Anatomy of a smear campaign by Niki2

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Anatomy of a smear campaign

POSTED BY: NIKI2
UPDATED: Friday, July 23, 2010 05:24
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Thursday, July 22, 2010 11:00 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

This will bring the righties out of the woodwork to defend FauxNews, but given the continuing rhetoric about the voter fraud case, fair is fair. So:

From the Washington Post:

Quote:
the network didn't touch the story until her forced resignation was made public Monday evening, with the exception of brief comments by O'Reilly. After a news meeting Monday afternoon, an e-mail directive was sent to the news staff in which Fox Senior Vice President Michael Clemente said: "Let's take our time and get the facts straight on this story. Can we get confirmation and comments from Sherrod before going on-air. Let's make sure we do this right."

Sherrod may be the only official ever dismissed because of the fear that Fox host Glenn Beck might go after her.

Ffrom the New York Times:

Quote:
Fox News began its pursuit of Ms. Sherrod in prime time on Monday night on three successive opinion shows that reached at least three million people. Leading off, Mr. O'Reilly asked on his top-rated program, "Is there racism in the Department of Agriculture?" He discussed the tape, plugged Mr. Breitbart's Web site and demanded that Ms. Sherrod resign immediately.

By the time Mr. O'Reilly's remarks, which were taped in the afternoon, were broadcast, Ms. Sherrod had indeed resigned, a development that Fox's next host, Mr. Hannity, treated as breaking news at the beginning of his show. He played a short part of what he called the "shocking" video from Mr. Breitbart, and later discussed the development with a panel of guests, mentioning the N.A.A.C.P.'s recent accusations of racism within the conservative Tea Party movement.

"It is interesting they just lectured the Tea Party movement last week," Mr. Hannity said, telegraphing a talking point that would come up repeatedly on other shows.

Fox's 10 p.m. show also covered the resignation as breaking news. Ms. Sherrod later said Fox had not tried to contact her before running the video clip repeatedly on Monday.

Interesting discrepancies. “three successive opinion shows: v. “with the exception of brief comments”; “Let’s get our facts straight” v. “not doing my homework”. Lessee, the Washington Post is owned by whom?

Breitbart (may he rot in hell) claimed he asked the person who told him of the video to send him the “relevant clips”. Not the whole video, note, only that which was “relevant” ‘to his cry of “racism”. He isn’t finished, either. Now he’s focusing his attention on the AUDIENCE reaction to the parts of the Sherrod tape he says were racist, and the NAACP’s involvement. Unfortunately for him, there was no racist reaction from the audience, and the NAACP can’t be called to task for the speech, since it wasn’t racist, only edited to look that way.

David Frum (Republican and former Bush speechwriter, note) said the saddest thing is that Breitbart feels you can meet false accusations of racism (in Breitbart’s opinion) with false accusations of racism of your own, and that the way you respond to a mistake is not to apologize, but to make more accusations. He also lamented that Breitbart, once found out, then switched tactics to condemn the White House and NAACP for jumping to conclusions! Frum went on to say it’s sad that the right wing chose to focus on the White House mistake, not on the fact that there was a false story. He said the problem for the GOP is that some people are trying to focus on what’s wrong with Obama’s agenda, but those don’t get nearly as much attention as if (in his words) “you take a big block of cement and drop it on the country” (referring to the media picking up and running with the story. “While situations like this are exciting and get a lot of press, you can’t govern that way”. I think he makes some excellent points.

Note: I condemn both the White House and the NAACP for buying into this without checking the facts, and for being total woos Democrats for being so afraid of “looking bad”, just as much as I condemn FauxNews for running with it without checking as well, and Breitbart for taking advantage of the situation. The only difference is, Breitbart KNEW it was a fraud and used it to further an agenda.

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of __________________, code name ‘Nike”,
signing off

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Thursday, July 22, 2010 11:30 AM

WHOZIT

MSNBC and Comedy Centeral INVENTED this! How often does Olbermann, Maddow and Stewart butcher video to make Conservitives look bad? You reap what you sow!

Those arn't boobs, they're lies! - Stewie Griffin

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Friday, July 23, 2010 5:19 AM