Shirley Sherrod: Sue Breitbart and Fox News (SF Chron) [View All]

[mike r]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/yaki/detail??blogid=68&entry_id=68441

... While the ill-treatment of Shirley Sherrod is of serious import, the real culprit, the mastermind behind this smear campaign is none other than Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart, who runs his own website (which I will not publicize) and is credited for airing the infamous undercover ACORN video, is a right-wing nutjob who, hours after Senator Ted Kennedy's death, called Kennedy a "villain," a "duplicitous bastard" and a "pr-ck."

Defamation law clearly puts Breitbart in a tough position. He deliberately aired a video that was edited in a way to put Sherrod in a very bad light. Breitbart even said on Fox News that the purpose of the tape was to show that racism existed in the NAACP, even though the speech Sherrod gave was precisely the opposite -- it was about overcoming prejudice and stereotypes. Before the tape, Sherrod was not a public figure for whom a higher legal threshold of "actual malice" would be required, though in this case it would be hard to say that malice or a reckless disregard to the truth wasn't present. Fox, by way of offering Breitbart a forum, may be similarly at risk. Under the "republication" doctrine, Fox may be as liable as Breitbart for recklessly running (and rerunning) the doctored footage... The fact remains that but for Andrew Breitbart, who deliberately manufactured this story and dressed it up with racist overtones, people today would have no idea who Shirley Sherrod is or what she does. And she'd still be at her old job.

Sometimes in the law you get the perfect test case. Shirley Sherrod's high tech railroading by Breitbart offers an unprecedented opportunity to make an example of the right wing's repeated distortion and discoloration of the facts. At the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights I've watched my right-wing colleagues and their media friends misrepresent and inflame the paltry facts that constitute the New Black Panther Party investigation. But while my conservative colleagues flail around like psychotic berserkers in the Panther proceedings, they have yet to cause collateral damage to anything but the truth. That is not the case with Ms. Sherrod, who suffered public vilification, private harassment and humiliation, and who was pressured to leave her job.

The only way to treat a bully is a swift punch to the nose, and there's nothing like a million dollar libel suit to bloody someone up. Let's see how Breitbart and Fox take a roundhouse right to the chin. I bet the number of attorneys who'd volunteer to take this one would stretch around the block.