George Rebane
The Shirley Sherrod saga has reached the silly season. On RR, and probably many other blogs, the howls of how Fox News “snookered” the country and its government into an unjustified termination of the woman from her Dept of Ag job has reached hysteric heights. The comment threads stand as a permanent witness.
The timeline of events turns out to tell another story, a timeline that by regulation the FCC requires broadcasters to maintain of content that they air. Let’s take a look.
– On 27 March 2010 Ms Sherrod makes her famous NAACP speech and video. NAACP has the full video of the speech.
– Early April internet commentator Breitbart gets a copy of the video, and sits on it.
– Week of 12 July 2010 the NAACP announces its draft resolution that alleges the Tea Party movement as containing racist elements and proceeding toward a racist organization.
– 19 July 2010 at 0818EDT Breitbart posts the now infamous video segment of Sherrod’s speech. The WH finds out about it, briefs Obama who, as a minimum, does nothing to halt the intended firing of Sherrod because she will be “on Glenn Beck tonight.”
– By mid-afternoon on 19 July the Dept of Ag places three separate cell calls to Sherrod, in her car, demanding her resignation, and finally gets her to pull over and transmit her resignation on her Blackberry. She has been fired.
– 19 July 2010 5-6pm the Glenn Beck show airs on Fox with no mention of Sherrod or the incident.
– 19 July 2010 in the evening after Glenn Beck’s show, commentators O’Reilly, Hannity, van Sustern all cover the firing (announced on an Atlanta station, CNN?) and the Breitbart segment.
– 19 July 2010 about 2100, Fox News interrupts Hannity to confirm the firing of Shirley Sherrod.
– 19 July 2010 2355 (almost midnight) the NAACP “cheers” the WH firing of Sherrod and fully backs the decision.
Quite a day. And, of course, the leftwing media and blogs started screaming for the heads of Breitbart and Fox News way before the sun set that night. The comment threads from the left across the country have ranged from the thoughtful to the vile, but have uniformly condemned both Breitbart and Fox News for journalistic malfeasance.
There apparently is much confusion in the liberal ranks about the difference between commentary and objective news reporting. Commentators of all political hues picked up on the Breitbart posting during the afternoon of 19 July. The WH, which doesn’t consider Fox News to be a real news source and has given its imprimatur to the ‘Faux News’ label that is used today by most collectivist outlets, apparently gave the highest credence to every blogger it encountered that afternoon and hip drew the decision to get Sherrod out before the evening news cycle.
The above timeline is a matter of record that can be reconstructed at will from the FCC archive. What should be especially interesting is to review the original Breitbart video post, and then make a straight-faced case that that segment was sufficient for any kind of precipitous action, let alone a very public dismissal, by national institutions supposedly run under adult supervision.
[23jul2010 update] In a discussion with KVMR News Director Paul Emery today, he told me there was evidence that Fox News wrongly attacked Ms Sherrod on the air before she was fired. The evidence he emailed me is on this MSNBC program. The indictement starts with a Fox News clip which begins with the newscaster saying, “Breaking news tonight … “, indicating clearly that it was broadcast after the afternoon firing of Ms Sherrod. The rest of the MSNBC program presents numerous other Fox News clips with anchor Rachel Maddow tying it all together in a sequence that somehow omits the needed timeline to nail Fox News. In fact, all the clips shown seem to be of the post-firing evening programs. In trying to get to the bottom of who did what when, does someone have any time related material of what Fox News broadcast before the afternoon firing? If Fox News screwed up and then covered up, I want to post it.
But true to form, Ms Maddow, a handsome looking woman with a mouth like a razor, comes across convincing her viewers that Fox News fired Ms Sherrod. Maddow is good, I almost believed her myself until it suddenly occurred to me that there was something in the middle called the United States Government and the Obama Administration that may also have had a hand in it. Instead, Maddow makes out that the government was a sock puppet in which Fox News had its hand.
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