Perils of the 24/7 News Cycle
Jules Witcover

The first law of American journalism used to be: "Get it first, but get it right." But that was before the era of instant news transmitted by modern vehicles of communication faster than a speeding bullet.

The law's continuing validity has been underscored by a conservative blogger's posting on the Internet of an edited video of an African-American Agriculture Department employee seeming to own up to bias against a white farmer who sought her aid in 1986 to save his farm.

The video turned out to be a selective portion of a recent talk by the woman, Shirley Sherrod, which when seen in full showed the opposite. She really was using her early attitude as a sort of confessional before she actually did work to save the farm. The farmer subsequently lauded her for her efforts.

The blogger aired the edited portion as an example of "reverse racism," mostly conservative news outlets and commentators gave it wider circulation on the Internet, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack without further investigation fired the woman. He said he acted on his own, but there was much speculation that he had been prodded by the White House.

When a full and unedited version of Sherrod's remarks surfaced, Vilsack under pressure reversed himself and offered the now 62-year-old Georgia supervisory official her job back. And when she said she wanted to talk to President Obama about the whole matter, he phoned her, apologized for what had happened and urged her to return to work.

All this occurred in the context of a row between the NAACP, the respected African-American civil rights organization, and the growing tea party movement. NAACP President Benjamin Jealous had recently called on movement leaders to purge alleged racist elements from it.

Also in the mix was grumbling from black leaders that Obama was not doing enough to address the needs of the African-American community, and right-wing counter-charges that he was showing favoritism or that the very legitimacy of his presidency was in dispute -- the discredited but lingering challenge that he was not American-born.

The whole ugly mess was rightly laid at the feet of the blogger, a man named Andrew Breitbart, who has a history of airing other right-wing exposes of liberal causes on the Fox News television network, which has been charged by the White House with having a pointedly anti-administration slant.

The blogger claimed he did not edit the video in question, but his airing of the damaging segment did not say much, to say the very least, for his caution or thoroughness. Nor did it say much of the same for all the rumormongers on cable television of whatever political persuasion who ran with the story without bothering to verify the original allegation against Sherrod.

Obama in an ABC News interview said of Vilsack's quick firing of Sherrod: "He jumped the gun, partly because we now live in this media culture, when something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles. I've told my team and I told my agencies that we have make sure that we're focusing on doing the right thing instead of what looks to be politically necessary at this very moment."

In this era of anything goes from anybody on the Internet, whether true or not, whether verified or not, and regardless of the partisan intent of the story being floated, the same message should be delivered by every editor of every news outlet, print or electronic.

More than ever in this freewheeling time of news, rumor and distortion packaged as news, being right remains the essential component in journalism. It must come before being first, even in the 24/7 news cycle that has subordinated accuracy and completeness in what now passes for the all-important "breaking news."

Secretary Vilsack, and the Obama administration, should now understand the distinction. So must the editorial gatekeepers in today's more permissive journalism, responsible for guarding the credibility of the news business. As long as the growing breed of unmonitored propagandists continues to infect the news product, however, don't look for the distinction to be made by the barbarians at the gates.

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