Unchecked video sets off a media storm

This is the story of the three-minute video that lied - and how, in our supercharged media world, a tiny clip can ignite a runaway chain reaction.

And it's the story of Shirley Sherrod, who until Tuesday worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture - and who, by the time you read this, may be working there again.

It began Monday, when the clip, from a 43-minute speech Sherrod gave in March to an NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Georgia, appeared on the conservative website Breitbart.com. In a blog post, activist Andrew Breitbart called it a "racist" tale in which she "racially discriminates against a white farmer." Breitbart, long at odds with the NAACP, said this demonstrated its racism. The NAACP had passed a resolution at its national conference last week calling on the tea party movement to repudiate racist elements in its ranks.

Out of an already-buzzing blogosphere, the clip was sucked into the 24/7 news cycle. Many major cable news outlets ran it, evidently without watching the rest of the speech.

Lambasted by NAACP president Benjamin Jealous, Sherrod resigned, saying later she'd been pressured to by an administration official worried that the story was going to be on Glenn Beck's show on Fox. Her boss, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, declared "zero tolerance for discrimination."

Then . . . somebody looked at the whole speech. Turns out it wasn't what it seemed. Quite the reverse.

"This shows you do your work, better check your facts, or you'll end up doing something you're going to regret," says Brooks Jackson, director of FactCheck.org, a project of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Public Policy.

As of last night, Vilsack had apologized, the White House had apologized, and Sherrod had been offered a new job (she was considering it). While the NAACP, the Obama administration, and many in the 24/7 news media have been left looking, well, dumb.

Had people watched, they'd have seen Sherrod giving old-fashioned testimony about herself. To an audience nodding in the rhythm of religious call-and-response, she told of a 1986 case when she worked for a nonprofit that helped farmers. She related how she initially hesitated to assist white farmers Roger and Eloise Spooner. But Sherrod finally saw her error and did all she could to help them avoid foreclosure on their farm.

Sherrod said she felt that God had sent her this case to teach her. The Spooners said Tuesday on CNN's Rick's List that they considered Sherrod a friend and "no way" a racist.