BigGovernment.com broke an exclusive story in which Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra, goes on the record stating that her mother actually wants out of Congress.

During a telephone interview, Ms. Pelosi–speaking from a friend’s home in New York City–described her mother’s predicament:

She would retire right now, if the donors she has didn’t want her to stay so badly. They know she wants to leave, though. They think she’s destined for the wilderness. She has very few days left. She’s 71, she wants to have a life, she’s done. It’s obligation, that’s all I’m saying.

After the story was published, Alexandra notified BigGovernment.com that she had said “greatness,” not “wilderness.” The crux of the story, that her mother would rather leave Congress, remained unchallenged. So here we have the daughter of the former Speaker of the House stating that her mother would retire if it weren’t for people who donated to her election keeping her in office.

Pretty big news, right? All kinds of questions come immediately to mind when I read this. What do her donors want of her? What has she not done that they need her in office to accomplish? There are dozens of questions a news organization would want answers to in order to give their readers the best possible coverage of this significant story. That is, of course, if the news organization is really interested in informing their readers rather than moving a narrative forward.

Enter Politico. (more…)

Last month, New York Times reporter James C. McKinley Jr. falsely reported that an FBI informant who helped to thwart a left-wing terrorist plot had actually encouraged the conspiracy. In the article “Anarchist Ties Seen in ’08 Bombing of Texas Governor’s Mansion” published February 22, 2011 online and in the print edition a day later, the Times indicated that former left-wing activist and BigGovernment.com contributor Brandon Darby urged two anarchists to firebomb the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota [emphasis added]:

Yet federal agents accused two men from these circles of plotting to make firebombs and hurl them at police cars during the convention. An F.B.I informant from Austin, Brandon Darby, was traveling with the group and told the authorities of the plot, which he had encouraged.

We brought this to your attention on February 24th when we asked the Times to correct the record. We noted that according to the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota, the assertion Darby “encouraged” the plot was patently false. On February 27th, we brought in Matthew Vadum, an expert on the circumstances surrounding the plot, to provide broader context to the Times’s smear.

Still, the error remained uncorrected.

Then, last week, a source informed BigJournalism.com that the New York Times reporter acknowledged the charge they published against Darby was in fact bogus, but still, the Times did not correct the article.

As of this writing, the false charge against Darby remains in tact.

Today, Brandon Darby filed a lawsuit against New York Times for libel and defamation. An official letter from Mr. Darby:

We’ll be following the story as it develops on BigJournalism.com and BigGovernment.com.

Earlier today BigGovernment.com, BigJournalism.com, and Breitbart.TV published a shocking video investigation from Lila Rose’s pro-life organization, Live Action, showing a Planned Parenthood employee advising a “pimp” on underage sex trafficking and secret abortions for minors  The post had only been live for a few hours when NPR began to run interference for Planned Parenthood, the government-supported clinics widely known for counseling women on abortions.  There are factual errors in the piece that NPR ought to address.

First, note the original headline of the NPR article:

The article by Eyder Peralta was originally given the title “Group Behind ACORN Undercover Videos, Sets Up Planned Parenthood ‘Sting.’”  The ACORN investigation was conducted by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles for O’Keefe’s Veritas Visuals organization, while the Planned Parenthood investigation released today was conducted by Lila Rose and her team at Live Action.  Ms. Rose was not involved in the ACORN videos.  NPR has since corrected the headline, which is especially convenient because we also take issue with their comma usage as well as their decision to use scare quotes around the word “sting.”  The URL slug of the updated version of the post still contains the original headline:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/02/01/133403770/group-behind-acorn-undercover-videos-sets-up-planned-parenthood-sting

The folks at Live Action discreetly let NPR know they had mischaracterized the organization, and NPR obliged with a correction, but the fact that this error was made at all is extremely revealing.  Live Action’s investigation clearly demonstrates a manager of a government-funded organization, trusted to abide by the law, advising young people to perform illegal (and immoral) activities, even offering tips to not get caught, yet NPR ran the story with the aforementioned headline.  Their editorial staff used a false fact as an attempt to diminish Live Action’s findings, portraying the investigation in a controversial light instead of letting their audience simply see and hear the facts for themselves.  While we appreciate the correction, this was a mistake that diligent and honest journalists never would have made.

But wait, there’s more.

(more…)

As was the case with most of the corrupt mainstream media last week, if you were watching MSNBC you’d never know that the now-famous Shirley Sherrod video posted by Andrew Breitbart on BigGovernment.com included her moment of redemption. But that’s because MSNBC is a den of left-wing propagandists who have sworn to tell no truth that stands in the way of their agenda.

So what was all their faux outrage over? It was over their own false claim that the video was intentionally edited in a way to unfairly brand Ms. Sherrod as racist. Therefore it is safe to conclude that in the eyes of MSNBC, falsely branding someone a racist is a terrible thing.

Unless, of course, it’s one of their own employees doing it.

So outraged was Keith Olbermann by the Sherrod affair, that Mr. Special Comment himself briefly returned from an abrupt vacation to deliver a Special-Special Comment — one of those Bizarro-Murrow moments so lacking in self-awareness that even that vipers’ nest of  JournoListers can’t help but to roll their collective eyes at him. (more…)

In the Associated Press article “GOP invites blogger Breitbart to fundraiser” published yesterday, the AP states:

Breitbart was behind an edited video clip of a former Department of Agriculture official that suggested Shirley Sherrod, who is black, denied a white farmer aid. The speech, when viewed in full, shows the opposite.

The written report authored by Breitbart that accompanied the aforementioned video acknowledges that her “humanity” did compel her to help the white farmer:

Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind.” She refers him to a white lawyer.

The AP claims Breitbart suggested that Sherrod “denied a white farmer aid.”  His multimedia presentation, when viewed in full, shows the exact opposite. (more…)

NEW YORK (AP) – A conservative blog posts 2 minutes, 38 seconds of video clips of a black federal agriculture official saying she didn’t do everything she could to help a white farmer. The blogger labels it racism. Calls grow for the Obama administration to remove her. No one at the Agriculture Department or the White House checks further. The official is forced to resign.

Monday ends, but not the story.

A complete, 43-minute version of the video surfaces the next day, Tuesday, and casts a much different light on Shirley Sherrod’s comments: They were part of an NAACP speech about how she overcame her racial prejudice to help the farmer, not about prejudice that stopped her from helping him.

Now, the administration is criticized for wronging her by rushing to judgment.

By Wednesday afternoon, Sherrod is sitting at a studio in CNN’s Atlanta headquarters, watching on live television as White House press secretary Robert Gibbs apologizes to her.

She accepts and says: “Being afraid of the machine that the right has put out there—that’s what’s driving this.” (more…)