Video Flashback: Liberal Media Defended Weiner by Slashing Andrew Breitbart
As NewsBusters' Lachlan Markay pointed out, the Weinergate scandal showcased a variety of liberal media conspiracy theories. One of the most prevalent theories focused on besmirching conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, who broke the story wide open Monday with a series of posts on BigGovernment.com featuring lewd photos of Rep. Anthony Weiner.
"Look, Breitbart is a proven liar, okay?" bellowed MSNBC anchor Cenk Uygur on June 1. "He doctored the Shirley Sherrod tapes. He's done this over and over again. Why would anybody take this fool seriously?"
[Video after page break]
Uygur was far from the only media figure to assault Breitbart's credibility to defend Weiner:
In an exchange with Howard Kurtz on CNN's "Reliable Sources," CBS correspondent Nancy Cordes blamed Breitbart's "history of taking Democrats out of context and smearing people" for her network's reluctance to cover the Weiner story. “That was a reason that people were going slow on this story,” Cordes confessed. “We were wary.”
On the May 31 edition of "Anderson Cooper 360," CNN's Jeffrey Toobin suggested Weinergate would “fall apart” because it originated with the unreliable Breitbart: "In his defense, I think we do need to point out that the person behind this is Andrew Breitbart, who has made a practice of targeting Democrats – Shirley Sherrod most notoriously of all. And his stories tend to fall apart on close inspection."
The next night, CNN's Paul Begala took a similiar tack: "It is a right-wing blogger who was pushing this, and a pretty unreliable one at that, which mama always said, consider the source."
Salon.com's Joan Walsh chimed in on the June 1 "Hardball" to take her pound of flesh: "My position from the beginning has been, I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt because this originated with Andrew Breitbart, who released the selective – deceptively edited ACORN tapes."
Noting that Gawker's Maureen O'Connor scolded Cordes on "Reliable Sources" for failing to cover Weinergate, NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard framed the reflexive criticism of Breitbart as a clash between old and new media.
At his contrite press conference on Monday, Weiner apologized to Breitbart. How many of these newspeople have issued similiar mea culpas?
--Alex Fitzsimmons is a News Analysis intern at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.
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Comments
We'll see this kind of swarm defense repeated over and over
Submitted by Galvanic on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 5:42pm.
It's the strategy: Get your spin and counter-accusations out there right away and merely repeat them over and over. I have little doubt that at least one MSMer will get caught in the future claiming Weiner get was a Breitbart set-up.
"Death is Their Picnic"
Submitted by SickofLibs on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 5:54pm.
Oh, they're swarming, alright.
~Weiner's "apology"
Submitted by Wrathful Brunette on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 6:16pm.
carried all the sincerity of a sniveling bully in a headlock.
Agreed
Submitted by tcm14 on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 7:56pm.
Agreed. One of the most insincere apologies I have ever seen. He went from "crying" (i.e., bowing his head and making sniffing noises) to an upbeat and chipper "But I'm not resigning!" in about a half second flat.
The MSM response is exactly
Submitted by ThisnThat on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 8:14pm.
The MSM response is exactly why Weinger isn't going to resign. He knows the MSM has his back. All he has to do is to weather this little storm, and soon there won't be any mention of him anywhere -- except the radical right-wing sources, of course.
__________
“Didn't win the Medal of Honor? Didn't even serve? Then lie about it. We'll support you." — 9th Circuit Court
Twitter Weiners
Submitted by im41 on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 6:32pm.
PIC OF THE DAY
A Long List Of Sports Figures Who’ve Also Claimed Their Twitter Was Hacked!!
Roles have changed...
Submitted by retrocon on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 6:33pm.
So, the mainstream media are no longer the watchdogs of the people, protecting us from an oppressive government.
Instead,
The mainstream media are now the watchdogs of the government, protecting it from a freedom loving people.
Watchdog of the People?
Submitted by Kingfish17 on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 7:43pm.
I hope you really don't believe that the MSM was ever the "watchdog of the people". They used to peddle that message a lot harder back in their monopoly days, but the MSM has always been in the tank for the political insider elite.
"You can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas...on the taxpayer’s dime." Barack Obama
Breitbart "doctored" the Sherod tapes? Really?
Submitted by krendler on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 6:40pm.
And is a "proven liar?" Sounds like slander to me. No?
Matthews knows that Breitbart risks much to "selectively edit"
Submitted by Deskpilot on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 7:00pm.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/07/29/chris-matthews-and...
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, there you go. "I opened my eyes. I realized it wasn't about black and white. It was, but it was about other things, about poverty." So, Joan, that part, that part in there about redemptive revelation was actually in the initial tape.
JOAN WALSH, SALON: Chris, that little snippet was. But it ends with, "I took him to one of his own." What she goes on to say is one of his own didn't help him. He came back to her. She wound up helping him. She saved his farm. And then she goes on to tell this story, which is a story that I've told and to some extent Governor Dean has told it, too, about the way black and white people in the south were pitted against each other and they were always taught to fight one another when they really had more in common. She goes on to say repeatedly it's about poverty. It's about haves versus have-nots.
MATTHEWS: Yeah, but why do you think if this was a complete slime job, why do you think Breitbart kept that in there, Governor? Why did he keep in that part - let me let the Governor in here. Why did he put the redemptive part in here at all?
HOWARD DEAN: That's not, I did not see that at in the original on the original website or...
I thought Breitbarts ...
Submitted by Redrowan2000 on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 8:10pm.
point was to show the NAACP as applauding Shirley in all their hypocrisy rather than show Shirley as an aberration, when she was displaying racist attitudes towards the white farmer. You know before she started loving white people.
"Don't let the bastards grind you down."
Hey MSM, did you know Weiner
Submitted by Van Halen on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 7:05pm.
Hey MSM, did you know Weiner admitted to the whole sordid affair and even hinted that there was more? Yeah, it wasn't a conspiracy. Not even a little bit. The Weiner played you all for fools.
the media has thrown in the towel-
Submitted by JIMMY1660 on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 7:22pm.
on America. Media has taken the side of liberal scum bags.
They deserve one another-sweet marriage-hope they both get the clap.
Cancel your newspapers-find a good source for news -that does not use alot of adverbs and adjectives to tell the story.
Be sure you read both sides and make up your own mind.
Talking heads are rating whores-and spend you info dollars smartly.
Sloppy with Sherrod
Submitted by Kingfish17 on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 7:40pm.
Breitbart was sloppy with the Sherrod story and he let the MSM turn a racist, rich, government funded leach into Saint Shirley Sherrod, with her false story of redemption. There were plenty of quotes in Ms. Sherrod's entire speech, (like preaching to blacks how they shouldn't sell their family farms to white folks), that showed her true attitudes regarding race relations. Breitbart could have used these quotes to further his credibility in his efforts to show the NAACP in their true light.
If Sherrod was pure, and redeemed, the Dems would have taken that opportunity to bring her into a more powerful position or run her for elected office. Instead, they dropped her after the incident blew over, because her true beliefs, and the record of her husband, made her too big of a potential liability.
I think Breitbart learned a lot from the Sherrod fiasco.
"You can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas...on the taxpayer’s dime." Barack Obama
Mr. Kingfish: Sherrod climbed out from underneath the bus.
Submitted by SickofLibs on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 7:55pm.
Now a big cheese @ USDA.
Never count out a zombie.
Thank Goodness
Submitted by Kingfish17 on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 8:28pm.
I'm sure she was hurting.
I'll bet she'll do a great job figuring out new and innovative ways to spend producer's tax dollars. And she will often be heard to lament: "Oh the wonders we could perform if we only had more money!"
"You can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas...on the taxpayer’s dime." Barack Obama
I kind of see their point
Submitted by Dave81 on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 8:13pm.
In THEIR defense, I kind of see their point about considering where this came from. WE don't trust the MSM because of their history of taking things out of context, misleading, and in some cases outright lying. From their position, Breitbart has the same history, so they're going to be skeptical of anything that comes from him.
Breitbart hasn't taken
Submitted by Free Stinker on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 8:16pm.
Breitbart hasn't taken anything out of context. Please don't spread MSM bias. This site is about combating MSM bias.
/// Sarah Palin Fan since July 11, 2007 /// خال
Another liberal Liar
Submitted by grumpyoldb on Wed, 06/08/2011 - 11:26am.
get your facts straight. Breitbart vets his information far more carefully than any liberal news media.. You know.. like the ones that doctored a truck explosion to make GM look bad, the ones that said Breitbart was the hacker in the wiener case... the ones that don't seem to think that several tons of yellow cake uranium constitutes a weapon of mass destruction... going back further, the ones that made Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussellini men of the year (and even had a profile of Mussollini carved into a relief in the side of their corporate headquarters before WW2..... The liberal press wouldn't know the truth if it came up and bit them on their wiener story...