In the past couple of years,Twitter has become a major player in breaking news coverage. Many people go to Twitter before the TV networks to keep up with urgent and evolving rapidly stories.
Twitter has now confirmed months of speculation by hiring Vivian Schiller as their head of news. You may remember Schiller from her stint as Chief of NPR, where she was forced to resign after one of her top executives was busted by a James O’Keefe sting.
Schiller’s appointment should scare anyone who worries about liberal bias. If you go to Twitter to get away from bias, this isn’t a good hire because Schiller is about as blatantly hypocritical as they get.
Schiller will serve as a liaison between the social network and news organizations, according to the job description that Twitter posted in May. Twitter executives have repeatedly said the site wants to help media companies distribute news.
Schiller brings many years of experience in big media to the role, with prior experience at CNN, the New York Times, NPR and others.
A brief aside to Twitter executives — big media companies already know how to distribute news. Sure, it’s news that enforces a narrative but they are highly effective at distributing it. People like me love Twitter because it levels the playing field, not because Big Media needs a leg-up with extra help from one of their own.
Schiller has an impressive liberal big media CV. She was a senior V.P. at NewYorkTimes.com, then went to be general manager of the Discovery Times Channel, leaving around the time the New York Times pulled out of the venture.
Then, it was on to NPR and controversy for Vivian Schiller. She fired Juan Williams for what she termed a lack of journalistic ethics a short time after Williams said he got nervous when seeing people in Muslim garb boarding a plane. Schiller later had to apologize after saying Williams should have kept his comments between himself and “his psychiatrist or his publicist—take your pick.”
Schiller’s polticially correct liberal bias set the stage for the incident that led to Schiller’s resignation; O’Keefe and his team caught an NPR fundraiser on video trashing the Tea Party, and Christians while talking to undercover Project Veritas journalists he thought were part of the Muslim Brotherhood connected group.
Schiller was forced out by an NPR desperate to maintain its federal funding. As HuffPost reported about a speech Schiller gave soon after:
It’s a very difficult time an incredible amount of scrutiny in what we do and all the actions of NPR…because the presence of even one dollar of federal money changes the dynamic.
Schiller slammed Jamed O’Keefe in a speech shortly after she resigned, saying
“…this is not journalism. You don’t ensnare people. You don’t entrap people with hidden cameras…”
Schiller went to NBC where she was senior vice president and chief digital officer for NBC News, including oversight of NBCNews.com.
That’s right, after attacking O’Keefe over ‘hidden cameras’, Schiller went to work at the home of the TV show To Catch A Predator. And no, she didn’t find that ironic.
As Eric Erickson tweeted at the time:
So is anyone surprised that Vivian Schiller of NPR/James O'Keefe fame would wind up at NBC?
But defenders of Schiller might argue that To Catch A Predator isn’t news. They’s say t’s entrap-o-tainment or something.
Well, let’s look at how NBC News itself describe their newsmagaize Dateline.
Here’s an ad posted right now for Creative Promotions Director. At NBC News. The ad talks about the digital properties Schiller headed up, including iVillage, BreakingNews.com, theGrio.com, NBCLatino.com.
And the ad also says (emphasis added) :
The network’s primetime newsmagazine, Dateline provides a variety of in-depth stories week in and week out ranging from mysteries and breaking news to hidden-camera investigations and documentaries.
Here’s the reality : hidden camera investigations are a normal, perfectly valid journalistic technique.
People like Vivian Schiller just don’t like it when those journalistic tactics are used against the left.
That’s called biased hypocrisy. Now brought to you by Twitter.
DALLAS, TEXAS: This Monday , October 28th I’ll be having a fundraiser and Q&A presentation about my recent trip to the Middle East to report on the powder keg that’s building there, fueled by politicians like Barack Obama, John McCain and Hillary Clinton.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking this is something that won’t affect you or your family.
There’s a crisis for Christians in the Middle East. They are being targeted, kidnapped and murdered. They are being driven from their homes and cities by the hundreds of thousands.
This calamity is coming to the United States, in ways that the media and establishment politicians aren’t going to tell you about.
Consider:
In Egypt after the Arab Spring, the Obama administration backed the Muslim Brotherhood who killed Coptic Christians and destroyed their churches.
Syrian rebels, backed by your tax dollars, have led attacks on Christians throughout Syria.
In Lebanon, I interviewed survivors of an attack by Muslim rebels on the ancient Christian village of Maaloula. They confirmed people were killed for not renouncing their faith.
Al-Qaeda terrorists are now flooding into Syria from all over the world. Their stated goal is to create a Caliphate; an Islamic state ruled by Sharia law that rules first the Middle East, and then as much of the world as possible.
The northern Syrian city of Aleppo has been turned into ‘hell’, according to a Syrian I interviewed. Almost all the Christians have fled and kidnappings are common.
I interviewed the head of the Iraqi Catholic church, Patriarch Louis Sako and learned that in Iraq, fierce fighting between Muslim sects has driven over 1,000,000 Christians out of that country.
Here at home, we’re already seeing open hostility to Christianity and theism. Their nihilism is on full display: from the Democrats removing God from their political platform to the Obama administration punishing Christians in the military to liberal protestors shouting ‘Hail, Satan’ at the Texas Statehouse.
I know you’re busy. This is truly important. Please take an hour to come out on Monday and learn about how you can make a difference. RSVP now.
I’ll show photos and videos I shot in Lebanon, where over a million refugees have fled into from Syria. My reporting there confirmed for me that this is the biggest story in the world right now; I’m saying that both as a journalist and the father of six kids.
It’s a story that the status quo media is burying but together, we can get the story out there to the world quickly. We need to act fast. The situation is urgent.
I asked people in the Middle East what’s the most important thing Americans can do and they all said the same thing: get the word out. Let people know what’s happening.
I’m working on a documentary called The Caliphate that’s aimed at a general audience. The movie will lay out the clear evidence for what’s happening in the Middle East and why it’s so vital for all Americans, regardless of their political or religious beliefs. I’ll discuss the production plan. The complete budget for the film is here.
There are three distinct versions of the ‘redemption story’ that Shirley Sherrod gave in her infamous speech to the NAACP in Douglas, Georgia in 2010.
Story #1: In her 2010 NAACP speech:
At their first meeting Spooner is acting superior to her; the implication is that this is racial
Sherrod, unhappy to be helping a white farmer given the plight of black farmers, considers how much help to give him.
Sherrod decides not to give him the ‘full force’ of her help.
Sherrod does ‘enough’ so that he will tell whoever sent him that she helped.
She decides to take him to ‘a white lawyer’ that she describes as ‘one of his own kind.’
Later, she thinls he’s ‘being taken care of by the white lawyer’
She doesn’t like how the ‘white lawyer’ treats Spooner.
At this later point, ‘it’s revealed’ to her that ‘it’s not about black and white, it’s about rich and poor.’
Story #2: In Shirley Sherrod’s 2012 book The Courage To Hope:
1) Spooner isn’t trying to act superior; Sherrod admits in two different sections of the book that she incorrectly intererpated the way he was speaking.
2) At their very first meeting, Sherrod has ‘a revelation.’
3) She immediately tells Spooner she can help him and springs into action.
4) She sends Spooner to a lawyer; she doesn’t mention their race in the book but does include her NAACP speech where she makes references to lawyer’s race at least three times.
5) Sherrod is shocked at how the nameless lawyer (who we assume is white based on her NAACP speech) treats the Spooners
6) Sherrod wracks her brain trying to think of someone who could help them, then comes up with Ben Easterlin
Story #3: The Spooner’s Version
Roger isn’t ‘acting superior’; he’s hard of hearing.
Sherrod gives the Spooners the choice of a black lawyer who is local or a white lawyer who is further away.
The Spooner chose the black lawyer over the white lawyer, Ben Easterlin
The black lawyer takes their money and doesn’t help them
Sherrod sees how the black lawyer treats them and is upset
They call Sherrod and she asks if they want to see the other lawyer.
Here are a few major differences.
Despite what Sherrod told the NAACP, the Spooners themselves and Sherrod’s book agree that Roger Spooner was not “acting superior” or racist.
In the book, Sherrod helps immediately; no mention of not giving the ‘full force’ of her help.
The lawyer they go see initially isn’t white, as Sherrod claims. He’s black.
It’s the black lawyer who doesn’t help the Spooners.
A white lawyer, who Sherrod recommends immediately, helps them.
Here are the stories.
Story 1: NAACP Speech
The first time I was faced with having to help a white farmer save his farm, he — he took a long time talking, but he was trying to show me he was superior to me. I know what he was doing. But he had come to me for help. What he didn’t know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me, was I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him.
I was struggling with the fact that so many black people have lost their farmland, and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land. So, I didn’t give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough so that when he — I — I assumed the Department of Agriculture had sent him to me, either that or the — or the Georgia Department of Agriculture. And he needed to go back and report that I did try to help him.
So I took him to a white lawyer that we had — that had…attended some of the training that we had provided, ’cause Chapter 12 bankruptcy had just been enacted for the family farmer. So I figured if I take him to one of them that his own kind would take care of him.
That’s when it was revealed to me that, ya’ll, it’s about poor versus those who have, and not so much about white — it is about white and black, but it’s not — you know, it opened my eyes, ’cause I took him to one of his own and I put him in his hand, and felt okay, I’ve done my job. But, during that time we would have these injunctions against the Department of Agriculture and — so, they couldn’t foreclose on him. And I want you to know that the county supervisor had done something to him that I have not seen yet that they’ve done to any other farmer, black or white. And what they did to him caused him to not be able to file Chapter 12 bankruptcy.
So, everything was going along fine — I’m thinking he’s being taken care of by the white lawyer and then they lifted the injunction against USDA in May of ’87 for two weeks and he was one of 13 farmers in Georgia who received a foreclosure notice. He called me. I said, “Well, go on and make an appointment at the lawyer. Let me know when it is and I’ll meet you there.”
So we met at the lawyer’s office on — on the day they had given him. And this lawyer sat there — he had been paying this lawyer, y’all. That’s what got me. He had been paying the lawyer since November, and this was May. And the lawyer sat there and looked at him and said, “Well, y’all are getting old. Why don’t you just let the farm go?” I could not believe he said that, so I said to the lawyer — I told him, “I can’t believe you said that.” I said, “It’s obvious to me if he cannot file a Chapter 12 bankruptcy to — to stop this foreclose, you have to file an 11. And the lawyer said to me, “I’ll do whatever you say” — “whatever you think” — that’s the way he put it. But he’s paying him. He wasn’t paying me any money, you know. So he said — the lawyer said he would work on it.
And then, about seven days before that man would have been sold at the courthouse steps, the farmer called me and said the lawyer wasn’t doing anything. And that’s when I spent time there in my office calling everybody I could think of to try to see — help me find the lawyer who would handle this. And finally, I remembered that I had gone to see one just 40 miles away in Americus with the black farmers. So, I –
Well, working with him made me see that it’s really about those who have versus those who don’t, you know. And they could be black; they could be white; they could be Hispanic. And it made me realize then that I needed to work to help poor people — those who don’t have access the way others have.
Story 2The following is from Sherrod’s book The Courage To Hope.
I offered Mr. Spooner a seat. I could see he was trying hard to maintain his pride, and I figured he must have felt uncomfortable to be talking to me about his problems. Relations between blacks and whites were still fragile in 1980s Georgia. There was a common attitude of “We’ll take care of our kind, and you take care of your kind.” Mr. Spooner began by speaking loudly, and at first I thought he was acting superior to me, but I later found out he was hard of hearing and he always talked like that. We stared uneasily at each other across the desk, and then, haltingly, he began to tell me his story. He and his wife, Eloise, had a family farm they were on the brink of losing. I learned that the Spooners were two weeks away from their farm being sold at the courthouse, and someone had suggested they come to see me as a last-ditch effort.
I looked at the worried man sitting across from me, and my heart just opened up wide. I had a revelation. I said, “I can help you.” And I did. It took plenty of maneuvering, but my efforts succeeded, and the Spooners and I ended up being solid friends.
I told that story to the NAACP audience, describing it as an emotional breakthrough for me, because my work had always been with black farmers, but, as I told the audience, “God helped me to see that it’s not just about black people—it’s about poor people. And I’ve come a long way. I knew that I couldn’t live with hate, you know. As my mother has said so many times, ‘If we had tried to live with hate in our hearts, we’d probably be dead now.’
Story 3: Spooner Account From WaPo
We get this little paper from Atlanta, the Market Bulletin, and it had a little note in there and said if you were having and about to lose your fame … they had a toll-free number. So I decided to call and he told us to go to this lawyer in Cairo and we did and he knew the woman who was in charge of the FHA.
So he said you might as well go ahead and do what Diane suggested (the FHA supervisor). I was so mad when we were driving home. Then in about a few weeks, a man called to see what you guys have done. He didn’t do one thing for us. He said I’m gonna give you one more number for someone who could help you. That number was Shirley Sherrod. So we talked to her and we went up there to Albany, Ga. She said we’ve got two lawyers: one is a black lawyer and his name was Black and the other was Dan Easterlin in Americus, Ga.
We said we’d just try this one in Albany. So we went to see him and we had to scrape up some money and see him. We went to him for six months. But he wasn’t getting anything accomplished.
After about six months, he said he couldn’t help us on our case. I have another client. I called Shirley and told her and she asked me if she wanted us to call the other one. She asked us if she wanted her to go with us and we told her yes. She went up there two or three times.
We told Mr. Easterlin that we had some rough nights and couldn’t sleep because we were worried and Mr. Easterlin told us to go home and get a good night’s sleep and he’d take care of that. He managed to get us a Chapter 11 and we got that all settled. Then it began to level off, everything got better.
That was just about two weeks before they were gonna sell our farm up at the courthouse. He got the Chapter 11 to stop it and Shirley Sherrod arranged it all and got it going. We would have lost everyting if it hadn’t been for Shirley.
Why did Shirley Sherrod tell the NAACP in 2010 that she’d taken ‘white farmer’ Roger Spooner to ‘one of his own kind’?
I’ve just confirmed the bombshell story that I reported this morning : that a key component of Shirley Sherrod’s infamous 2010 speech to the NAACP in Douglas, Georgia appears to be false.
In her speech-which grabbed headlines when Andrew Breitbart posted an excerpt from it in an essay discussing the audience reaction-Sherrod said that at her first meeting with Roger Spooner, she thought Spooner was ‘acting superior’ to her. She told the approving NAACP audience that she didn’t give Spooner ‘the full force’ of her help and referred him to a white attorney. She mentions the race of the attorney at least four times.
So I took him to a white lawyer that we had — that had…attended some of the training that we had provided, ’cause Chapter 12 bankruptcy had just been enacted for the family farmer. So I figured if I take him to one of them that his own kind would take care of him.
(snip)
That’s when it was revealed to me that, ya’ll, it’s about poor versus those who have, and not so much about white — it is about white and black, but it’s not — you know, it opened my eyes, ’cause I took him to one of his own…
(snip)
So, everything was going along fine — I’m thinking he’s being taken care of by the white lawyer and then they lifted the injunction against USDA in May of ’87 for two weeks and he was one of 13 farmers in Georgia who received a foreclosure notice.
I spoke exclusively to Roger and Eloise Spooner this morning, who confirmed that the attorney Sherrod initially took them to was black.
And here’s an extended version of clip I include in the video. Listen to what Eloise Spooner told me:
The Spooners say that the black attorney from Albany, Georgia failed to help them. They were helped by a white attorney, Ben Easterlin.
On July 22, 2024 Eloise Spooner said in an online chat hosted by the Washington Post:
So we talked to (Shirley Sherrod) and we went up there to Albany, Ga. She said we’ve got two lawyers: one is a black lawyer and his name was Black and the other was Dan Easterlin in Americus, Ga.
We said we’d just try this one in Albany. So we went to see him and we had to scrape up some money. We went to him for six months. But he wasn’t getting anything accomplished.
After about six months, he said he couldn’t help us on our case, that he had another client. I called Shirley and told her and she asked me if she wanted us to call the other one.
The Spooners were both clear that Mrs. Sherrod had helped them but had no explanation for why Mrs. Sherrod told the NAACP she’d initially taken Spooner to an unhelpful white attorney.
In her 2012 book The Courage To Hope, Sherrod reprints her speech on page 183. Sherrod also gives a more detailed account of bringing the Spooners to the first attorney who did not help them but makes no mention of the lawyer’s race.
However, the book includes the text of her NAACP speech, which includes the falsehood about the race of the lawyer.
Sherrod is currently suing the widow of Andrew Breitbart and Larry O’Connor, a Breitbart News employee for defamation and false light.
And that lawsuit also claims that Sherrod took Spooner to ‘a white lawyer.’ Point 51 of the legal filing states in part:
51. Although the text of the blog post does, in one stray reference, concede that Mrs. Sherrod gave some help to the farmer, even this statement is portrayed in a deliberately misleading and incomplete manner. The blog post mentions only the first part of Mrs. Sherrod’s assistance — that Mrs. Sherrod initially referred the farmer to a white lawyer, noting sarcastically that Mrs. Sherrod had “decide[d] that he should get help from ‘one of his own kind,’” taking yet another quote out of context from Mrs. Sherrod’s speech.
Who should we believe: Shirley Sherrod or Eloise Spooner, the wife of the ‘white farmer’?
Sherrod and Spooner tell significantly different versions of story about the Spooners almost losing their farm.
In both versions, Sherrod eventually helped the Spooners after Sherrod saw how a lawyer she’d sent them to wasn’t helping.
In Sherrod’s version, the lawyer who didn’t help the Spooners is white. As Sherrod puts it in her speech, ‘one of his own kind.’
Sherrod’s story is the story that the world knows. It’s got two white characters in it. Neither presented to NAACP audience in a good light. Spooner is presented as arrogant. Sherrod describes him as ‘acting superior.’ Then, there’s the white lawyer who doesn’t help the Spooners. Sherrod tells the NAACP crowd that this shocks her.
That’s the story Sherrod told the NAACP audience. It’s been repeated over and over by everyone in the media.
I’ve already written about Sherrod’s claim that Spooner was ‘acting superior.’ Sherrod herself admits that this wasn’t true, twice, in her book The Courage To Hope. Sherrod’s portrayal of Spooner to the NAACP audience was false.
But what about the lawyer who didn’t help the Spooners?
According to Eloise Spooner, the attorney who didn’t help the Spooners was black.
Spooner didn’t say this in some obscure backwoods daily a few days ago.
Spooner told her story in the Washington Post. In July, 2010.
It’s a direct contraction to what Sherrod told the NAACP audience.
According to Eloise Spooner, the Spooners met with Sherrod who suggested two lawyers. The Spooners chose a black attorney in Albany, Georgia. The struggled to pay him and after six months, the black attorney had done nothing to help.
That’s when Sherrod stepped in to help; apparently with a white attorney.
Let’s compare the two versions.
In her infamous 2010 speech to an NAACP meeting, Shirley told a story where white people are the problem:
The first time I was faced with having to help a white farmer save his farm, he — he took a long time talking, but he was trying to show me he was superior to me. I know what he was doing. But he had come to me for help. What he didn’t know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me, was I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him.
I was struggling with the fact that so many black people have lost their farmland, and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land. So, I didn’t give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough so that when he — I — I assumed the Department of Agriculture had sent him to me, either that or the — or the Georgia Department of Agriculture. And he needed to go back and report that I did try to help him.
So I took him to a white lawyer that we had — that had…attended some of the training that we had provided, ’cause Chapter 12 bankruptcy had just been enacted for the family farmer. So I figured if I take him to one of them that his own kind would take care of him.
(An attorney) said I’m gonna give you one more number for someone who could help you. That number was Shirley Sherrod. So we talked to her and we went up there to Albany, Ga. She said we’ve got two lawyers: one is a black lawyer and his name was Black and the other was Dan Easterlin in Americus, Ga.
We said we’d just try this one in Albany. So we went to see him and we had to scrape up some money. We went to him for six months. But he wasn’t getting anything accomplished.
After about six months, he said he couldn’t help us on our case, that he had another client. I called Shirley and told her and she asked me if she wanted us to call the other one. She asked us if we wanted her to go with us and we told her yes. She went up there two or three times.
We told Mr. Easterlin that we had some rough nights and couldn’t sleep because we were worried and Mr. Easterlin told us to go home and get a good night’s sleep and he’d take care of that. He managed to get us a Chapter 11 and we got that all settled. Then it began to level off, everything got better.
That was just about two weeks before they were gonna sell our farm up at the courthouse. He got the Chapter 11 to stop it and Shirley Sherrod arranged it all and got it going. We would have lost everything if it hadn’t been for Shirley.
Which story is true?
Sherrod’s or Spooner’s?
If Spooner’s detailed account is true, why would Shirley Sherrod tell the NAACP crowd a story that makes the white farmer look arrogant and the white lawyer look lazy and greedy?
Why did Sherrod tell the NAACP audience that she took Spooner ‘to one of his own kind’ if she gave the Spooners two options and they went with the black attorney?
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