It is worse than a liberal-progressive radical lying… the Media knew that she was separated from the Zimmerman portion of the protest and clearly on the New Black Panther side of the line… yet, they still painted her as with the Zimmerman crowd. Here is the early reporting from the blogs about it, via Gateway Pundit:
That looked incongruent with the other reports from the pro-Zimmerman side. The NY Daily News, based on reporting from The Houston Chronicle, identified her as Renee Vaughan:
One woman in the Zimmerman group held a sign that said, “We’re racist & proud.”
Austin resident Renee Vaughan echoed the sign’s ugly sentiments by yelling, “We’re racist. We’re proud. We’re better because we’re white,” at the Martin group as they passed, according to the Chronicle.
The act to smear the Zimmerman supporters as racists with a leftist plant worked as the photo and comment was picked up and spread worldwide.
Scanning the internet we found that a “Renee Vaughn” from Austin worked for a far left environmental group, the Texas Campaign for the Environment.
Renee even has her photo linked to a far left environmental website.
- Breitbart News: What does your sign mean?
- Woman: This sign means that there are people here who are racist and apparently think that’s OK. I’m not one of them. I’m being sarcastic.
- Breitbart News: OK.
- Fellow anti-Zimmerman Protestor: Yo. What she said.
Breitbart points out all the places where this person was touted as a genuine Zimmerman protestor:
…The Houston Chronicle’s Jayme Fraser wrote of the woman pictured above: “At one point, Renee Vaughan of Austin mocked protesters by chanting, “We’re racist. We’re proud. We’re better ’cause we’re white.” The language of the article was somewhat clumsy, allowing other media outlets to jump to the wrong conclusion.
The New York Daily News’ Philip Caulfield used the following caption for the above photo, from the Associated Press: “A George Zimmerman supporter holds a sign during a counter-demonstration of activist Quanell X’s group march in the River Oaks community in Houston on Sunday.” He also wrote: “One woman in the Zimmerman group held a sign that said, ‘We’re racist & proud,'” distorting the Chronicle story significantly.
The UK Daily Mail repeated the error, reporting that the sign was held by members of the pro-Zimmerman group in Houston, portraying it as a form of racist backlash against the New Black Panther Party march.
Democratic strategist Tara Dowdell then took to Fox News’ Hannity to repeat the false accusation, using the “racist and proud” sign story to push back against video evidence of intolerance at pro-Trayvon Martin rallies.
Well, Sean, do some people show up at protests with their own agenda? Absolutely. That happens all the time. There was a pro-Zimmerman rally in Texas where a woman showed up with a sign that said “Racist and Proud.” And that was in the newspaper today. So certainly there are people who show up who behave badly at protests, and that’s not something you can really control for.
[….]
Gateway Pundit concludes she was a “leftist plant” who intended to trick or otherwise deceive the media. As the interview reveals, however, she was quite honest and open about her intentions and what her sign meant. She also located herself quite clearly on the Trayvon Martin/New Black Panther Party-supporting side of the demonstration (this video shows the two sides were clearly separated and distinguished from each other).
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WHICH THE MEDIA SHOULD HAVE PICKE-UP!]
The reason the media simply picked this up as true is that it has a narrative it believes to be true — that is, the Zimmerman case was over race… and Republicans are racist. Ergo, ad hoc — and all that jazz — the sign must be true… PLUS, it is in Texas! Double-Jeopardy, it must be true. Renee Vaughan has since apologized:
