situation but was supporting Vilsack’s decision.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this kind of wilting of White House officials under pressure from the political right. They fired Van Jones, a White House environmental advisor, after Fox’s Glenn Beck made false claims that he was a “black nationalist” and former “radical communist” who was using green jobs as a form of “stealth reparations.” They repudiated an accurate 2009 Department of Homeland Security report that was leaked and then attacked by right wingers for supposedly defaming conservatives — a charge that was patently false.
Let’s take a closer look at a couple of the other actors in this nasty little episode.
Andrew Breitbart is a former editor for the right-wing Drudge Report (which also participated in the plugging of Breitbart’s video) and a columnist for the arch-conservative Washington Times who sometimes substitutes for Michael Savage, a radio talk show host who regularly makes racist remarks on the air (and who, I should say in the interest of full disclosure, has attacked me personally many times). It was one of Breitbart’s websites that aired videos made by right-wing activists of ACORN employees giving advice concerning prostitution, and that later suggested that ACORN was destroying incriminating documents. (California Attorney General Jerry Brown investigated, concluding there was no criminal activity depicted on the “severely edited” tapes Breitbart aired.) Breitbart also has claimed that Congressmen John Lewis and Andre Carson “made up” a story about being repeatedly called “niggers” during a walk through a Tea Party rally. His evidence? There was no videotape of the insults.
Breitbart recently blogged about the “insufferable assholes” he claims populate the mainstream media. Ironically enough, given the revolting role he played in the defaming of Shirley Sherrod, John Lewis and others, he described “the racket that is modern journalism,” saying that journalists “lie when they claim to be objective.” Elsewhere, in his first column about Sherrod, he crowed that “the new media will not be silenced.”
Which brings us to Fox News, that infamous purveyor of falsehoods, wildly skewed reporting and propaganda posing as real facts (some of Fox’s “journalists” even later suggested that Fox had never plugged the Sherrod tape story). As my colleague Alexander Zaitchik wrote on this blog Monday, the network has “a long history of crude and transparent race-baiting.” And Zaitchik wasn’t even talking about the Sherrod spectacle — he was writing about Fox’s current obsession with the “scandal” of the Justice Department dismissing part of a voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party, a black racist hate group. On MSNBC last night, Rachel Maddow did a serious takedown of Fox’s rantings about Sherrod.
The United States faces many serious problems in the year 2010, from a crashed economy to the largest oil spill in our history. But no American should ignore another serious threat to our integrity as a nation and a culture: the far-right propagandists, their media and political enablers, and the political cowardice that allows complete falsehoods to destroy perfectly innocent human beings.
Another Long, Hot Black Nationalist Summer at Fox News
originally posted by Alexander Zaitchik for Hatewatch | Southern Poverty Law Center [click here]
Jul 19th
It must be July, because Fox News is once again hyperventilating over a racially charged non-story. One year ago, it was Glenn Beck’s crusade against Van Jones, the White House environmental advisor who, the host charged, day after day and against all available evidence, was a black nationalist using green jobs as a form of “stealth reparations.”
One year later, the channel’s marquee hosts and anchors are tag-teaming a new fear-mongering race fantasy — the idea that the New Black Panther Party, with the assistance of the Obama Administration, is currently hanging its black militant fangs directly over the arteries of the republic.
On nearly 100 occasions since June 30, Fox News anchors and hosts have breathlessly discussed the marginal group and the “scandal” of the Justice Department’s dismissal of a voter intimidation case filed against two of its members who were videotaped standing outside a Philadelphia poll station on Election Day 2008. (For more sober accounts of the events, read here and here and here.)
Nobody familiar with the Fox network’s long history of crude and transparent race-baiting should be surprised by the conclusion of Abigail Thernstrom, a conservative George W. Bush appointee on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. “This doesn’t have to do with the Black Panthers,” Thernstrom told Politico. “This has to do with their fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the [Obama] administration.”
And what better way to do that than play sensationalized loops of militant-looking black men with zero political power or connections to the White House?
We’ve seen this before. Here’s Glenn Beck announcing his fatwa against Van Jones, one year ago this week:
“[Obama's] new science czar, Van Jones, is a guy that was all caught up in the Rodney King trial and he was actually arrested. He was a radical communist. … He is still a black nationalist. He is also now your green job czar. … Your country is being hijacked. They are using things like green jobs as a front. In the context of Obama-style reparations, that’s what they’re doing. [Jones] is yet another community organizer. This is yet another black nationalist in the same way that Reverend Jeremiah Wright is a black nationalist. … America, you need to wake up, because this country is being transformed. It is way beyond socialism. It is into black nationalism.”
None of which was true. But the campaign served its purpose.
By pounding this drum and inflaming existing (but mostly low-intensity) anxiety over the election of a black president, Beck and his FNC colleagues have steadily and deliberately helped create a new generation of hysterical, racially paranoid political activism across the country. Over the last couple of years, Hatewatch has chronicled this growth, which shows no sign of slowing down. Typical of the numerous examples of FNC-inspired literature that continues to pop up across the land is a flyer distributed for a meeting organized last week in Suches, Ga., by a self-styled “Patriot” named R. Keith Martin. Among the subjects discussed at Martin’s meeting were “Race-Based Tyranny” and “Our Black Imbroglio.”
“White racism is rare,” explains the flyer, “but black racism is raging.”
Of course, there is no evidence that this is true. Which raises the rhetorical question of where on earth Martin could possibly have gotten the idea.
An Irritated World Net Daily Denounces Terrible Reviews
originally posted by Larry Keller for Hatewatch | Southern Poverty Law Center [click here]
May 10th
For an organization that loathes the mainstream media, World Net Daily sure craves their acceptance. The book publishing division of the far-right, Obama-obsessed organization released a new title about the president last week and it’s furious about the contempt with which major news organizations have greeted it. So much so that WND sent out two E-mail alerts last week to complain bitterly about the hostility. And, in a novel marketing ploy, the publisher urges people to buy the book as a means of defying the same traditional media whose approval it covets.
The book — The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists by Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott — was among Amazon.com’s top 10 sellers last week; it had fallen to 16th as of this morning. It claims to have uncovered “copious new details” about Obama’s ties to one-time Weather Underground co-founder William Ayers and to a “radical, far-left church” during his childhood, as well as his supposed associations with the Nation of Islam and black political extremists. There also are claims linking Obama senior advisers Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod to communist activists.
“The book seeks to expose an extremist coalition of communists, socialists and other radicals working both inside and outside the administration to draft and advance current White House policy goals,” says a WND press release.
This is standard fare at WND, which continues to obsess over Obama’s birthplace, even though there is no credible evidence he was born anywhere but Hawaii, making him a U.S. citizen.
Klein’s publicist was greeted, not with mere indifference, but downright hostility after she sent press releases pitching The Manchurian President to her list of media contacts. She couldn’t even give the book to some of them. Here were some responses she received, according to WND:
• “Ridiculous crap” — a New York Daily News editor
• “Absolute crap” — a Huffington Post editor
• “Never, ever contact me again” — a Time magazine writer
• “Sensational rubbish” — a Newsweek editor
• “Seriously, get a life” — an AOL writer
Some might see these responses as merely reflecting a lack of interest in searching for dubious links floated by often anonymous sources to draw predictable conclusions. WND, however, sees it as proof of that the media is protecting an undeserving president. The Web-based publisher breezily dismisses the mainstream news organizations as “the dying, dinosaur media” who are “not even interested in a good story! That’s why it’s important for you to crush the gatekeepers, stomp on them, destroy their temples, burn their groves, smash their false idols. You can do that by doing the opposite of what they want you to do. In this case, they don’t want you to know about Manchurian President, apparently because it dethrones one of their political icons. So be sure to read it.”
And then, WND helpfully displays a link and a telephone number to order the book and “poke them right in the eye by being aware of their efforts to control you and what you know” — and, of course, to help WND’s bottom line.
He’s Back: Robert Stacy McCain and the Washington Times
originally posted by Heidi Beirich for Hatewatch | Southern Poverty Law Center [click here]
Mar 10th
Robert Stacy McCain, a former key Washington Times editor who has suggested that “perfectly rational people” react with “altogether natural revulsion” to interracial marriage, apparently has returned as a free-lancer to the newspaper he left in January 2008. In a “Special to The Washington Times” article published today, McCain covers a congressional race in upstate New York involving a candidate with connections to the Tea Party movement.
A casualty of the housecleaning that occurred at the Times three years ago, McCain left the paper on his own accord after managing editor Fran Coombs, with whom he was close, was terminated (Coombs had his own connections to white supremacy).
Once identified as a member of the neo-Confederate hate group League of the South, McCain’s reporting while at the Times was always controversial. As editor of the “Culture Briefs” section of the paper, McCain used excerpts from racist publications including American Renaissance magazine and the anti-immigrant hate site VDARE.com. In fact, McCain may be the only mainstream newspaper reporter to have covered four American Renaissance conferences. Twice, he offered no description at all of the group he was covering, which is devoted to race science. Once, he said it was “critical of liberal positions on race and immigration.” Only in 2004 did he note that some viewed it as racist.
Breaching journalist ethics by reporting on causes he was personally involved in, McCain regularly quoted neo-Confederate activists favorably in his stories. In 2005, stories freelanced by McCain to the website of the conservative newspaper Human Events were scrubbed after that publication’s editor, Thomas Winter, was given information by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report about McCain’s racism.
It is unclear if McCain’s return is related in any way to the resignation last year of John Solomon, the longtime Associated Press reporter who was brought in as the Times’ executive editor in 2008 after the dismissal of Coombs and others. Solomon’s hire was widely seen as the Times’ effort to clean up a reputation that was badly soiled by its overt partisanship.
Since leaving the Times, McCain has run a rather prolific and bombastic blog about politics and culture. An E-mail seeking comment today from McCain about the nature of his rekindled relationship with the Times was not immediately answered.