Althouse: On Sherrod and Taking Things Out of Context

Analysis from Ann Althouse today. Read the whole thing:

Don’t we constantly extract quotes and clips from larger contexts? I do blog posts by that method all the time. I find the juiciest line and quote it often deliberately out of context or with intent to misdirect for humorous or shocking effect. It’s the reader’s responsibility to figure out what to do with it. I’m not ashamed to operate that way. For one thing, I give links, so you have a path to the larger context. And, more important, by depriving you of a pat, self-contained package, I’m forcing you to read critically and keep going.

There’s always more to the story. When we purport to put something “in context,” it’s the whole context, We’re choosing the frame of information that serves our interests, interests that may include but are rarely limited to the pure understanding of the truth. Traditional newspapers may have led their readers to think that they’d processed all the information and digested it into a simple-to-read article, and they often abused their readers’ trust. The web doesn’t work like that. The web activates its readers, and I think that’s for the good…

…[Breitbart] identifies Sherrod as USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development, speaking a the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Georgia, giving a “meandering speech to what appears to be an all-black audience.” He misstates (and later corrects) that she’s talking about how she treats white people today, in her current job. That’s an atrocious, blatant error, which, as we all found out, is easily refuted by watching the video of the full speech. (I should say, more accurately, the speech minus the gap that “an NAACP spokesman” said occurred “when the tape was switched in the recording.” Really? They use tapes to record? Tapes that are inadequate to hold a speech of less than an hour? My pocket digital cameras have better video capacity that than. I’m skeptical.)…

…We learned much more about Shirley Sherrod, but we don’t know everything. The context frame was widened, to her full speech, her life story as she chose to tell it. But there are gaps even in that (even aside from the tape-switch gap). I want to know more, and I don’t think we know the whole story about why she was fired. The official story is pretty embarrassing for the administration, and I don’t quite believe it. They jumped because of the Breitbart post? What are they hiding? I suspect that they don’t want us delving into the inner workings of the USDA, and they don’t want us listening to all the various things Shirley Sherrod has said and will say. Why wasn’t she on any of the Sunday talk shows?

Full article here.