Conor Friedersdorf, subbing for Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic, is trying to tell you how to talk about Pigford.
In a couple of pieces recently, Friedersdorf focuses on the gap between the number of Pigford claimants and census records of the number of the black farmers. It’s an odd issue to focus on – although Media Matters does it, too – because it doesn’t really prove anything. It’s just floating numbers. What does prove something are the testimonies of Jimmy Dismuke, Willie Head, Eddie Slaughter, Lucious Abrams, and other black farmers who all have first hand knowledge of Pigford fraud.
Of course, Friedersdorf doesn’t mention the black farmers. They aren’t his concern. He’s much more interested in slicing and dicing numbers, comparing reports and – mostly – trying to impugn the motives of people like Andrew Breitbart (and Republicans in general) for covering the story in the first place.
Friedersdorf doesn’t care about the black farmers and their stories, so he can’t imagine anyone else caring, either.
And then the echo chamber begins, with The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates discussing the motivation of Republicans while ignoring the actual black farmers and then The American Prospect’s Adam Serwer opining on what Friedersdorf and Coates said, while once again ignoring what the black farmers said.
It’s okay to totally ignore the black farmers as long as you’re calling Republicans racist. By insulting the motives of people covering the story, you gain absolution and you don’t have to lift a finger to actually do anything resembling fair reporting or even render an informed opinion. These are paid, staff bloggers.
These articles and their hermetically sealed opinions all represent the absolute worst things about blogging: smug, self-satisfied homebodies analyzing other people’s analysis of third hand reports of what someone else’s study found by looking at discombobulated data.
Is there any way to get Friedersdorf, Serwer, Coates, and Sullivan to pay attention to firsthand, real world data like the video interviews with the black farmers (LINK) or the two-hour audio of Tom Burrell explaining to a church full of people how to commit fraud in Pigford? It’s doubtful because they just ignore the quotes from black farmers in the National Review article.
And the odds that Friedersdorf, Serwer, Coates, and Sullivan would bust out of their echo chamber and hop in a car, head down to southwest Georgia, and spend a few days interviewing people while staying in the Quality Inn in Valdosta and eating at the waffle house… that won’t ever happen. You see, that would be journalism and it’s apparently not an interest of theirs when it comes to Pigford.
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