By Brad Friedman on 8/4/2010, 11:36am PT  

The news this summer has largely focused on an unstoppable, slimy, toxic, oozing gusher polluting our nation. That, and on the BP oil disaster.

As to the unstoppable, slimy, toxic, oozing gusher, the Associated Press has continued in the recent tradition of its failed corporate media brethren by gracing Rightwing propagandist Andrew Breitbart with yet another puff profile piece today. The more Breitbart reveals himself to be a fully-discredited, pathological-liar, race-baiter and opportunist, it seems, the more the corporate media regard him as a player in modern Republican politics. That kind of makes sense when you think about it.

If one regards the "crazy-cons" that have become today's GOP as little more than one half of today's Right/Left, Red/Blue, Republican/Democratic, Conservative/Liberal "politics as usual" --- if, by "usual", one means the years immediately proceeding the American Civil War --- then why not offer another friendly profile to one of the four top leaders of that once-legitimate party? (The others being Beck, Limbaugh and Palin.)

So that's what AP's Michael R. Blood did today.

Since we tell the truth here at The BRAD BLOG, rather than just make shit up, and were, in no small part, somewhat responsible for helping to demonstrate to the nation that Breitbart's only actually "successful" disinfo campaign --- his faked ACORN "Pimp" Hoax tapes --- were completely phony, the AP has neither profiled us, nor even called us for comment as a "critic" of Breitbart's for their story. (They haven't issued corrections for their myriad of articles which misreported the ACORN story either, for that matter).

All of that makes sense, of course, because, as Media Matter's Eric Boehlert points out today, "in [their] 2,100-word profile coming in the wake of Breitbart's Sherrod debacle, the AP only set aside 13 of those words to quote a Breitbart critic."

And even those 13 words --- reported by Blood as "Critics said the heavily edited [ACORN] tapes shaped a deceptive narrative" --- are quickly made moot by AP as little more than an indeterminable, open-ended, he-said/she-said "charge Breitbart denies". Close enough for corporate mainstream media work, apparently.

Boehlert describes it this way...

This time the AP does the I-hung-out-with-Breitbart honors and pretty much rehashes what every other Breitbart writer has already explained about the man's past. Amazingly, in 2,100-word profile coming in the wake of Breitbart's Sherrod debacle, the AP only set aside 13 of those words to quote a Breitbart critic.

Any way, this AP passage in particular is just awful [emphasis added]:

Last year, one of Breitbart's websites debuted the hidden-camera sting videos made by James O'Keefe III and Hannah Giles that brought down the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. Giles posed as a prostitute, and the videos show ACORN staffers offering advice on taxes and other issues. Critics said the heavily edited tapes shaped a deceptive narrative, a charge Breitbart denies.

Oh, well that's interesting. "Critics" claim the ACORN tapes were deceptively edited, but Breitbart denies the charge. 

But of course, that's dead wrong. 

"Critics," such as Media Matters and blogger Brad Friedman, didn't say the tapes were heavily edited to create a deceptive narrative. We proved it. And we had some help from law enforcement on the East and West Coast who confirmed our claims that the ACORN tapes, without question, were heavily edited. But in the sympathetic eyes of the AP, the charge is quite fungible and Breitbart is allowed to simply deny it. 

Keep in mind that the ACORN tapes, prior to Breitbart's Sherrod face-plant episode, represented the crowning achievement of his career. Yet the fact that his one-hit wonder turned out to be a Milli Vanilli fake is of no interest of the AP, which lets Breitbart simply swat the embarrassment away by saying he "denies" the charge.

We've been trying to sneak in a few hours off this week near a lake in Southeast Texas. It's blisteringly hot and sunny here again today, with the Heat Index pushing 110 degrees, according to the Weather Channel --- not wholly unusual for August in this part of the country. But if Andrew Breitbart was to claim that it's cold and snowy near Houston today --- and if he were to post a video of an "August Snowstorm in Houston!" on his website this afternoon to "prove" it, apparently we'd be just another one of his "critics", according to AP. They would, of course, have no earthly way of definitively informing their readers as to which of those two "points of view" is actually the truth.

Gather your armies.

* * *

P.S. Aside from the points made above, including the AP's previous misreporting on the ACORN "Pimp" Hoax, Blood also offers out-and-out errors in his piece, including this one in regard to Breitbart's deceptively-edited Shirley Sherrod video:

He did not speak with Sherrod before the clipped video went up, and he says he was unaware of the complete speech at the time. By his account, he posted the clip to expose racism within the NAACP, which last month passed a resolution condemning what it said were racist elements within the tea party. He wrote that the 1986 video shows "nodding approval" in the crowd to Sherrod's remarks, which he sees as evidence of bigotry.

The video in question was not from 1986, but from March of this year. The story Sherrod is seen telling in the video was one that took place for her in 1986, not recently, as Breitbart misrepresented it to his readers.

Moreover, Breitbart has inaccurately and repeatedly claimed, since the video was revealed to have been dishonestly edited before being published on his website, that the crowd "applauded" and "cheered" for the racial biases that Sherrod describes as having overcome in the complete, unedited video. The NAACP crowd, as your own eyes and ears can tell you, did nothing of the sort. Reporting that he merely characterized their reaction as "nodding approval" is both inaccurate and dishonest. AP and Blood owe readers a correction. Perhaps they'll get to it just after they get around to redacting and correcting their repeatedly inaccurate coverage of the ACORN "Pimp" Hoax.

Share article...
                 

Article Categories: AP, Dirty Tricks, Mainstream Media Failure, Accountability, ACORN, Andrew Breitbart