Breitbart Inadvertently Admits To Lying About Sherrod's NAACP Audience

by Matt Gertz/media matters

For nearly a year, we've been pointing out that one of the blatant lies Andrew Breitbart has told to defend his smear of Shirley Sherrod is the claim that the NAACP audience she was speaking to "applauded" her supposed "racism." Last week, Breitbart appears to have accidentally admittedly lying about that response on multiple occasions.

In a profile last week of Breitbart, The New York Times helped the blogger-provocateur lie by uncritically reporting his false defense, writing that "Mr. Breitbart said... the crowd applauded when Ms. Sherrod said she did not help" a white man save his failing farm.

After I pointed out that one could easily watch the original Sherrod smear clip and determine that no such applauding occurred, the Times issued a correction indicating that the audience "did not applaud, although Mr. Breitbart stated that they did." Eric Boehlert and Brad Friedman subsequently pointed to another possible error in the Times article, which the paper's public editor is currently reviewing (Friedman has also noted that the text of the article itself has been edited to hide Breitbart's lie).

After New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen said on Twitter that the Times' correction "doesn't go far enough," Breitbart responded with his typical wit and charm:

So according to Breitbart, his explanation of what happened is accurate because when he says "applaud," he doesn't mean that the audience was "clapping." He's just using "applaud" to refer to the "nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement" he mentioned in his original Sherrodpost (which, as we'll explain below do not show racism on the part of Sherrod or her audience).

This explanation fails the laugh test (as a failed Hollywood type, Breitbart really should know that when you're referring to the actions of an audience, "applauded" means engaged in clapping), but the line of logic leads us somewhere interesting: presumably, anyone who said that Sherrod's audience had been "clapping" would be incorrect, right?

I'm sure you can see where this is going. Yes, Breitbart has used the terms "applauding" and "clapping" interchangeably in describing the audience's reaction -- and has even clapped his hands while saying the word  "applauding." 

Breitbart Has Repeatedly Said Sherrod's Audience Was "Clapping"

Here's Breitbart in an interview last July on ABC's Good Morning America:

What this video clearly shows is a standard that the tea party has not been held to, is that the NAACP shows people in the audience there applauding her when she discriminates against a white farmer. ... If you want to talk about people clapping racist behavior, that's exactly what you see in this video.

A few minutes later, he returns to this point:

The video shows racism, and when the NAACP is going to charge the tea party with racism, saying that people in the audience are racist, I'm going to show you that it happens on the other side. At an NAACP event, people are applauding racism.

Not only did Breitbart say the audience was "clapping," both times Breitbart refers to the audience "applauding" Sherrod's "racism," he claps his hands. Watch (clapping at 1:16 and 6:37):

Nearly a year later, on C-SPAN, he did it again:

The NAACP excoriated the audience for its clapping and its affirmation of her telling the story about how she sent the farmer to "one of his own" and how she patronized him initially.

According to Nexis, Breitbart has also said that the Sherrod audience was "laughing and applauding" [Fox News' Hannity, 7/20/2010] and that the audience "cheers" [NBC's Nightly News, 7/21/2010] during Sherrod's story. Needles to say, these characterizations are all a long way from the "nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement" he initially cited.

What The Audience Did And What They Knew

After Breitbart began making these claims last July, CNN's Anderson Cooper and NBC's Chuck Todd both reviewed the tape. Cooper concluded that there "actually was no applause whatsoever during the speech when talking about the white farmer," while Todd found that "the reactions that Breitbart said were there are not there."

So what did the audience actually do? Watch for yourself.

As Breitbart indicated in his original post, there are "murmurs of recognition and agreement," and even laughter, when Sherrod says of the white farmer who "was trying to show that he was superior to me," "what he didn't know was while he was taking all that time trying to show he was superior to me, was I was trying to decide how much help I was going to give him." At no point in the clip is there clapping from the audience (i.e., "applaud[ing]").

In a 2010 interview with Sean Hannity, Breitbart explained why he thinks the audience's reaction is so crucial:

BREITBART: Did the people in the audience know that there was going to be a point of redemption?

HANNITY: No.

BREITBART: The point is that the NAACP at a dinner honoring this person is cheering on a person describing -- describing a white person as the other. [Fox News' Hannity, 7/20/2010]

There's one major problem here. The audience did know there was "going to be a point of redemption."

The full video shows that Sherrod prefaced her story about the white farmer by explaining that she had originally made a commitment "to black people only" before learning better of it:

[16:34] SHERROD: God is good. I can tell you that. When I made that commitment [to working for change], I was making that commitment to black people -- and to black people only. But you know 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 -- 

AUDIENCE: All right. All right.

SHERROD: -- you know. The first time I was faced with having to help a white farmer save his farm. He took a long time talking but he was trying to show me he was superior to me -- I knew what he was doing.

Is it possible that nearly a year after he first smeared Sherrod, and months after she sued him, Breitbartstill hasn't watched the full video?

Breitbart's Dishonest Crutch: What The NAACP "Admitted"

In his tweet, Breitbart defends his use of "applaud" by reporting that the "NAACP admitted audience's affirmative reaction." This is a talking point he broke out for his book tour, when numerous interviewers tried to pin him down on his Sherrod antics. Like most Breitbart talking points, it is deeply dishonest.

It is true that in a July 19, 2010, statement, the NAACP's Ben Jealous said he was "appalled" by Sherrod's "shameful" actions, and says that "the reaction from many in the audience is disturbing." But as the criticism of Sherrod in the statement indicates, it was released before the NAACP had reviewed the full video - including the context noted above, wherein Sherrod previews the white farmer story by indicating it was a story of redemption.

The next day, after reviewing video of the full Sherrod speech, Jealous said he had been "snookered" by Breitbart and that the clip posted on his site had been "deliberately edited to create a false impression of racial bias."