After my earlier post, I received an e-mail from one of my readers who happens to be an attorney. He stated that he thought that Sherrod could have a claim against Breitbart if it could be shown that Breitbart knew that the video tape would make Sherrod look racist.
This is clearly wrong. If Breitbart had written an article rather than posting the tape and had said that "USDA official Shirley Sherrod told the NAACP in a speech that she had on occasion not help a white farmer as much as she could have because of his race, but instead sent him to one of his own, a white lawyer", this would have been true. It certainly would have made Sherrod look like a racist. but it would not be actionable under the law. Putting the same thing on tape changes nothing.
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