"The Liars Win" when Propaganda is Conflated with News

E. J. Dionne's editorial in The Washington Post today accurately describes what is happening in the media today as propaganda and outright lies are being treated as "news." (hat tip to Steven Bennen for the link) There has long been a tradition in the media (if imperfectly executed) to provide "both sides" to the story. This approach works if both sides act, at least relatively, in good faith. But people with an agenda can take advantage of this approach by promoting lies and propaganda as news. As long as citizens can recognize the difference, the republic stands. However, in recent years, the liars seem to be winning.

The first step, it seems to me, was to fuel people's fears that journalists could not be fair if their personal views leaned in one political direction. This, of course, meant completely denying the professionalism of journalism. So the meme has become "the liberal media"--and in spite of all evidence, the public at large believes that this "liberal" media is bent on promoting only its "side." Yet as many analysts have pointed out, the talk shows on radio, the guests invited to speak on those Sunday shows, the folks interviewed on the major networks are most often conservatives. Just look at how often John McCain, a twice-failed candidate for president, gets a slot on those shows. Mike Huckabee gets his own talk show. Did John Kerry get his own talk show? Or Howard Dean? But if you can convince the public that "the media" is "liberal," then you have convinced the public not to trust journalists' pursuit of truth--and then you can take advantage of that mistrust by promoting your own "truth."

The firestorm over the Journolist (a listserv for journalists) is the latest attempt at totally annihilating trust in journalists. "Journolist scandal proves media bias" screams a headline--and people fall for it without reading any more of the details. Tucker Carlson, a conservative pundit, has been milking this "scandal" for all its worth--but he refuses to release the full e-mails on which he is basing his claims of a liberal conspiracy among the members of that listserv, a listserv that included one of his own conservative reporters (so how conspiratorial could the listserv be?!). Ezra Klein, the creator of Journolist, explains why he created the listserv here: on his blog for The American Prospect. Most of the members on that list lean center-left, but their participation was not conspiratorial but empirical: they needed a place to discuss their ideas and to access experts who might be less willing to answer questions elsewhere. (The thing is, most of the public probably doesn't even know what a listserv is--and how many there are for every subject and interest.) Sure, ideas were raised that others in the listserv shot down--but Tucker Carlson and his ilk don't reveal the shooting down, the consequences of debate. Of course, right-wingers love conspiracy theories (uh huh, and left-wingers do, too, but for some reason, the left-wing doesn't carry the day, does it? Does anyone with any sense REALLY believe the Bush administration orchestrated 9/11? Oh, but how many on the right believe that Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States--and that he's a commie pinko?) To further support their view of the leftist conspiracy of Journolist, radicals claim that liberal pundits such as Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann were on the list. Not so, says Klein. But who's listening?

And that's the point, isn't it: to get people to stop listening, to stop thinking. When the majority of the public believes that journalists cannot be trusted, then the power-hungry win. The liars win.

This trend to conflate propaganda with news is evident in the recent Andrew Breitbart/ Shirley Sherrod episode. And here, the purpose was not only to conflate propaganda and legitimate news but to push the idea of the equivalency of white racism and black racism in this country. The NAACP had called on the Tea Party to repudiate racist elements in its ranks. Now, anyone who has listened to Tea Party participants in interviews and who have watched videos know that there are racists in the party. That's not to say that every person involved in the Tea Party is a racist. A radical group is going to attract un-desirable elements. But wouldn't it be best for the country if a group such as this said, "We're in opposition to the government led by a black man, but we're not against a black man being president. Racist literature, signs, and statements are totally out of character in our movement." But instead of doing that, radicals such as Andrew Breitbart go about trying to prove that white racism can't be so bad because there are black racists, too: the stupid (yes! stupid!) argument of equivalency. It's the childish argument that what I'm doing isn't so bad because others--especially those who claim some kind of moral superiority--are doing it, too. Only in this case, Breitbart chose a woman who was communicating exactly the opposite of what he purported that she was communicating. Here was a woman who had experienced racism of the worst sort--the kind that led to a miscarriage of justice. Yet here she was, telling her audience of how she rose above hate and how she believed that they should all work together to create a society where people of all ethnicities could live in better communities. And her audience demonstrated their understanding of her message with "uh huhs" and "alrights" and "amens" and their sympathy with her feelings and experience, likewise.

Here, again, the purpose is to call into question any sense of fairness and justice on "the other side"--and to use race to do that. The far-right has the media and the government so scared of being accused of unfairness, that they bend over backwards to avoid the appearance of unfairness and thus give credence to lies. Breitbart got what he wanted: a larger audience, a national presence in the media, and more white followers who believe that they are just as discriminated against as blacks in this country--contrary to evidence. Because, guess what, they've been gradually led not to believe in evidence, to conflate propaganda with news.

Without journalists being able to ask hard questions, without people having some trust in the professionalism of journalism, a country's citizens are at the mercy of the powerful. Just look at dictatorships such as Burma, which routinely arrests journalists and passes jail sentences of twenty years on those who speak truth to power. The rodeo clowns win; the man (or woman) in the saddle loses.

More Conflation, Propaganda vs. News, black racism vs. white racism

• "Fox News, the DOJ Pseudo-Scandal, and White Racial Hysteria," Jonathan Chait, at The New Republic
  
  
• And now the back-tracking to find SOMETHING to hang around Shirley Sherrod's neck: "Defining Lynching Down," Adam Serwer, on Jeffrey Lord's claiming that Shirley Sherrod lied when she described Bobby Hall's being beaten to death by Sheriff Screws and his colleagues as a "lynching." Disgusting. Having been called out for lying about Sherrod's hopeful message, the right now is looking for any mud to sling on the woman.

Unreconstructed Lying

When the Shirley Sherrod story broke, I was in the middle of attending freshman orientation with my daughter at a state university in Georgia, and so I came in on what seemed to be at the time the tail-end of the story: a tape of Ms. Sherrod's speaking at an NAACP dinner had been edited to suggest that she was a racist; it had been published on Andrew Breitbart's website; after Breitbart and his ilk created a firestorm, administrative officials panicked and fired Ms. Sherrod without researching the truth. It was finally revealed that the tape had been edited to grossly mislead (and that Brietbart had had it in his possession for several weeks before posting it).

I learned that, at first, Breitbart and other far-right bloggers yelled foul over Ms. Sherrod's words, claiming that here was a prime example of an African-American woman in a position of power (USDA's Georgia state director for rural development) who admitted to failing to help a white farmer. It was a nice story to use to claim the equivalency of black racism and white racism in this country, that there was no foundation for criticizing all those white Tea Party people showing up with racist signs. Only that was a lie. Now Breitbart is claiming that he posted the video not because it reveals Ms. Sherrod's racism (racism which the unedited tape clearly refutes) but because it reveals the racism of the NAACP members listening to Ms. Sherrod and clapping at times in her speech when she is describing her previous attitudes. Only that's a lie, too, now that I have listened to the whole damn tape, to five sections that Breitbart has now posted on his website, probably believing that most people won't take the time to listen to it. And as there are only 8 comments on that site (as of 2:00 p.m. today), I think it's safe to say that most of Breitbart's loyal listeners and readers will not view the entire tape and will accept Breitbart's continued unreconstructed lying.

What Ms. Sherrod does in her speech is put one of her past actions in context. First, she tells the crowd about her father being murdered by a white man and the family never receiving justice. Anyone who knows anything about the African-American experience, especially in the South, will know that it was not unusual for a white man to murder a black man and not suffer any legal consequences. In addition, Ms. Sherrod describes a time when a bunch of white men showed up at her home and burned a cross on the front yard. Her mother--then a widow--was home alone with the baby boy born just weeks after his father's murder--and a couple of other children. The family was in danger, but several neighbors--all African-American men--showed up with their shotguns. They didn't fire a shot, and they allowed the white men to leave, but their show of unity prevented further violence. This background puts everything else into context.

Ms. Sherrod describes how she had wanted to leave the South, with its terrible memories, but that she finally decided to stay to help create change, and so, long before her tenure as a government official with the USDA, she worked for a non-profit to help farmers. But she said that when she "made that commitment [to stay in the South and to create change], [she] was making it to black people, and to black people only...But you know," she went on to say, "God will show you things and he'll put things in your path so that you realize that the struggle is really about poor people." [Here the silence is broken by affirmative responses: "all right, all right."] And that's her preface to the story of when her attitude changed. In the edited tape, these words are missing--Ms. Sherrod's indicating to her listeners that she was to change her mind about helping "her own" alone. The audience did not clap when she said that her first intentions were to help black people alone. There were no "amens" there. So Ms. Sherrod tells the story that most people have heard totally out of context, of how a white farmer came to Ms. Sherrod for help and how when he had spent a great deal of time showing he was superior to her, she wasn't inclined to help him as much as she should have, so she referred him to a white lawyer because she figured he could get help from "his own." When the white farmer came back to her and told her that the lawyer had not helped him, she realized that she had been wrong. Sherrod then helped the white farmer get what he needed, and she goes on to say some really inspiring words:

I've come a long way. I knew that I couldn't live with hate.... I've come to realize that we have to work together. And it's sad that we don't have a room full of whites and blacks here tonight 'cause we have to overcome the divisions that we have. We have to get to the point where, as Toni Morrison says, 'Race exists, but it doesn't matter.' We have to work just as hard. I know it's, you know, that the vision is still here, but our communities are not going to thrive, you know, our children won't have the communities that they need to stay in, to live in and have a good life if we can't figure this out, you all. White people, black people, Hispanic people--we all have to do our part to make our communities a safe place, a healthy place, a good environment.

After viewing this entire tape, it's clear to me that the folks in that room were receptive to Ms. Sherrod's message. They weren't applauding her racism; they were applauding her altruistic ideals to overcome racism and to make the world a better place. As Ms. Sherrod says, the problem is poverty; the problem is the haves and have-nots; the problem is that those in power want to keep power, and they keep that power by dividing us. In posting the edited video and in continuing to spew lies, Andrew Breitbart and others like him are counting on perpetuating those divisions.

[After writing that last sentence, I came across this video of Anderson Cooper's interview with Ms. Sherrod. Breitbart himself might not be racist, but he is using racism to make a political point (albeit, unfairly, and with lies), and he certainly doesn't care one iota about who gets hurt. His cynical manipulations, however, are no better than racism. And he needs to be called out on this!]

More Here:

• "Some Find Irony in Shirley Sherrod's USDA Incident," by Krissah Thompson, Washington Post, 23 July 2010.
  
  
• "Amen Canard," by William Saletan, Slate, 23 July 2010.