Head Strong: Andrew Breitbart fooled America - again

Last week, blogger Andrew Breitbart released a mischievously edited video. It showed a black Department of Agriculture official, Shirley Sherrod, recalling her seemingly racist reluctance to assist a white farmer more than two decades earlier. Some in the audience of NAACP members are heard engaging in a sort of call-and-response approval of Sherrod's sentiments. Reacting to the edited video, Sherrod's boss, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, demanded her resignation.

Now imagine if it had gone a little differently - if, before Sherrod could resign, the White House had intervened and saved her job. Imagine the reaction of those now trying to put President Obama at the center of this debacle by blaming him for Sherrod's unnecessary resignation. They would have been outraged if he had backed her up in the face of the initial information.

Should Vilsack have investigated further? Yes. Ditto for the NAACP. But White House spokesman Robert Gibbs should not have been the first to offer Sherrod an apology. It should have been Breitbart, the man who started the controversy. What he did was tantamount to releasing the Zapruder film minus the moment of impact.

Breitbart's explanation - that he didn't realize the video had been so maliciously manipulated - only amplifies his irresponsibility. Of the "source" who gave him the video, he told the Daily Beast: "I don't know this person. I can't divine what that person's motivation was. I don't know."

A little less trust and a little more verify next time, Mr. Breitbart.

Even shallower was Breitbart's description of his own motivation: "The video shows racism, and when the NAACP is going to charge the tea party with racism . . . I'm going to show you it happens on the other side."

Even if you take that bogus explanation at face value, Breitbart at least should have highlighted the fact that the NAACP audience also expressed approval when Sherrod brought her story full circle and said poor people of every race need help. But he didn't.

Such are the pitfalls of a media world in which everyone plays whisper-down-the-lane, but nobody fact-checks the message.