On July 19, 2010, Shirley Sherrod was forced to resign from her appointed position as Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the United States Department of Agriculture because of video excerpts from her address to a March 2010 NAACP event and commentary posted by blogger Andrew Breitbart on his website. Based on these video excerpts, the NAACP condemned Sherrod's remarks as racist and U.S. government officials called on the official to resign. But, with review of the complete unedited video in full context, the NAACP, White House officials, and Tom Vilsack, the United States Secretary of Agriculture, apologized for the firing and offered Sherrod a new position.

Extensive media coverage of the excerpted videos, various parties' comments, and later corrections when the full story was discovered, exacerbated the affair. The event brought to the forefront current debates regarding racism in the United States, cable news reporting, ideological websites on the internet, and decisions made by President Barack Obama's administration.

Jacob Paul "Jake" Tapper (born March 12, 1969) is an American print and television journalist, currently the senior White House correspondent for ABC News in Washington, D.C. He was named to that position the day after election day 2008, having covered then-senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

He last interviewed Obama in July 2009 in Moscow, in an interview where the president expressed confidence that his foreign policy approach was starting to work and said regarding the stimulus package, "there's nothing that we would have done differently." That January, Tapper had broken the story of the tax troubles of then-Health and Human Services secretary nominee and former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), troubles that ultimately derailed Daschle's nomination.

From March through July 2010, Tapper was interim anchor of ABC's This Week, hosting the program until Christiane Amanpour became This Week's anchor.

Tapper was born in New York City and was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His mother, Anne Tapper, retired as a psychiatric nurse at Philadelphia Veterans Administration Medical Center. His father, Theodore S. "Ted" Tapper, a Dartmouth graduate, was a president of South Philadelphia Pediatrics, a group medical practice, and is an associate clinical professor of pediatrics at Jefferson Medical College, both in Philadelphia.

Glenn Edward Lee Beck (born February 10, 1964) is an American conservative radio host, vlogger, author, entrepreneur, political commentator and former television host. He hosts the Glenn Beck Program, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show that airs throughout the United States on Premiere Radio Networks. He formerly hosted the Glenn Beck television program, which ran from January 2006 to October 2008 on HLN and from January 2009 to June 2011 on the Fox News Channel. Beck has authored six New York Times–bestselling books. Beck is the founder and CEO of Mercury Radio Arts, a multimedia production company through which he produces content for radio, television, publishing, the stage, and the Internet. It was announced on April 6, 2011, that Beck would "transition off of his daily program" on Fox News later in the year but would team with Fox to "produce a slate of projects for FOX News Channel and FOX News' digital properties". Beck's last daily show on the network was June 30, 2011. In 2012, The Hollywood Reporter named Beck on its Digital Power Fifty list.

Steven Arnold "Steve" King (born May 28, 1949) is the U.S. Representative for Iowa's 5th congressional district, serving since 2003. He is a member of the Republican Party.

The district is located in the western part of the state and includes Sioux City and Council Bluffs.

King was born on May 28, 1949 in Storm Lake, Iowa. The son of Emmett King, a state police dispatcher, and Mildred King, a homemaker, King graduated in 1967 from Denison Community High School. He attended Northwest Missouri State University from 1967 to 1970, taking courses toward becoming a wildlife officer. He does not have a college degree. In 1975, he founded King Construction, an earth moving company. King founded the Kiron Business Association in the 1980s. His involvement with the Iowa Land Improvement Contractors' Association led to regional and national offices in that organization and a growing interest in public policy.

From 1996 to 2002, King served as an Iowa State Senator, representing the 6th district. King worked as the Chairman of the State Government Committee and Vice Chairman of the Oversight Budget Committee. He was a part of the Appropriations Committee, Judiciary Committee, Business and Labor Committee, and the Commerce Committee. He assisted in eliminating the inheritance tax, enforcing workplace drug testing, strengthening parental rights, passing tax cuts for working residents of Iowa, and passing a law that made English the official language in Iowa.

The Courage (formerly known as "Noah Gundersen & the Courage") is an indie band initially started in Centralia, Washington by siblings Abby & Noah Gundersen and expanded to Travis Ehrenstrom and Ivan Gunderson. The group has two EPs, a live CD, and a studio album. Before the removal of Noah Gundersen's name from the title and the incorporation of the entire band, a majority of the songs were written and recorded by Noah and Abby.

Noah Gundersen began playing music when he was 10 or 11 years old when his parents had him take piano lessons. Later he taught himself to play the guitar and recorded songs with his father's recording equipment. Around the age of 16, Noah was performing solo in local cafes. His sister Abby began to accompany him with violin and harmonies in 2006 . Noah Gundersen & the Courage began in 2006 in Centralia, Washington. They began playing shows throughout the Washington/Oregon region, and quickly gained a fan base there. Noah's first CD, "Brand New World" (recorded by himself, Abby Gundersen, and Michael Porter) was recorded in Eugene, Oregon in a home studio. It began to be sold on the internet in 2008. That summer, an internet hacker named "andrewlandon" discovered Noah Gundersen's music and stole his song "Winter" (as well has three songs by a neighboring musician, Jacob White, and several other artists) and put it on his own MySpace.