Rushing to Judgement- Shirley Sherrod Saved

Ms. Shirley Sherrod

I love the news.  Any and all news, I want to know what's going locally and globally.  I am a political junkie and living in DC has only deepened this passion. But the recent incident involving Shirley Sherrod made my mind swirl.  When the news initially broke that she was forced to resign (by pulling over and submitting her resignation).  Nothing made sense and the news media did not connect the dots.  

Ode to all news media and major organizations- fact check before publishing any content, hence the full story of Shirley Sherrod. A snippet of her speech was taped by conservative web publisher and Tea Party advocate Andrew Breitbart.  Many major news agencies ran the story and no one bothered to fact check or listen to the entire speech she gave before the NAACP banquet.  No one wondered why the farmer she spoke of highly still regarded her as a heroine.

It is clear that there is something wrong with Andrew Breitbart's politics, especially since he was intentionally running a smear campaign to bring down the NAACP.  The only organization that came out on top was the Black Caucus.  They were the only organization that listened to the speech in its entirety before posting judgement.

In the end, Shirley Sherrod has been vindicated.  Did journalists really learn from this episode?  Why is the tea party not feeling the heat?  Finally, Andrew Breitbart, who started this debacle, should have all of his work re-evaluated.