Never Trust Andrew Breitbart

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Irrelevant. All Breitbart has to do is testify that he truly believed she was a racist based on her statements; legally she's got nothing.

So many assume that Sherrod was a "public figure" when the doctored video was released and so the standards to get Breitbart must be higher, his malice towards her personally must be proved. Just becasue she worked for the government doesn't make her a public figure. Just because she gave a talk to the NAACP that no one outside a small group of people saw, that doesn't make her a public figure. Some said, "No one can prove that Breitbart saw Sherrod and decided to get her personally". Oh, really? What was Sherrod to him. A black woman working for the Evil Big Government! The epitome of Evil in his opinion. Of course he wanted to destroy her!

She said she simply wanted an apology. Why not just do it?

"All I can say is that this is a person on national television who said I wanted to put blacks back into slavery. This thing has gotten to a place that’s far beyond where it should be. I’d be more than happy to meet with her in private and have a discussion with her."

How do you think this got so out of control?
"
At the beginning, Shirley Sherrod’s first comments were that she got caught between the NAACP and the Tea Party and she said that the NAACP is the reason for this. That’s her quote. The intent of my post was to challenge the NAACP in its six-day media-enabled negative branding of the Tea Party as racist using provably false information that the N word was thrown at the Congressional Black Caucus [earlier this year during the health-care debate]. I’ve been doing this for over a year, and this is just one more attempt of mine to point out to the general public that there’s consistency here in the Democratic Party to strategically issue the race card. My regret was that has been lost, and Shirley Sherrod became the focus."

Do you agree that the edited video took things out of context?

"Well, yes. But I put up what I had. It granted a great portion of her redemptive tale, but not all of it. If I could do it all over again, I should have waited for the full video to get to me."

Do you regret how this all went down?

"Look, there’s a lot of blame to go around on this story, and it’s very convenient to try to place it all on me when the Obama administration and the NAACP were also involved. I don’t think anybody looks particularly good in this thing."

Counterpunch has never brought down anyone... unlike Breitbart, friend of predatory lenders everywhere. I have never seen Counterpunch mischaracterise people for destructive purposes - if they say bad things about people it's because they're guilty as charged and not only that, those people are proud of their crimes and they know they'll get away with them. Not so with Sherrod, when Breitbart saw the effectively destructive fallout of his knowingly false videos.

That would reinforce that it was published with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.

Shirley Sherrod unlikely to succeed in court against Andrew Breitbart
By: Kate Tummarello
Special to The Examiner
07/30/10 5:25 AM EDT

Ousted former federal agricultural official Shirley Sherrod made news Thursday by announcing a lawsuit against conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart who, she claims falsely accused her of being racist against white people.

Although it would make for an interesting showdown, media lawyers contacted by the Examiner said that that Sherrod’s case stands little chance of succeeding or even making it to trial.

According to Ron Coleman, intellectual property attorney and blogger and general counsel for Media Bloggers Association, “[Sherrod] is a public figure, and she would certainly have to prove actual malice to prevail,” something that would be much more difficult than proving negligence on the part of Breitbart.

Andrew Mirsky, an intellectual property attorney based in the District, asserts that Sherrod would have two tasks in such a suit: The first? To prove “That she was actually defamed, and I do think she has a plausible argument on that,” and depending on her status as a public figure she would have to prove either negligence or malice.

Coleman, on the other hand, questioned the validity of Sherrod’s defamation claims. “Practically speaking, isn't she likely to have a far more economically rewarding career now than before?” asked Coleman. Since resigning Sherrod has been offered another position in the USDA.

Regardless of the viability of her case, both are doubtful the case will actually go to court. “The chances of this actually getting to a trial are very, very slim. And her chances of collecting damages are infinitesimal,” Coleman explained. “Considering that [Breitbart] did, at the end of the day, portray her unfairly, she can hardly be blamed for trying.”

Complicating the issue, according to Mirsky, is that Sherrod did say the things in the video Breitbart posted. “This wasn't the classic Photoshop cut and paste job,” Mirsky said, “it was just badly and unfairly excerpted.” Mirsky cited as a possible defense for Breitbart the libel principle of “neutral reporting" under which “a publisher can argue that all they were doing was reporting facts.” Mirsky deemed this defense “weak,” as this privilege also requires that the reporting be fair and balanced.

Mirsky agreed on the likelihood of a trial. “It’s very rare to win a defamation judgment in this country,” Mirsky said. “They generally get settled or dismissed well before they go to trial.” While “[Breitbart] might very well love the publicity,” Mirsky explained that, in addition to dealing with the costs associated with a defamation trial, “it may not be in [Sherrod’s] interest for this to be constantly around for the next three years.”

As of yet, Breitbart, no stranger to threats of lawsuits after last year’s ACORN controversy, has not commented publicly on the possibility of a lawsuit.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

This man is a vicious racist, and is justifying his hate under the guise of political activism.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

How about some more expert opinion?

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opini ... 88399.html



Bold is mine.

She wasn't a low level employee. Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the United States Department of Agriculture is hardly a sectary or building maintenance job.

It wasn't just badly excerpted, it was also inappropriately captioned and had absolutely no research into the context of the comments or when the comments were made. There was no effort to verify the video's nature.

She wasn't elected to office.

Doesn't matter. Someone sent him a video, he posted it with his impressions based on what he saw. He's not a journalist, he's an activist blogger with all the connotations that implies. The fault lies with the news organizations and USDA officials that didn't bother to fact-check information coming from a highly questionable source, but that doesn't allow left leaning people to score political points, which seems to be the real goal here.

"with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not."

He's not a journalist

And yet Fox News always uses him as a source.

Yes it does matter because it puts it back into the actual malice qualifier of defamation considering the video and associated commentary with the video was released.....

There really isn't any argument that she's wasn't a public figure.

I'm sorry.



Uh oh, smells like more libel, better lawyer up...