Lessons For Journalists in Sherrod Debacle

Shirley Sherrod, the U.S. Department of Agriculture worker vilified by a heavily-edited and out-of-context video that led to her forced resignation, received a personal phone call from President Obama today apologizing for her ordeal, reports Salon.
 
Sherrod gave a speech at an NAACP conference earlier this year, describing how she came to believe that the difficulties facing poor farmers in the South had more to do with class than race. But on Tuesday, Andrew Breitbart, a conservative journalist responsible for the ACORN scandal, released a video of the speech and framed Sherrod as a racist who had denied a white farmer aid.
 
In reality, this white farmer told The Washington Post that they would have lost their farm without Sherrod's help. But instead of checking sources or finding the original tape of the speech, news outlets ran the edited story unquestioned. And everything spiraled out of control.
 
Perhaps terrified of what Glenn Beck would say that night, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack fired Sherrod, and continued to defend his actions even after the truth came to light. Only after it became apparent that the furor over Breitbart's hatchet job wasn't dying down did the White House intervene, forcing Vilsack to offer Sherrod another job and culminating in Obama's mea culpa.
 
Whether the news media will hold its own to account over this mess remains to be seen. Given our track record, it seems unlikely. It will at least be great fodder for a journalism ethics class.