Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Is the Huffington Post Biased?

Let's test. The correspondents whose e-mail appears below are defensive of a teacher at a church-sponsored school who exposed students to anti-Muslim wartime propaganda messages from many centuries ago. They want to use commercial pressure, in classic "conservative" style, to punish the Huffington Post for citing this teacher as a specimen of "hate and bias."

The position of this web site is that the Huffington Post ought to be aware that hate and bias are two different things. Bias is the obvious fact that your grandchildren are in a whole different class of cuteness and cleverness from everyone else's grandchildren. Hate is the desire to do harm to someone else's grandchildren. Duh. If the school advertises itself as a Catholic high school, then the students and parents are obviously paying for Catholic bias in everything, up to and including a bias in favor of vintage Catholic rules regarding the hem- and necklines of the cheerleaders' uniforms. Confusing that bias with hate is just plain wrong--ethically, and intellectually.

(The position of this web site is that, yes, the students should be aware that a Catholic "saint" said some very unpleasant, and debatable, things about the enemies of his church and country during a war, and they should be aware that the circumstances under which he said those things calls those things into question. Some things said by Martin Luther, by G.K. Chesterton, by Margaret Atwood about these United States (even if she used those remarks as evidence of a fictional character's deteriorating mental state), not to mention by people on all sides of the color and culture wars of the 1960s, were also very "polarizing" and frankly rude to various readers. This should not be a problem for students who belong in high school, though. At my school we were tested on identifying statements of alleged fact versus statements of opinion in grade six...this should still be a requirement for admission to high school. And, given that high school students can make this crucial distinction, they should not need to be "protected" from the hatespeech of bygone years. Whether it serves any useful purpose to require them to read ancient war propaganda is debatable, too, but I'm willing to leave that debate to the local community; it may relate to the local news the kids are reading.)

But, is the Huffington Post itself getting biased these days? Let's check. How are they handling the Mark Smythe story? (Mark Smythe is a Michigan farmer who, according to Breitbart, was banned from a market because--although he waits on market shoppers impartially--he refused to rent out his orchard for a same-sex wedding party.) Are they defending Smythe's freedom of association from religious persecution?

"
Allstate continues to be a leading advertiser at Huffington Post while blocking emails from Floridafamily.org action email server.

Click here to send your email to Allstate officials. This email will open in your email browser unlike most email campaigns. This is because Allstate is blocking emails from Florida Family Association’s email delivery server. If the above link does not open in your email browser or if the email is returned to you please prepare an email using the suggested subject line, content and four email addresses provided below.
Please consider posting a message at
https://www.facebook.com/Allstate/
to urge Allstate to stop supporting HuffPost propaganda with their advertising dollars.

420 out of 439 (96%) companies have stopped advertising at Huffington Post in the thirteen months.

Allstate Insurance Company has advertised at Huffingtonpost.com longer than most of the other companies. Allstate continues to be a leading advertiser at Huffingtonpost.com. Florida Family Association had not targeted Allstate up until recently because the company has routinely blocked emails from the Florida Family Association office. Now Allstate is blocking emails that are sent through the Floridafamily.org action email server.
The Huffington Post’s most recent Islamophobia fake news targeted a Catholic High School teacher for sharing truthful statements with students that Saint John Bosco wrote about Islam. The Huffington Post has started a project called “Documenting Hate which put pressure on a Catholic Diocese to terminate well liked teacher Mark Smythe for sharing factual Catholic teaching with students that was critical of Muhammad. In the case of the Huffington Post’s hit piece on Mark Smythe, the person who filed the complaint directly with the Huffington Post was not directly involved in the school. The Huffington Post article states “A concerned mother with a child in Smythe’s class gave copies of the reading assignment to a friend, who then sent the copies to The Huffington Post through the Documenting Hate project.” The Huffington Post writes regarding their “Documenting Hate” project“America does not do a good job of tracking incidents of hate and bias. We need your help to create a database of such incidents, so we all know what’s going on.” This project is certainly being used to push the Islamophobia false narrative.

Fourteen examples of Huffington Post’s Islamist propaganda articles are posted at the bottom of this article.

Why is it important to urge companies to stop advertising at Huffingtonpost.com?

• Islamophobia propaganda is the top tool Islamists use to influence Americans to ignore advancement of Sharia doctrine in the United States. Unfortunately, it intimidates people to the point of stifling free speech in a manner that hurts public safety. Labeling people or groups as Islamophobes is intended to influence them to stop criticizing Islam. Fear of being branded an Islamophobe played a role in suppressing communications that may have had different results for the lives of 63 people in San Bernardino and Orlando.

• One article wrongfully places the blame on Christians and Jews in a manner that creates contempt for Christianity and Judaism.

• The reports published by the news media do influence the political positions of the public. Huffingtonpost.com is one of the largest liberal progressive media outlets in America.

• Florida Family Association’s opposition campaign educates hundreds of officials at American companies about the harm caused by erroneous Islamophobia propaganda. The thousands of emails that company officials receive reveal that there are many Americans who find Islamophobia propaganda deceitful, harmful and offensive.


Allstate Insurance Company has advertised at Huffingtonpost.com since June 2016. Their advertisiements have increased during the past month.

Florida Family Association has prepared an email for you to send to encourage Allstate officials to stop supporting the Huffington Post’s Islamist propaganda with their advertising dollars.


Click here to send your email to Allstate officials. This email will open in your email browser unlike most email campaigns. This is because Allstate is blocking emails from Florida Family Association’s email delivery server. If the above link does not open in your email browser or if the email is returned to you please prepare an email using the suggested subject line, content and four email addresses provided below.

Suggested subject line:

Please stop supporting Huffington Post Islamist propaganda with Allstate advertising dollars.

Suggested content:

I am very disappointed that Allstate is advertising at the Huffington Post whose Islamist propaganda impairs public safety and is offensive to Christians and Jews.

Huffington Post articles defend the Muslim Brotherhood, fundraise for CAIR, blame Islamophobia for worldwide conflict with Muslims, and promote an anti-Semitic blog.

Please stop supporting Huffington Post Islamist propaganda with Allstate advertising dollars.

Email addresses


tom.wilson@allstate.com

matt.winter@allstate.com

sanjay.gupta@allstate.com

victoria.dinges@allstate.com



Floridafamily.orgEmail: ffa@floridafamily.org

Florida Family Association, Inc.
P.O. Box 46547, Tampa, FL 33646-0105
Telephone 813-690-0060
"

Here's the Breitbart story about left-wing haters who are actually doing harm to a Christian because he's acting on his beliefs, which ironically happen to be much, much milder than the view of homosexuality taken in Muslim countries...Breitbart stories aren't circulated free of charge in the e-mail, but I have to say that, for a Breitbart page, this one behaved well this morning. (Though it didn't behave equally well when I reopened it to share the link with you.)

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/06/04/christian-farmer-barred-michigan-market-views-gay-marriage/

Breitbart acknowledges a right-wing bias as readily as many Huffington Post writers acknowledge a left-wing bias, so I'd like to see how HP'ers might report the Mark Smythe story.

One more thought for "conservatives," for +Arianna Huffington , and for the Huffington Post: The way to get more of the type of content we want into web sites is to sponsor it. For example, if you think this web site is too political, or not political enough, or too religious, or too book-oriented, or whatever, the way to shape this web site in the direction you prefer is to sponsor more of the kind of content you prefer to see. More links? More recipes? More local tourist attractions? Click one of the links below, then follow instructions:

https://www.fiverr.com/priscillaking

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4923804

And, can we do an Amazon link? I've not actually read this one; many books have been written on the history of book banning, and this is the one that floated to the top on Amazon today.

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