[Guest Post by Lee Stranahan]

Media Matters has hit an absolute new all-time low, defending not just the Pigford scam but Pigford’s mastermind, attorney Al Pires. Worst of all, they do it in an article entitled “Stossel Once Again Attacks Black Farmers Who Were Victims Of Discrimination By The Federal Government” and by using video where Media Matters deliberately edited out footage of a black farmer.

This is another in a series of race baiting attacks by Media Matters’s cowardly Adam Shah, who has consistently refused to retract or correct any of the numerous errors he’s made about the Pigford story. Shah has previously defended "Dr." John Boyd and now he’s in bed with Al Pires, too. I have personally offered Shah the phone numbers of farmers like Lucius Abrams and Eddie Slaughter so he can get the facts about Pigford straight from black farmers himself, but Shah is more interested in protecting people like Pires and Boyd, who we have shown are profiting from and victimizing the black community.

To understand the heinousness of what Media Matters in this article, you have to watch the entire segment from a recent John Stossel show that featured Al Pires and Andrew Breitbart. Try to imagine defending Pires and attacking Stossel after you watch this. It’s unfathomable.

Here’s the Media Matters article, which includes numerous screen grabs and then the first minute or so of the piece. But the entire piece included a significant section where black farmer Jimmy Dismuke explains in detail why Pigford is a scam. Media Matters makes no mention of Dismuke and cuts him out of the piece entirely. That’s because they want to be able to claim that Stossel and Breitbart are quote “attacking black farmers” when in fact this entire story came out of complaints FROM black farmers who saw their case being hijacked back in 1999 by Al Pires.

These farmers have been fighting this battle for over a decade to get their story out. Breitbart has only been involved in the story for less than a year. Men like Jimmy Dismuke have called every network, the FBI, politicians and others trying to expose the massive fraud that the USDA has perpetrated on the American people. Anyone doing the slightest amount of research can quickly find concerns that Pigford is a scam that completely predate Breitbart or Stossel’s involvement.

Media Matters is attacking these black farmers who have tried to get this story out for over 10 years. MMfA obviously watched the entire Stossel segment, saw the clip with Dismuke and then made a deliberate and calculated choice to remove all evidence of Dismuke from their piece. Media Matters and Shah have absolutely no credibility on this issue.  Further, the reason they did this was to stir up racial animosity as a smokescreen. I’m calling on them to issue a retraction but I’m not holding my breath.

– Lee Stranahan