Conservative Blogger Exposes Breitbart/Stranahan's Latest Dishonesty About Sherrod Story

Of course, everyone by now knows the story of Andrew Breitbart's websites presenting highly edited video of Shirley Sherrod designed to make her look racist while leaving out the redemptive arc that was the whole point of her original story. But one thing you might not be aware of is that Glenn Beck was actually given credit on that story for acknowledging that the original videos were out of context and correcting the record on his Fox News Show. For example, here's what the New York Times wrote:

The administration’s haste to fire Ms. Sherrod was unfair and unseemly. She told of how an agriculture under secretary phoned her to demand she resign instantly via her BlackBerry. The official anxiously cited the likelihood the furor would “be on Glenn Beck tonight.”

By the time the conservative commentator took up the issue, the full transcript of the speech was out and Mr. Beck was citing Ms. Sherrod — but as a victim of administration recklessness. This time, he was right.

Beck's website The Blaze was also later credited with revealing the fact that James O'Keefe's smear job against NPR was also based on an out-of-context clip where the person was actually quoting someone else (sound familiar?). For these reasons and because Breitbart thinks Beck is trying to grab his share of the conservative media market, Breitbart and his minions have been working overtime to attack Glenn Beck lately.

The latest example was a piece by Breitbart's resident faux liberal Lee Stranahan claiming that Beck told "Out of Control Lies" about the Sherrod fiasco. Actually, it's not really important whether Stranahan is liberal or conservative, because what is beyond doubt at this point is that Stranahan is a completely untrustworthy source of information who endlessly distorts reality to try to defend his employer Breitbart. And his latest on Sherrod is a great example of this.

Stranahan claims that Beck was "lying" when he said that he "didn't rush to condemn" Sherrod and that he held off on the story. Here's Stranahan:

As you’ll see, both of those statements are totally false. Glenn Beck not only didn’t initially defend Sherrod but he actually dropped the entire context that Sherrod’s video clip was originally presented in. Close to a year later, Beck still hasn’t been honest about his initial context dropping attacks on Sherrod.

And later:

This is patently false. Yes – on his TV show on July 20th, Beck defended Sherrod…but as you’ll see, this was after Beck has attacked Sherrod for three segments of his radio show.

And worst of all:

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.

So Stranahan is claiming that Beck attacked Sherrod throughout the radio show, but later pretended that he had reservations about the story from the beginning. Stranahan does acknowledge that he's heard there is a "Fourth Hour" of Beck's radio show available for subscribers, but like a true "Breitbart schmournalist," he doesn't bother to check what's in that fourth hour before declaring that Beck is a liar. Unfortunately for Stranahan, it turns out that, contrary to Stranahan's claims, the radio show did in fact defend Sherrod and say that it looks like the videos were out of context. Here's a short clip showing them doing just that just released from conservative Joe Brooks:

Here's the full fifteen minute version for those who are truly dedicated:


Stranahan also claims at various times that Beck's show used "clip-job" editing. However, Beck included Breitbart's line that Sherrod sent the farmer "to his own kind," which of course is the basis of Breitbart's claim that he included the redemptive arc of Sherrod's story in his original post. In fact, Breitbart tried to make her sound racist even in that part of his post, and the actual redemptive arc was something else entirely.

So while Beck's radio program on July 20th was initially critical of Sherrod, they defended her at the end of the show and, in fact, argued that it looked like she had been wronged and that this was an example of the media taking stories out of context. In other words, Stranahan's attempt at attacking Beck to defend his employer Breitbart was based entirely on falsehoods.

h/t to Joe Brooks for releasing the relevant video.