Beck on Sherrod: The Flip-Flopping Innocent

reply to post by SM2


Type her name in the search box on the bottom right corner. The clip starts with a goldline add.

I also edited my original post. Sorry for the confusion.

When are we going to learn that these people are playing with our minds.

There is no truth in them. It is all about an agenda and that agenda is to control what you think, feel and do.

They want to make us their puppets and they are doing a darn good job.


All together now: " Baa-ram-ewe! To your breed, your fleece, your clan be true! Sheeple be true!"

reply to post by tspark


Ok i found a few audio clips, and they were all after she was fired. All of them were from wednesday and thursday's radio shows and some video clips from his TV show.

Sorry for quoting the entire post but it is part and parcel equal to what it claims to fight. You can't dissect anything and make sense of it without considering the whole entity... i.e.: "context".

Dissecting Beck's statements and actions regarding Sherrod in the manner presented is equivalant to creating "viral slander and libel".

Originally posted by ~Lucidity

Not to stray too far off topic, because this is a very small yet critical detail that might make a lot of difference in that so many people are canonizing Beck for his fairness and defense of this woman.

I'm doing this because I think it's important to dissect stories like this down to the minutiae to get at the root of viral slander and libel that is becoming all too common in the media today...from the blogs to the mainstream media and beyond.

So many people take at face value and only hear the sensationalist exagerrations and lies and pick "sides" based on this and propogate the lies further. Furthermore, they rarely get or hear the retractions because most people simply don't follow things this closely. They pick and choose what suits them and then go with that, thereby spreading erroneous, false, and even harmful information even further.

This may seem like a nit in this particular case, but this case is very symptomatic of a huge problem we face daily in how we get and react to information. False information that goes viral and is not tempered can lead people to make the wrong decisions...about things like wars and which candidates to support or even how to judge their fellow humans.

And so again, while this may appear to be trivial, it's not. And that's why I think it's critical to expose the shills in the media for exactly what they are in the hopes that it will make people pause and THINK before they do more harm.

reply to post by SM2


I really like Glenn Beck.
Hope that helped. I am new...

reply to post by abecedarian


Legally it can not be libel or slander. Nothing about it was not true at the core. She was relating a story about a time when she held back help from an indvidual based on thier skin tone. Yes, she later helped the family to her fullest, yes, the family is supporting her, yes she had a turning point in her life and changed her views, however, she still did it, she made it right but she did it. Turth is the automatic defense of libelor slander and in this case, it was the truth. It was misrepresented some intially but enough truth there to use the "truth defense". if not, then there is always the "fair comment on a matter of public interest" defense or the opinion defense. then there is this one...

"Under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, as set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1964 Case, New York Times v Sullivan, where a public figure attempts to bring an action for defamation, the public figure must prove an additional element: That the statement was made with "actual malice". In translation, that means that the person making the statement knew the statement to be false, or issued the statement with reckless disregard as to its truth. For example, Ariel Sharon sued Time Magazine over allegations of his conduct relating to the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Although the jury concluded that the Time story included false allegations, they found that Time had not acted with "actual malice" and did not award any damages."

www.expertlaw.com...

So, libel and slander would not stand in a court.

Edit to add....by the way, the burden of proof would fall on Mrs Sherrod. So she would have to prove that Glenn Beck and or Fox News and Brietbart KNEW that thier statements were false.


[edit on 23-7-2010 by SM2]

reply to post by SM2


Media Matters might get more right than most people care to admit. This seems like a pretty straightforward point. They are biased by the very nature of what they do. No one can deny that. But this is also exactly why I separated out this very simple point that apparently, many missed or dismissed when Beck started to defend Sherrod.

Beck's radio show on July 20 and as I understand it, the show is three hours long. This occurred during the first hour, at the end of the first hour, as I recall.

Are you saying that Media Matters doctored this audio? Or misrepresented it in any other way?

I wondered too if she's going to sue Breitbart and others in the media for slander and libel. Seems she might have a very strong case.


[edit on 7/23/2010 by ~Lucidity]

reply to post by SM2

Sorry, was responding to your first post and missed this one.

She's not a public figure. I think there's a case here against at least the media, unless they are somehow "protected." But she may get distracted by all the "apologies" and offers of new jobs. Does an apology negate the damage done?



[edit on 7/23/2010 by ~Lucidity]

reply to post by abecedarian

No it's not. It's merely pointing out to those who may have missed it that he may not be as innocent in all this as he attempt to later imply.

As I have said repeatedly, I know what I heard and it appears to be what is in the audio clip on Media Matters reflects.

My language here is not libelous. His may have been. In addition, even if mine were, Beck, unlike Sherrod, public figure.

[edit on 7/23/2010 by ~Lucidity]

reply to post by SM2

Are you saying that he never mentioned her in the first hour of his radio show on Tuesday, July 20, 2010?

reply to post by ~Lucidity


No, I am not saying that, he did mention her on Tuesday the 20th, as that would be the day AFTER she was fired. She resigned on Monday the 19th. The audio from media matters is a clip that was altered and taken out of context, just like Mrs sherrod's video.

Yes she is a public figure, she is a political appointee. She is a public servant, a politician and a civil rights leader in the area.

Agree with it or not, here's an attempt at a timeline of Timeline of Breitbart's Sherrod smear, including many bloggers and mainstream media outlets.

The item under discussion in this topic occurred on Tuesday, July 20, 2010, at 9:52 a.m.

[edit on 7/23/2010 by ~Lucidity]

Ok I will say that it appears that he did back track on this.However, I want to say this, Media Matters is a joke. They spin more crap then a politician. One question remains though...why is Beck being singled out when the man-child in chief and his merry band of thugs in the white house are getting a free pass on this? They are the ones responsible, had they had all the facts before "Acting stupidly", maybe none of this would have happened. I personally find it hilarious that the Obama adminstration is scared of fat guy with a few chalk boards that just tells people his opinions, however on spot or way out in limbo they may be. A reasonable, logical person would have to assume that possibly, Beck is on to something, or Barry and Company would not be so worried about who or what is going to be on his show.

reply to post by SM2

Well, that's the next item I had in mind to look at when I found the time...the statement about his show. But I don't think we are ever going to learn exactly what the timeline or evolution of that particular tidbit was...probably too much hearsay and room for misinterpretation of private conversations there.

And again, I only elected to use Media Matters here in this thread because they summed up very well exactly what I saw and was thinking anyway, and it was the only place I could find that had access to the audio of that particular show. Sometimes they're right on the money, and sometimes they're not. I'm not going to disregard the former due to the latter.


[edit on 7/23/2010 by ~Lucidity]

If the timeline is correct, and Beck really did make the comment the way Media Matters portrays it, then is it really a flip-flop if he was going based off the information available at the time only changing his views once more information came out? A reasonable person does change their views on any given subject when they obtain new information that invalidates the view they held previously. How is that different than what Beck did, if he did in fact make the comments as portrayed?

reply to post by Jenna

I can't disagree that a reasonable person changes their views based on new information. That's an admirable trait.

However, when a person is in a leadership position with a wide platform and high influence, don't they have an even higher degree of responsibility to make certain they have investigated for themselves and do have all the facts before they make slanderous and/or libelous statements?

What's wrong with 1.) either waiting until more information comes out or 2.) reporting the story based on the information that is available with a more reserved opinion and making it clear that there is probably more to the story.

I suppose they view their business as getting the "news" or the "word" out first and loudly to their followers as a sort of call to arms, and that it's a competition for ratings, so they get a lot of attention for the more colorful and "brave" remarks they make. But there are also consequences to doing this. For them, rushing to judgment is a crapshoot, They play the odds hoping they're right. When it turns out they're not, the damage is already done, and apologies don't cut it.

A large subset of people who heard the initial stories from all the media on this are still out there thinking this woman is a racist and now always will. She lost her job based in part on the actions of the media, and apparently his name was mentioned somehow in relation to her firing, so he became more important to the story somehow.

In addition, people in positions of power who make a habit of this type of thing need to be exposed so that other people learn the level to which they can and cannot be trusted and start to think more for themselves.

Originally posted by ~Lucidity
However, when a person is in a leadership position with a wide platform and high influence, don't they have an even higher degree of responsibility to make certain they have investigated for themselves and do have all the facts before they make slanderous and/or libelous statements?

He didn't say much that hadn't already been said by others from what I've read about it. Why should he hold a greater degree of responsibility than those who first reported on the story with incomplete information? I don't think he should.

Should he (or whoever does research for him) have researched the story better and found the original unedited video? Absolutely. I just don't think he should be held more responsible for what happened to Sherrod than the NAACP who had the original unedited video and condemned her anyway, other members of the media who reported on the story with incomplete information an entire day before Beck commented on it, or her bosses who demanded her resignation without all the facts.

What's wrong with 1.) either waiting until more information comes out or 2.) reporting the story based on the information that is available with a more reserved opinion and making it clear that there is probably more to the story.

Nothing wrong with either of those, and I agree that Beck should have done one or both.

A large subset of people who heard the initial stories from all the media on this are still out there thinking this woman is a racist and now always will.

The story she related shows that she was racist at that point in time. She might not be now, and I have no reason to believe she still is, but she was when the events of her story happened. There's no getting around that. Most of the people who will forever believe she's still racist will never interact with her, so their misinformed opinions won't really affect her life. It's a small consolation compared to what she's lost over this, but I doubt she's too concerned with people she's never met and never will thinking she's a racist. I'd imagine she's more concerned with what she's going to do for employment now that this mess has happened.

In addition, people in positions of power who make a habit of this type of thing need to be exposed so that other people learn the level to which they can and cannot be trusted and start to think more for themselves.

Were we talking about someone who had intentionally and maliciously gone after Sherrod or one of the original people to report on the story, I would agree with you. When it comes to one news commentator repeating what several news reporters and commentators had already said, not so much. On this site in particular Beck catches a lot of flack for things beyond his control and for things he hasn't actually done. In this case, he didn't research what he was talking about well enough before going on the radio but he didn't come up with the story and he didn't cause her to lose her job. (Again assuming he said it the way he's accused of saying it.)

Never said he was the only one. He's just the topic of my thread and I selected this topic simply because people are running around calling him god or a saint or something in his "defense" of her. He doesn't deserve that much respect, but yes, he is just one piece of this big huge mess which has become so tragically stereotypical.


Side note about Media Matter for America:

Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.

They don't hide what they do and who they are. That doesn't mean they have no validity. From what I've seen, they're a thorough and sharp research staff.

If they missed anything in the timeline (other than Red Eye, a show that was pretty damn vicious), I can't find it.

One other thing to note, we must remember that Beck is not a journalist nor a reporter. He is an opinion man. Just like Chris mathews or Kieth Olberman. No matter what you post, I will never trust media matters further then I can throw them. primarily because of George Soros, that man is pure evil. They are an extreme leftist progessive spin machine in my opinion, to thier credit though, at least they are somewhat open about what they are...notice I said somewhat heh.

reply to post by SM2

I look everywhere for information...to those I agree with and those I don't. It's hard to tell what the facts are anymore...as if we ever really could

But I do think they did a decent job on the timeline. I'm still not sure about the audio clip, even though it appears to be what I remember, but I'm also pretty sure MMfA doesn't want to get caught with their pants down either.