IN THE COURSE OF COMPLAINING ABOUT AN OUT-OF-CONTEXT YOUTUBE CLIP, Kurt Walling commits the sin he decries by misreporting on the Shirley Sherrod affair: “Especially in light of the Shirley Sherrod incident, in which a conservative blogger defamed a member of the Obama administration by deliberately posting a clip from her remarks that made her seem to say the opposite of what she intended and actually said, prudence would dictate a careful investigation of the facts, including a transcript when it is available, before making hasty judgments.”

While the general point — context matters, and hasty judgment is a bad idea — certainly holds, Walling’s version of the Sherrod affair is incorrect, as Prof. William Jacobson has pointed out. Walling, in fact, seems to have taken that version from media talking points, rather than actually examining the matter himself . . . .