Facts Don’t Matter to the Average Breitbart Fan
There are degrees of media perfidy, while some see breitbart as a frilly cheerleader who will scream for his team no matter what the score others see him as that bookie guy who tries to “fix” the game.
The stories and videos Mr. Breitbart plays up on his Web sites — which include Big Government, Big Journalism and Big Hollywood — tend to act as political Rorschach tests. If you agree with him, you think what he does is citizen journalism. If you don’t, his work is little more than crowd-sourced political sabotage that freely distorts the facts.
“On the right, he is seen as an investigative journalist along the lines of Woodward and Bernstein,” said James B. McPherson, author of “The Conservative Resurgence and the Press.”
The damage Mr. Breitbart suffered to his credibility after he posted a tipster’s edited video that showed an Agriculture Department official, Shirley Sherrod, making what appeared to be prejudiced remarks seems not to matter as far as his fans are concerned. Also, the Acorn videos appeared to show a man walking into Acorn offices dressed as a pimp, when in fact he was not.
“I think his actions show that if he’s not willing to distort, he is at least careless with the facts,” Mr. McPherson added. “But there are no standards of fact anymore for a lot of people. We have gone from selecting sourc