How Glenn Beck, Not Andrew Breitbart, Screwed Shirley Sherrod, And How He Then Screwed Andrew Breitbart – UPDATED: Breitbart Issues $100,000 Lie Detector Challenge To Beck
May 25, 2011 16 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
UPDATE 1: About 7:15 P.M., today, May 24, Breitbart issued the following challenge to Glenn Beck, via Twitter.
I’ve got a lie detector & $100k to charity of your choice, @GlennBeck! Let’s have some good, old-fashioned ‘Truth Has No Agenda’ fun!
And, Breitbart reveals that he has spent the last year trying to resolve the issue diplomatically with Beck, to no avail:
1 year of trying to handle diplomatically, behind the scenes. And your suggestion now is what? @JulielvsISRAEL
Excerpted from Lee Stranahan’s piece in Big Government, which contains crucial videos:
Becks’ statements have helped muddy the actual story, leaving not just a false impression of Beck’s own involvement. Beck cuts out the context that Mrs. Sherrod’s remarks were placed in – namely, to show the NAACP audience’s reaction to Sherrod’s initial admission to not helping the white farmer. By dropping this essential detail, Beck helped promote the idea that Breitbart had launched an out-of-context personal attack on Sherrod.
Most of Beck’s impact comes from his TV platform, so his radio show comments flew under the radar. On the radio, Beck sliced and diced Breitbart’s two and a half minute video clip down to shorter sound bites. Beck focusing solely on Sherrod and dropping the NAACP angle that Breitbart had focused on. Beck’s radio show also edited out the section (that Breitbart had included) where Sherrod discusses it not ‘being all about race, but about rich and poor’.
At no point during Beck’s radio show does he do anything that could possibly be construed as defending Shirley Sherrod. Nor does he say anything about waiting to hear her side or waiting to see if more of the video will be released. In fact, at the end of the show Beck taunts Sherrod and says she will be the focus of his TV show that night.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the Fox News building.
In the last hour of Beck’s radio show, news breaks on CNN – apparently unknown to Beck, although I’ve since learned that there’s a ‘fourth hour’ of Beck available to private subscribers. I’ve been told that Sherrod was mentioned but I have not heard this personally.
(The following times are from Media Matter’s flawed but occasionally useful timeline.)
11:20 a.m.: On CNN Newsroom, farmer’s wife calls Sherrod a “friend” who “helped us save our farm.”
July 20, 2010 – Between Radio & TV Shows
Then Beck’s radio show finishes…and more of the story breaks in rapid succession.
1:03 p.m.: Video producer confirmed that “the full speech is exactly as Sherrod described … she goes on to explain learning the error of her initial impression.
1:36 p.m.: HotAir’s Morrissey reports that edited video was “the entirety of the speech [Breitbart] had in his possession.
3:58 p.m.: Breitbart confirms in a TPMMuckracker interview that he never had the full video of Sherrod’s remarks.
4 p.m.: Rick Sanchez devotes an entire hour of his show to the accusations against Sherrod
This all obviously changed the story from the way it was initially reported. And Andrew Breitbart was showing no signs that he was trying to hide anything. He said in that TPM interview…
Breitbart said he’ll post the full video, if he can get permission from the video production company who filmed it for a local NAACP chapter. He also maintained that he didn’t edit the clip and that it was sent to him already edited.
