During both commutes yesterday, NPR was flogging the NAACP/Shirley Sherrod story. They did their due diligence, once, and mentioned that the NAACP seemed to have warmly received Sherrod's account of having discriminated against a white farmer.

But their overall treatment of the story (particularly in the evening) was vile, calling Andrew Breitbart a host of unpleasant names and accusing him of "smash mouth" journalism. Hilariously, in light of this diatribe, they also accused him of "blurring the line" between news reporting — he a a blogger, apparently, and so shouldn't break news.

Were they kidding? What of the other side of that — NPR are allegedly journalists, and (unlike Breitbart) claim to be neutral — so why are they always mixing their opinions and personal attacks against Breitbart in with the news? What about Newsweek now admitting it is basically a lefty opinion journal, despite that "News-" prefix in their name? What about Dan Rather rushing the "George Bush AWOL" document onto ABC News, straight from a Kerry campaign worker, over the protests (which he lied about) of document experts? What about the New York Times, in general?

Additionally, the timeline they related was false (or, more precisely, phrased misleadingly) to give the listener the impression that the administration reacted to pressure from Fox News and other sources. To the contrary, Yid with Lid has a helpful post which notes:

No matter what Fox News does, it is their fault. Even though Ms Sherrod was warned that she was about to be on Beck the day she resigned no one told Glenn Beck. He didn't know the details of the Sherrod controversy until after his show. In fact Fox didn't cover the story until hours after Sherrod resigned...

Let's still blame Fox, shall we? (Every group needs a bogeyman.) I guess Fox shouldn't cover a major resignation triggered by an NAACP denouncement. Ever.

The larger morality tale, of course, was that evil Andrew Brietbart had deceived the administration. Yet only the NAACP had the full tape; Breitbart himself had only been given the edited portion. If there was a deception, Brietbart was as much a sucker as the head of the NAACP and the Obama administration. And, indeed, all three judged a snippet out of context.

And speaking of taking things out of context, NPR also nearly submerged the context of the story itself — portraying Breitbart's post as an attack mainly on Sherrod, and failing to note his real target was the NAACP, which had been promoting (along media outlets, like NPR) completely-unsubstantiated claims of racist attacks from Tea Partiers. In this context, it's very hard to take NPR seriously when they complain about shoddy journalism, rushes to judgment, covering unsubstantiated charges, et al.