Andrew Breitbart and the “Big” websites are currently receiving a hefty dose of well-deserved criticism due to their shameful smear against Shirley Sherrod, and they have been scrambling to defend themselves.

Their attempts at defending their behavior have been, in equal doses, delusional and shamelessly dishonest. In other words, their response to this scandal nicely encapsulates the utter lack of journalistic integrity practiced by Breitbart's fledgling media empire.

A quick tour of their defenses so far:

• Breitbart has been flailing wildly (and dishonestly.) He has falsely claimed that the NAACP audience was “cheering” supposed racism in Sherrod's speech, absurdly stated that he “felt sorry” that the media made the story about Sherrod, and even suggested on CNN last night that the farmer and his wife who defended Sherrod were imposters. What he hasn't done is apologize or attempt to correct the record.
• In a jaw-dropping display of audacity, Big Government's Guy Benson proclaimed that Breitbart “didn't hide Sherrod's redemption,” in the video he posted, and that Breitbart “included Sherrod's change-of-heart conclusion that she ought to engage in class warfare rather than race warfare.” Benson proceeded to start race-baiting again by asking what would happen if a “white federal employee” had said that to an “all-white audience.”
• Big Government's Jeff Dunetz has written two posts that essentially amount to chastising the administration for making the mistake “overreacting” based on trusting Big Government's awful reporting.

Now, Big Journalism is seeking corrections from Media Matters for referring to Breitbart's original video as “heavily edited,” courtesy of his childish “Correction Alpaca.”

A good faith search of the Media Matters for America website found that the term “heavily edited” was used no less than 4 times in this article and 5 more times [captured in screen caps below the fold] to describe a video or videos that are not edited in any way whatsoever.

Both videos clearly represent full unedited excerpts of Sharon Sherrod's speech before the NAACP.

To refer to full excerpts as “heavily edited” or even “edited” is misleading and not true.

We respectfully request that Media Matters For America correct the record.

It's hard to understand the trick of semantics they are trying to pull off here. By the very nature of calling something an “excerpt,” you are conceding that it was edited out of a larger video.

More importantly, what the alpaca calls the “full unedited excerpt” was presented -- via, yes, editing -- in a way that completely distorted Sherrod's story. The initial clip promoted by Breitbart was edited to include text at the beginning that framed Sherrod's comments as a story from her time as a USDA employee. The video has since been changed to include new text essentially correcting this falsehood:

While Ms. Sherrod made these remarks while she held a federally appointed position, the story she tells refers to actions she took before she held that federal position.

By including this new text on the video, Big Government is conceding that the video was edited and framed in a misleading way. And of course, the text edited into the video claims that she was describing how she “discriminates against people based on race” which is completely contradicted by the comments before and after the supposed “full unedited excerpts” that were originally presented.

Semantic games aside, would Big Journalism prefer we change the phrase from “heavily edited” to “excerpts ripped horribly out of context in order to create a false narrative and smear an innocent woman as a racist”?