Maine news, sports, weather | Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

CORRECTION: The incident involving Shirley Sherrod began when conservative activist Andrew Breitbart posted a video clip on his website BigGovernment.com on July 19. It did not start with Fox News, which did not run any material about Sherrod until her resignation was made public that evening.

GORDON L. WEIL: Obama administration intimidated by faulty Fox News story on Sherrod

The case of Shirley Sherrod raises worrisome questions about the media and the government.

She is the U.S. Agriculture Department official who was fired because of a Fox News video that made her look like she was willing to discriminate against white people in performing her duties.

On the basis of that report, Tom Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa and current Secretary of Agriculture, ordered her to resign from her job. In fact, she was forced to pull to the side of the road and, using her Blackberry, send in her resignation.

Only later did the full clip appear, showing that, in fact, Sherrod was telling a decades-old story about how she had overcome racism. The white farmer she had helped came to her defense. Apologies flowed from Washington, including from the president, and she was offered a new job.

Was this a happy ending? No, it was more like a scary one.

Fox News, despite its claims of objectivity, is the banner carrier for the hard right in American politics. It has many viewers who agree with what it will say even before it says it. For them, Fox is facts.

Of course, we are fortunate in our country that Fox News can says almost anything it wants, and people are free to make their own choices about what they believe.

What is worrisome is that Fox News has come to wield so much power that a top government official, fearful of not seeming to be as vigilant as it is, summarily fired an employee without even giving her a chance to be heard.

Though Vilsack appears to have acted in his own, there can be little doubt that the administration of the first African-American president wants to show that it will discipline wayward African-Americans and not favor them.

Vilsack should have known better and shown some spine. As a former governor, he must have been aware of normal personnel procedures, giving people the chance to make their case before being fired. But he clearly was running scared.

Scared of what? The power of Fox News.

The media, along with the federal government, was at fault in accepting the report as fact without doing any checking. CNN did dig and managed to find the white farmer and his wife who fully backed Sherrod’s story. Oddly enough, in the television media wars between the right’s Fox News and the left’s MSNBC, the supposed straight news network, CNN, is losing viewers. Fox News has become the dominant voice.

For most of the television media, covering controversial issues involves either simply giving equal time to both sides or having the media’s own staff provide their views, often badly informed.

Seldom is there true reporting where a journalist tries to get the facts in the face of competing claims. The rarity of what used to be standard reporting is shown by the ballyhooing of the “investigative” reporters — usually one per network.

Thanks to television and the electronic media, news now breaks all the time, not just when a new edition of a newspaper is published. The rush to be first has overwhelmed the need to be accurate.

Even after the event, some people at Fox News justified the criticism of Sherrod because of her speech before the NAACP, the civil rights organization, on the grounds that the NAACP had charged that the Tea Party movement is racist. This looks like a case of two wrongs making a right.

Anyway, on either side, leveling charges about racism probably serves no useful purpose.

Is Fox News’ power the fault of that network itself?  Only to the extent that its claim that it is “fair and balanced” is ridiculous.

Those who do not accept its viewpoint but are intimidated by its appeal to many fellow Americans give Fox News its power.

That begins at the White House. President Barack Obama and congressional Democratic leaders are seriously fooling themselves if they believe catering to Fox News will gain them any support.

It gets back to leadership. Being a leader means, in part, being willing to take risks for what you believe is the right thing to do. It means showing a little courage. So we should worry about an administration that would fire Sherrod as it did.

And we need television news organizations that focus more on news reporting than they do now.

In Maine, we may seem far removed from all this. But it affects our country at its core, and there is reason to worry.



Gordon L. Weil, a weekly columnist for this newspaper, is an author, publisher, consultant and former international organization, U.S. and Maine government official. 

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