Color of Change, a great organization with many successes behind them (including the superb action to get Glenn Beck’s advertisers to stop giving FOX News Channel money to air their ads during his program) has a new media action. Please join your voice to all of ours, to ask Arianna Huffington not to provide a platform for infamous race-baiter and notorious liar Andrew Breitbart on her new AOL joint venture.

You can sign the Color of Change letter here:

Dear Ms. Huffington,

I am deeply disappointed that The Huffington Post has chosen to give a platform to the notorious liar and race-baiter Andrew Breitbart. I urge you to stop promoting his work immediately, and publicly explain why Breitbart’s work was promoted to the front page.

Breitbart’s long history of attacking Black people and institutions — from ACORN to Shirley Sherrod to Black farmers who were compensated for years of discrimination — has few parallels among mainstream media figures. Worse, these attacks were based on deceptive editing and willful distortion of the truth. That Huffington Post would choose to elevate Breitbart when news outlets from ABC to Fox News have distanced themselves from him is both tone-deaf and insulting.

It’s especially galling that The Huffington Post seeks to attract Black audiences with its planned “Global Black” venture, even as its main site provides a prominent platform for Breitbart to continue spreading lies that have a real impact on Black people.

If the Huffington Post is to be taken seriously — whether by Black audiences or any other — then prominent placement should not be given to someone like Andrew Breitbart. I urge you not to promote his work at The Huffington Post.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

Please take a moment to add your voice to the many who’ve signed this letter already. We need to hold citizen journalism accountable, just like we hold Legacy Media accountable. The Color of Change action will help do that, and will be stronger with your name on it.

Thanks.

The right-wing is in overdrive attacking Judge Vaughn Walker’s bias, since they say he is ‘openly gay.’ Of course, Walker isn’t openly gay by any stretch of the imagination. But Michaelangelo Signorile perpetuates a dangerous stereotype, difficult to shed for men of my generation and Vaughn Walker’s, by calling these lies ‘smears’ in his otherwise excellent HuffPost article today entitled Judge Vaughn Walker Gets Smeared By the Media. It’s not a smear to call someone openly gay, since there’s nothing wrong with being gay in the first place.

Signorile:

The way that the sexual orientation of Judge Vaughn Walker — the federal judge who overturned Proposition 8 last week — has been targeted and exploited by proponents of Prop 8 is not only an example of the ugly smear tactics of the theocratic thugs who call themselves Christians; it’s a testament to how easily the media is manipulated by the right into doing things about which editors and reporters claim to be staunchly opposed.

I’m talking about that fact that every far-right organization, from the National Organization for Marriage to the evangelical American Family Association, has attacked Walker’s decision as biased because he is supposedly "openly gay."

How did the media choose to report on Judge Vaughn Walker’s sexual orientation after the Perry decision was announced?

But more grotesque is the lie Perkins is spinning out, because Judge Walker is in fact not "openly" gay. Perkins surely knows that, as an obsessed proponent of Prop 8 following the trial day in and day out. Judge Walker has not ever confirmed to anyone in the media what sexual orientation he may be. And yet most major media organizations, from the New York Times and ABC News to the Washington Post and National Public Radio, have reported on him as gay or had commentators saying it.

Signorile contrasts the difference treatment from the mainstream media of the Kirby Dick/Mike Rogers documentary film Outrage and points out that most outlets elected not to name the names the film did in their reviews.

Then Signorile goes too far, I believe, in labeling the discussion of whether Vaughn Walker is openly gay a ‘smear’ conducted by ‘smear artists.’ It may very well be a lie to broadcast that Vaughn Walker is openly gay, since he’s never discussed his sexual orientation publicly.

Well, there was NPR last week, in an "All Things Considered" report, jumping on the bandwagon, like the Washington Post and others, reporting on Judge Walker as "openly gay" in the context of the criticisms against his ruling. The only difference was that this time the claims were coming from right-wing smear artists, whom the mainstream media are only too eager to accommodate.

It is no smear in the 21st century to call someone openly gay, because there’s nothing wrong with being gay. Our commentators play into the subtle characterization of ‘wrongness’ when we call an error a smear. It’s wrong, bad journalism, and untrue to call Vaughn Walker openly gay.

But it is certainly no smear.