I'm getting dizzy!

Spin and bias in the news really annoys me. It insults my intelligence. Journalism is about getting facts, if its true it doesn't require any spin and if it's isn't true, it isn't news. My definition of spin is deliberately misrepresenting the facts in order to give the illusion something is true that is either completely false or has only some element of truth to it. I define bias as reporting only the news that promotes your political agenda, holding double standards, being extremely partisan, etc.. Bias is harder to avoid, I think in part because of human nature, we're all biased to some degree but spin is essentially the same as lying. As for bias, I think the fact that Rush Limbaugh is quoted on their main page day after day, deliberately keeping him in the spotlight and attempting to paint him as the head of the Republican party at the cost of helping to empower his voice... well you get the point. (In their defense I don't think they've ever denied their obvious bias)

Today I found another perfect example of how the huffingtonpost is guilty of spinning.

A link on the huffingtonpost says, POLL: Most Americans Support Bank Nationalization. Just by glancing at this link I can tell it is inaccurate. I hope everyone else reading this who's been paying attention lately would immediately know better. The poll they are quoting from was done by newsweek and when you read the actual article, (which is about something else entirely) It says this A somewhat surprising majority 56 percent supports nationalizing large banks at risk of failing".

Okay 56% of people (in one poll) is not "MOST Americans", it is barely the majority. When I hear most I think at least 70-75%, but that could just be me. The real beef I have is this. The poll question isn't asking about supporting bank nationalization in general, its asking about "large banks at risk of failing", this is not a matter of semantics, its completely different. Supporting the nationalization of all banks in general, as implied in the huffingtonpost's spin, compared to temporarily propping up banks with governement money only if they are going to fail. (Then, I'm assuming, returning them to the private sector soon after they are stable)

I personally don't support bank nationalization in either circumstance, I do support Obama but his economic advisers are another story. Below are screenshots and links to the pages mentioned.



Below I've superimposed the huffingtonpost link over the ad in the newsweek article so you can see them side-by-side. (click to enlarge)



I would love to post a comment on the huffington post to call them out on this, but when I go to leave a comment I see this:



Articles referenced:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/188002
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/06/poll-most-americans-suppo_n_172627.html

"This Profile Has Been Removed."

I personally like the new, removed version better because I was trying to delete my profile manually but there is no such option. Posting comments the moderators don't like is the only way I'm aware of to delete it. In their defense, I did actually violate their posting rules this time, I posted a link to this blog on several of their posts after having many of my valid comments pulled. This is considering posting duplicates and "taunting moderators". But what is the difference between being banned from commenting and having almost all of my valid comments pulled without violating any of their rules?

Here was my profile yesterday.


The above comment was also removed earlier today, before the profile was completely removed and it took them about 24 hours to spot this one for some reason, notice how I posted something that was accurate, inoffensive and did not violate any of their rules. Yet was still pulled for simply pointing out that they made a mistake, I'm assuming by an unpaid comment moderator. I would love to know what the management tells these people to look for.



Also worth reading:

http://blog.blogcosm.com/2007/09/26/10-million-huffington-post-0-their-bloggers/

Related Sites

Here are a few links to other people sharing my annoyance with thehuffingtonpost from censorship to content theft. .

Censorship at Huffington Post

Write for free!: Huffington Post Chicago débuts

HuffingtonPost facing a dilemma: Too many comments

The Huffington Post Slammed for Content Theft

Censored AGAIN - 'Progressive' Huffington Post Censorship Nazis Delete Opionions They Don't Like

Huffington Post Censorship: Arianna Can't Have It Both Ways!

End digital censorship now!

Huffington Post Censors Are Big Fat Idiots

Huffingtonpost Censorship Goes Beyond Quality Control (Google Cache)

Huffingtonpost Confirms Censorship of 911 Truth

Again if you share our concern, please digg this page to help draw attention to the issue:

http://digg.com/political_opinion/The_Huffington_Pull_Because_Real_Liberals_Don_t_Censor

How Huffingtonpost lost my support.

I'm extremely disappointed in the huffingtonpost as this was one of my favorite sites. They basically round up news headlines and link to them with their spin on the caption of the links. I noticed many times in the past that they posted links with captions that seemed purposely deceptive, taken out of context, images under them that were misleading or just plain erroneous but I didn't really care enough to post about it at the time.

Today it was "Obama sends secret letter to Putin!". I saw that and thought to my self "what?!". Turns out he sent a letter to Medvedev which to my understanding wasn't intended to be kept a secret (why would he announce every letter he mails off?) and when I pointed out that not only was the title and the header wrong about it being sent to Putin, so was the image linked to the page which showed Obama and Vladimir Putin next to each other. Russia is not Putin. Medvedev is not Putin. What bothered me the most was the fact that they didn't do their own journalism (as usual) and they still got so much wrong by just copy and pasting a URL from another website and adding their spin in the commentary of the link.

I pointed out that not only was the title and the header wrong about it being sent to Putin, so was the image linked to the page which showed Obama and Vladimir Putin in the same image. In the same comment I mentioned that on another page they misquoted Michael Steele saying that he apologized to Limbaugh for his "inaccurate" comments when he actually said "inarticulate" comments. Of course that isn't a big deal but considering I've noticed this sort of thing happening frequently, its frustrating not being able to trust the accuracy of their posts.

First they posted my comment, then it disappeared after about 5 minutes, they changed the image on the main page and changed the link to say Russia instead of Putin (so I know it wasn't just a bot deleting my posts). But if you clicked on the link the title still said Putin. So I made another comment, something similar but shorter and questioned why they removed my previous comment. This one was deleted much faster and anytime I mentioned specifics on how they had inaccuracies or misleading information they pulled my comments. I never really paid attention to my profile on this site before, but when I noticed my posts were getting deleted I checked my profile. It seemed like the only posts that remained were ones criticizing Republicans or others that didn't clash with the overall theme of their website. I don't remember the content of every post I left, but i certainly noticed a pattern of censorship.

I am definitely more liberal than conservative, which is why I could stomach the huffingtonpost in the first place. I was aware that it is a left-leaning website of course, but I just recently discovered its true colors and had somewhat of an epiphany as to why republicans in general dislike their site. I always assumed that it was because some of their content exposed truths they would rather not have see the light of day, and to some degree this is probably true.

I don't like to be tricked into reading an article because someone put a heavy spin on the commentary that the link sends me to, and they are certainly guilty of this practice. I wrote another comment on an article titled "Bush considered scrapping the 1st amendment" where I talked about how ironic it was they are highlighting this just as they are censoring my comments which were entirely truthful and not at all offensive. This comment was also removed.

Another link I found today on the homepage was also misleading "Fox's Glenn Beck Threatens To Kill Anyone Who Buys Blago Book" Beck was clearly joking when he said this and it shouldn't have wasted space here. And another one "Pelosi To House GOP: Be Thankful For What You Have" she never said this. They make it look like its a quote but it isn't. Its just a vague interpretation of what she said that is quite misleading. I spent about 20 minutes reading articles on their site today, not hours trolling for inaccuracies and I've found several.

I didn't think to screenshot the first comment I made that got removed I obviously didn't think i'd need to. But here's the one I attempted to post after, notice the Title at the top still says Putin.



When I refreshed the webpage a few minutes later they had changed it to Medvedev. (Which makes me believe it was a person reading these and deleting them, not a bot)
I left another comment, this one got deleted much faster:



Notice below another member is QQing about having his posts censored as well.



And below my last comment I attempted to post, on an article about Bush considering scrapping our first amendment rights. Yes, huffingtonpost is a private organization and they can do what they want with my comments but... isn't it a bit hypocritical?

The Huffington Pull

I decided to start this blog to highlight the problems I've encountered on the huffingtonpost.com site. As the blog name implies the huffingpost has been pulling comments and censoring people who aren't violating their own rules. Here they are:

"Q: What is the Huffington Post's Comment Policy?

Huffington Post pre-moderates comments on our blog posts and post-moderates comments on news stories. We never censor comments based on political or ideological point of view. We only delete those comments that include the following transgressions:

• are abusive, off-topic, use excessive foul language
• include ad hominem attacks including comments that celebrate the death or illness of any person, public figure or otherwise
• contain racist, sexist, homophobic and other slurs
• are solicitations and/or advertising for personal blogs and websites
• thread spamming (you've posted this same comment elsewhere on the site
• are posted with the explicit intention of provoking other commenters or the staff at Huffington Post.

I left a comment on a digg page that was highlighting the same issue I've come across. But I decided to start a new thread because the site it linked to was dead

Feel free to send me your screenshots of posts before and after removal, misleading or erroneous content from the site, stories or anything else relevant.

email: Huffingtonpull@gmail.com

Here's the original article I found on digg.com but the link is currently dead (Thanks google cache!)