Fox News Demands an Apology for Being Called Racist

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Last updated on August 10th, 2014 at 05:00 pm

Fox News’ Brit Hume delivered a commentary on Special Report with Bret Baier, where demanded that the media apologize to Fox News for calling them racist. Fox wants an apology from the NAACP, Howard Dean, and Shirley Sherrod. Hume said, “You might think all this would be the stuff of further apologies.”

Here is the video courtesy of Media Matters:

Hume said, “As victims of unfair media treatment go, Shirley Sherrod got off easy. Within 24 hours or so from her forced resignation from the agriculture department, she’s been apologized to, offered a new job, and later even got a call from the president himself. All of this the result of a truncated Internet videotape that made it appear she had once done less than her best for a white farmer because of his race. It was unfair, and the apologies were deserved, but the initial rush to judge Sherrod was not the only rush to judgment in this affair.”

Hume then went in circles trying to spin away FNC’s responsibility for this, “Consider, Sherrod herself said she was ordered last Monday to resign immediately by a senior Agriculture official who said Sherrod was going to be on Glenn Beck’s Fox program that night. In fact, Beck did not say a word about Sherrod until the next night when he defended her. Bill O’Reilly called for her to step down on Monday, but by her account she had already quit before he spoke, and O’Reilly apologized the next night. Indeed, Shirley Sherrod was not mentioned on Fox News Channel or Foxnews.com either until after the Obama administration had forced her out, and no news as opposed to opinion broadcast on Fox ever accused Sherrod of racism, but she blamed Fox and accused the network of racism, so did numerous others including the NAACP, and former Democratic Chairman Howard Dean on Fox News Sunday though it became clear from Chris Wallace’s question that Dean had no idea what the facts were. You might think all this would be the stuff of further apologies. Somehow, I’m not holding my breath.”

By the way, Glenn Beck apologized to Shirley Sherrod by calling her a Marxist:

The Fox News spin on this is that it was all Breitbart’s fault. They really didn’t do anything wrong. They broke out the old news versus opinion defense, and Shirley Sherrod and others who called out FNC’s pattern of race baiting and pushing fake stories owe Fox an apology. What Hume leaves out of this little fairy tale is Fox’s own responsibility for gleefully pushing a racist angle on a phony story.

The idea that Fox didn’t run with the story until after Sherrod resigned is a flat out lie. Media Matters reported that, on July 20 Fox News.com took credit for Sherrod’s resignation, “The Agriculture Department announced Monday, shortly after FoxNews.com published its initial report on the video, that Sherrod had resigned.” (Don’t bother looking for the original, FNC edited the story the next day and removed that line).

Fox News wants an apology for some in the media finally growing a pair and calling them out for what they are trying to do. If this was the first time Fox News had done something like this then maybe it could be viewed as an isolated incident, but with the ACORN, Van Jones, and the Black Panthers stories, Fox News has built up a track record of race baiting through false reporting, but maybe Mr. Hume is on to something in terms of apologies? I still haven’t heard Fox News apologize to Shirley Sherrod, so I would suggest that until Fox News can apologize to Sherrod, no apologies should be forthcoming to them.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association

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