Former USDA official Shirley Sherrod, forced by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to abruptly resign this week, was a victim of a conservative activist. On his website BigGovernment.com, Andrew Breitbart posted a video clip of Sherrod, who is an African American, telling an NAACP gathering that 24 years ago she had considered not giving as much help to an impoverished farmer as she might have because he was white. Truth be told, the clip did not run Sherrod’s full speech in which she said she realized that she had been wrong, and that need, not race, was what mattered.
The speech was about redemption. Fox News went with Breitbart’s out-of-context clip, and created a furor. A few days later, Sherrod was vindicated with the truth, Vilsack and the White House apologized, and she’s been offered another position with the Agriculture Department. She hasn’t yet decided if she will accept.
This messy affair could have been avoided with thoughtful inquiry. But we don’t do that much anymore, do we? Should we accept at face value the rants of conservative and liberal activists, political pundits, or anyone with access to mass media?
Now seems the time for an active citizenry to become more active. “Investigate before leaping” (to conclusions) should be our motto. Let’s discuss.
You state, as fact, that Ms. Sherrod was a "victim of a conservative activist". How do you justify such a statement? She was fired by the Secretary of Agriculture. I fear that the "iCitizenForum" is illustrating a considerable amount of bias.
Bill O'Reilly apologized and CNN did a piece on how "the media" reacted to the videoclip but Andrew Breitbart basically said it wasn't his fault that viewers should have watched the entire piece before reacting. This is one more example of big media charging ahead without doing due diligence to the facts. Shame on them all.
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