Huffington Post

A mockery of new journalism based on being wrong, but having enough trollish followers that it doesn't matter.

HuffPo is a mockery of new journalism. The rules to get published seem to be (1) be popular (2) be wrong on everything you post (3) be sensitive to any corrections (4) have a flock of trolls. They are proof that popularity has no correlation to quality of information.

ℹ️ Info

~ Aristotle Sabouni
Created: 2018-04-28

Bad Journos

HuffPo is often wrong. Heck, every publication makes mistakes, but HuffPo pretends to be a newsite, while actually just being a liberal celebrity blog site instead. And since educated liberals are often wrong, and celebrity liberals are usually wrong, you know that a blog aggregator is going to get more than their fair share of crap-stories, and since their egos are involved, their willingness to correct them, is nearly non-existent.

An example is read this headline and crap story on Ted Cruz: "Ted Cruz, Longtime Foe Of NASA And Science, Will Oversee NASA And Science In New Congress"

Every one of their points is an exaggeration, mistake or lie: (1) Ted Cruz is in charge of NASA and Science, (2) Ted Cruz is anti-Science and anti-NASA.

Despite the fact that he isn't actually in charge of NASA, the foundation of the article is that Cruz is anti-NASA because when the U.S. was running the largest deficits in history, the Republicans tried a grand compromise. The idea was a 50/50 spending cut to tax-increase ratio. A had a deal made, but at the last minute, Barack Obama changed the deal, thinking he could force the new Republican congress into more tax increases -- but he blew up negotiations, lead to a shut-down, and the media blamed that on the Republicans, instead of Obama's last minute changing of terms. Their conclusion, this was all Cruz's fault, and because NASA was shut-down (or part of the sequester that did across the board cuts), then Cruz hates NASA. So HuffPo omits context and just infers, "Cruz didn't want more deficit spending, and he opposed The Obama, so he's a bad bad man".

It helps to remember that the cuts weren't really cuts, just decreases in spending growth. And this "austerity' the democrats/press predicted would result in doom and gloom and the destruction of our economy, instead lead to many quarters of growth. But if you understood context, you wouldn't read HuffPo.

And it doesn't stop there. NASA stopped being about space, and started being about politics, and diverted billions form exploring space, into furthering the Global-warming scare that the left is bonkers over. Because Cruz implied NASA should focus on their charter (space exploration), and he'd like to give them $50B more money if they would get out of the Climate Change charade and back to exploring space, HuffPo's claim is he's anti-NASA, anti-Science and anti-Climate. If you believe that crap is journalism, then you and HuffPo belong together.

Even when right, they're wrong[edit | edit source]

HuffPo wrote a good article on problems with Sweden.... so they pulled it. Can you imagine what the media would do if a right wing publication released and then pulled a story favorable to an Obama position? Sweden is a clusterfuck, no go zones, violence, rape capital of Europe, crime has gone up astronomically. That doesn't mean all muzzies are bad, it means that some are... and if you let in huge waves of one culture, you'll get a huge, undigestible sub-culture that you'll have to deal with. And it may take them a while to learn to walk upright and chew with their mouths closed (and stop raping tall blonde women). Welcome to life.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2017/02/huffpo-removed-post-trump-is-absolutely-right-about-sweden-but-you-can-read-it-here/#more-203608

Gender Pay Gap[edit | edit source]

HuffPo (or PuffHo) gets it wrong, again. They so want to propagate the myth that there's a huge gender pay gap (implication: based on discrimination), that they'll run just about anything that feeds that confirmation bias.

To dispute accurate articles like these:

Jillian Berman (with no economics background that I could find) writes an OpEd challenging economists that disagree with her agenda, that women are discriminated against:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/08/gender-pay-gap-op-ed_n_5110934.html

The problem is that polemicists don't try to normalize for career field, risk, geography, demography and so on. And since she seems to not be very good at reading the very studies she quotes from. (Since they don't seem to say what she implies they said). And the economist authors of the article she's refuting, try to explain some of the problems in one of the more recent studies:

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2014/04/the-gender-pay-gap-for-new-college-grads/

In the end, you either believe that businessesmen, HR, and companies are too stupid to save 23% on payroll by focusing on attracting an equally talented all female staff (for a major costs savings) -- or you think that these claims of a gender pay gap are exaggerated (at best). And HuffPo either has no fact checkers on staff, or they are all idiots and polemics to not demand wiggle-words and counter-balance for crappy articles like that one.

That's not to say that women don't face unique challenges over men in the workforce. Quite a few in fact. But salary disparity is nowhere near the top of the list. And the implication that Uncle Sugar (Uncle Sam), needs to protect the fair ladies from negotiating their own salaries, is quite a bit patronizing towards the Women they claim the want to protect-- and ignores the consequences of bad legislation. (Which is often to suppress employment).

2019.01.27 Learn to Code - ❄️ The left is angry because after the Obama administration's anti-business/anti-coal policies put many thousands of coal miners out of work they supported the administrations, "Learn to Code" response. Then the same Journos/Organizations had lay-offs... and they found the "Learn to Code" retweets insensitive, when it was being applied to them.
Global Massacres/Christchurch Shooting - 🇳🇿 A Green Nationalist (eco-Fascist), who hates Capitalism, Conservatism, and is Chinese Communist sympathizer. He doesn't like Trump, shot "muslim invaders" because immigrants were over-populating the planet and causing Global Warming, and used a gun instead of bombs, because he felt the left-wing gun-controllers would be his tools and magnify his message, and start a civil war trying to disarm honest citizens. The left ignores that, and spins it as he is a right-winger., Left wing eco-nationalist shot-up mosques because immigrants were over-populating the planet and causing Global Warming.
Muslim Ban - After a series of Terrorist attacks, Trump put a pause on immigration from terrorist countries until we could get better vetting. This was based on recommendations made during the Obama administration. And it wasn't an attack on the religion, it was an attack on the countries that wouldn't help us vet who was coming in. But FakeNews outlets spun it.
Nooses in Mississippi were Democrats - There was an uproar (AP and twitter) about a warning from white supremacist leaving 7 nooses... 12 hours later it came out Democrats were warning against electing Mississippi Republican Senate candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith (in a run-off election) by leaving those nooses around.
Trump's sexual assaults - List of non-credible women who claimed that Trump sexually assaulted them: E. Jean Carroll, Jessica Leeds, Kristin Anderson, Jill Harth, Cathy Heller, Temple Taggart McDowell, Karena Virginia, Melinda McGillivray, Rachel Crooks, Natasha Stoynoff, Jessica Drake, Ninni Laaksonen, Summer Zervos, Juliet Huddy, Alva Johnson, and Cassandra Searle.
UVA Rape on Campus - 💩 Rolling Stone published "A Rape on Campus" that describes a purported gang rape of Jackie Coakley by 7 frat brothers (Phi Kappa Psi) at the University of Virginia (UVA), as part of an initiation rite. This fed a false "Campus Rape" lynch-mob that suspended the fraternity, vandalized their FratHouse, and impugned the character of many innocents: who sued and won.

Not ALL Bad[edit | edit source]

They're not wrong on everything, just their signal to noise ratio is weighted towards noise.

This article on how to replace Trump was one of the best I've read, on HuffPo: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-could-replace-president-trump-with-little_us_5829f25fe4b02b1f5257a6b7
Here's another on H-1B's and Immigration. It's right that H-1B's are a way to get cheap labor, exploit foreign workers (indenture servitude), encourage age discrimination, and drive out some more qualified American workers for displacing foreigners. (The program is bullshit that's not doing what it claims to be doing). It's refreshing to see it expressed. But it's HuffPo, so it's often unbalanced and wrong, like it only touched on one benefit of these immigrants instead of many -- so it fails to offer both sides of the issue. Still, it's one of their more honest posts: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-h-1b_us_5890d86ce4b0522c7d3d84af
Here's another on Economics? A progressive outlet that has someone admit that the dot-com bubble popping wasn't Bush's fault, and that Bill Clinton wasn't a great savior that left Bush with an imaginary surplus: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/there-is-no-santa-claus-a_b_2362845.html

Even broken clocks like NYT or HuffPo get one right every now and then. It's just the quality control and averages that help us form our opinions. HuffPo is fun to read, in the same way it would be "fun" to be Amy Schumer or Samantha Bee's therapist, just to see what broke those self-deluded little dimwits.

Conclusion[edit | edit source]

I'm not horribly against HuffPo, they created a reasonable bog platform, and by ignoring quality control, had a huge progressive audience, until they were acquired. Now they are the NYT of the web: mostly full of crap and shoddy written clickbait to attract their readers. But occasionally a real piece of journalism, or at least something that challenges their status-quo slips through, to prove that they're not ALL bad.