Category: PuffHo :-(

Huff post pretends that ads are articles

April 30, 2018 • 10:30 am

I hate HuffPo with the blazing heat of a million white-hot suns. Well, maybe not that much, but I really do despise its predictable Authoritarian Leftism, ascribable to a new editor and a new editorial position. It’s become the left-wing Breitbart, but in one respect perhaps even worse: it has “articles” that are really ads, for, while purporting to tell you what to eat, what to buy, and what to visit, HuffPo is getting a cut from whatever recommendations they give that you spend money on. And you don’t know it if you don’t read the fine print.

For example, here’s an article that I, as a foodie, would have clicked on (click on all article screenshots to go to article):

One of those “best food cities” is Venice, and, like the rest of them, they recommend food tours, as in the following bit.

In Venice, there’s something tasty for everyone. Wine lovers might want to chow down on the spectacular wine and unique seafood dishes at al Covo, while pasta enthusiasts might prefer tucking into a dish of hearty bolognese at Ristorante Trattoria Cherubino. TripAdvisor’s most-booked food tour in the city is the Venice food tour: cicchetti and wine.

But if you click on the food tours, you go to one that TripAdvisor recommends. Well, okay, they’re using TripAdvisor as a source. But HuffPo also gets a cut if you book using the link, for this appears—at the very bottom of the page.

Here’s the direct link to the Venice food tour via Tripadvisor: https://www.tripadvisor.com/AttractionProductReview-g187870-d11453217-Venice_Food_Tour_Cicchetti_and_Wine-Venice_Veneto.html

And the link via HuffPo, clearly identifying their cut, presumably in bold:  https://www.tripadvisor.com/AttractionProductReview-g187870-d11453217-Venice_Food_Tour_Cicchetti_and_Wine-Venice_Veneto.html&cjp=5431261&cja=10834516&cjs=38395X1559466X38b37c6c52b4c4044853d627335a3e9f  .  The prices don’t differ; HuffPo is just taking a cut.

Why don’t they just label the article “ad” at the top? It’s deceptive.

Likewise, here’s a travel ad, with a weak indication at the top that, well, there may be some money given to HuffPo by booking.com:

The description:

If London’s a bit too far away for you to travel, venture to the city of Chicago for an all-out celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. Irish taverns are bustling, joyful people are singing and dancing in the street, and even the Chicago River sparkles a brilliant shade of emerald green. Families will love the vibrant and bustling Downtown St. Patrick’s Day Parade, full of colorful floats, marching bands and Irish dancers.

Where to Stay: Staypineapple at The Alise Chicago

The exquisite Staypineapple at The Alise Chicago was designed by renowned architect Daniel Burnham, with beautiful mosaic floors and marble ceilings oozing luxury, class and style. Select suites offer stunning views of Millennium Park and Lake Michigan, and the hotel is ideally located for shopping on the famous Michigan Avenue. Guests can enjoy an onsite fitness center, yoga and a bicycle rental service to explore the beauty of Chicago. After a fun-packed day of celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, guests will love the adventurous and contemporary cuisine at the The Alise Chicago, open for breakfast, lunch and dinner and serving a selection of premium cocktails.

HuffPost Brand Forum is a paid program that allows companies to connect directly in their own words with HuffPost readers. For more information on Brand Forum, please contact BrandForum@huffpost.com.

In this case, the link doesn’t give HuffPo a cut; Booking.com just pays them to recommend hotels where Booking.com gets a cut.

Here’s an item that you might want to buy; you don’t know HuffPo gets a cut until the bottom of the page:

Number 6 of the recommendations is the Ted Baker London Tailor Wool Duffel Bag, with this description and link:

This vintage-inspired Ted Baker bag is, uniquely, made of textured wool. It’s [SIC!!!] faux leather trim adds a touch that gives it the timeless look of another decade.

The link is (my emphasis): https://shop.nordstrom.com/s/ted-baker-london-tailor-wool-duffel-bag/4725805?origin=keywordsearch-personalizedsort&fashioncolor=GREY\&cm_mmc=Linkshare-_-partner-_-10-_-1&siteId=tv2R4u9rImY-XGt3DO8GDElvQjUZR_l3oQ, which clearly tells nordstrom to give HuffPo some of the money.  And at the bottom of the page you see this:

How can such an evaluation be “objective”? Clearly they’ll choose based on the willingness of the store to refund some of the dosh to HuffPo.

Finally, there’s this from the “wellness” section. (Whose “wellness” is being promoted?)

And number 1 in water bottles with filters:

 

The description?:

For under $15, the filter inside this BPA-free bottle filters as you drink to easily rehydrate at the office, a sporting event or on a day trip.

Amazon Reviews: 1,900
Average Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

“These have changed my life. I can go anywhere and all I need is a tap and I’ve got tasty (non-gross chlorinated tasting) water. I have two and might get a third.” – Amazon Reviewer

If you click on the link above, the URL is https://www.amazon.com/Brita-Ounce-Sided-Bottle-Filter/dp/B00AB8NOPY/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?amp=&ie=UTF8&keywords=water+bottles+with+filters&psc=1&qid=1523907905&sr=8-1-spons&tag=thehuffingtop-20

And, sure enough:

I wouldn’t trust HuffPo’s articles on “the best stuff/food/places” if there’s any kind of indication that the site gets a remuneration from its recommendations. If you want Amazon recommendations, just put in a product like “water bottles” at the Amazon site and click on “highest rated” on the right. That way you can see the same evaluations without HuffPo getting your dosh. It’s also duplicitous to put the “we might get a cut of the money” notice at the bottom of the page, as you may click on—and order—a product before you see it.

I’m not sure Breitbart does anything like this, and it’s sneaky. It’s sneaky if anyone does it, but particularly sneaky, to my mind, when a left-wing site does it. You may say, “Well, everyone does it,” but to me that’s no excuse for duplicity. After all, at the top of New York Times pages that may be mistaken for news but are ads, they clearly say “ADVERTISEMENT.”

My one consolation is that traffic at HuffPo continues to drop as its contents become thinner and more predictable. I used to go there to look at food and travel posts, but now these are rarely renewed, and when they are they are often “kickback posts.”

Traffic data:

HuffPo fails to correct erroneous post on hijab-cutting

January 19, 2018 • 2:00 pm

Three days ago I highlighted HuffPo‘s article on a Canadian Muslim girl’s complaint that she was attacked by a man (twice) who cut up her hijab with scissors. Here’s the article (click on screenshot):


As I noted at the time, this report turned out to be false: the girl admitted she made up the story. One would think, then, that HuffPo would correct this story, or at least add a note that it was false. But it hadn’t done when I made this comment on February 16.

It’s been three more days, and while the site has reported elsewhere that the girl’s story was false, do you think HuffPo revisited the original report to either correct it or link to the followup?

Don’t make me laugh. It’s HuffPo, Jake!

There is no monolithic “Twitter” that makes pronouncements

December 29, 2017 • 12:00 pm

This is happening not just at the much reviled (and, I suspect, cash bleeding) HuffPo, but on many other pop news sites as well. “Twitter does this” or “Twitter says that”, the sites proclaim. Here’s one example from the site I love to hate (click on screenshot to see it):Some points:

1.) There is no monolithic “Twitter” that expresses a unanimity or near-unanimity of opinion, as such headlines imply.

2.) The headlines reflect this sad fact: the author (in this case a Regressive Leftist) decides he or she doesn’t like something, and then trawls Twitter to find support for that opinion.

Yet for every case of support, there are cases of non-support. Just think about Trump and all the HuffPo headlines proclaiming that “Twitter thinks X” about Trump. They don’t look at opposite opinions—you’d have to go to Breitbart for that.

What author Moye really means here is that “some people on Twitter” criticized the NYT for portraying chopsticks in a culturally insensitive matter—clearly one of the overarching problems of social justice.

3.) The headlines reflect something else: lazy journalism. These “Tweetercles” are just a way of producing pieces of “journalism” without having to do any legwork. Just subscribe to a lot of Twitter sites, and pick out what you want from the feed based on whether it supports your preconceived ideology. Moye’s article contains 24 short lines of text sandwiched between ten tweets that themselves contain 19 lines of text. Remember, too, that Twitter is self-selecting: those who abhor something like misplaced chopsticks are more likely to tweet about it than those who don’t have an issue with it.

4.) This growing trend reflects a lack of journalistic diligence and integrity. Just pick and choose what you want from Internet, and voilà—you have an article that you can title “Twitter calls out X.” Whatever this is, it’s not journalism, but more like confirmation bias.

5.) As far as I can see, good journalism in newspapers and websites, and that includes the New York Times, is dying. I’m sure there are lots of good reporters out there, but how can they compete with clickbait that drags in views and bucks from those with limited attention spans? There are only about three halfway decent newspapers left in America, and I predict that even these will grow fewer in the coming years.

 

Day 3: HuffPo ignores story of its own sexual harassment

November 17, 2017 • 12:00 pm

Once again, HuffPo, while calling out all kinds of sexual harassment and assault on its sexual harassment page, ignores Tuesday’s Gizmodo story that Arianna Huffington ignored such harassment at her own venue, transferring a harasser to India. If you want to hold their feet to the fire, just ask them about the Gizmodo story on some of their posts on sexual harassment, and then wait to see if your comment is removed.

I made one yesterday, but haven’t checked if they removed it.  They’re instantiating the cry of the Regressive Leftist: “It’s okay when we behave this way!”

HuffPo: If you don’t take a knee, you’re a white supremacist

September 27, 2017 • 9:00 am

This article just in from the “Everyone’s a Nazi” wing of the Authoritarian Left, as reported (of course) by PuffHo. Click on the screenshot to see the article.

 

The author, Jesse Benn, who describes himself as an “engaged citizen”, is better characterized as an “enraged citizen”—or, better yet, a Woke Person.  His HuffPo posts, which you can see here, are uniformly against bigotry, which is good, but also go to ludicrous extremes, as in his approbation of political violence from the Left: “Sorry Liberals, a violent response to Trump is as good as any.” (I believe the comma missing after ‘sorry’ is an error, not a double-entendre). He’s always banging on about “privilege,” and here’s what he says about the error of condemning violence against Trumpies:

Last, I want to briefly note the problematic nature of people with privilege condemning violent resistance to Trump as an absolute moral failing, or denying its logic. Whether you would personally engage in violent conduct matters little to your ability to understand where it comes from. Some people have the privilege to consider the implications of Trump’s rise in the abstract and negotiate which means are necessary. That’s not true for everyone. And when those who hold that privilege dismiss the potential validity or logic of violent resistance, it’s effectively an effort to dictate the rules under which oppressed peoples respond to existential threats, and to silence forms of resistance disagreeable to privileged sensibilities. Don’t be that liberal.

I’m not really sure what he means by the “privilege to consider the implication of Trump’s rise in the abstract.” It’s not a “privilege” to figure out what Trump stands for and what he’s doing; it’s a simple matter of being aware and rational: “woke” in the genuine sense.  But what he says after that is, translated into English, seems to be this: “Some people who can’t change the Trump administration but also also aren’t aware enough to figure out what’s going on should be able to commit violence. It’s a good substitute for being rational and logical.”

Benn’s latest post on football players who, last Sunday, stood up during the playing of the National Anthem, takes a similar tack, but accuses the non-kneeling athletes of “standing for white supremacy.” Remember that the original protests by Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid, involving their own kneeling during the National Anthem, were meant to show their opposition to “systemic oppression against people of color, police brutality and the criminal justice system.” That was set off by the killing of unarmed blacks by police, in particular Alton Sterling in New Orleans (Sterling actually did have a gun, but wasn’t brandishing it).  The protests spread, and then many other players, managers, and football officials got involved after Trump began accusing the protestors of being unpatriotic and “disrespectful” toward the American flag and Anthem. Many of them joined in last Sunday’s protests, and many did not, but it was a rare show of political protest on the part of the National Football League.

But to Jesse Benn, that wasn’t good enough. Those players who remained standing, he says, weren’t woke enough to sympathize with those who didn’t appear on the field, or who went down on one knee in protest.

The absence of white athletes kneeling for the anthem Sunday was a particularly illustrative moment in white privilege.

See, for white athletes the anthem and American flag do represent freedom, liberty and whatever other amorphous American values one might ascribe these symbols. So, from their view, kneeling would be disrespectful to the privileges a white supremacist nation affords them.

. . . Now, I’m not going to spend much time with the most obvious counter, but it’s worth stating. In the fairytale we Americans tell ourselves where soldiers fight wars for freedom and not imperial conquests, the story says they’re fighting for someone’s right to protest, not the opposite. So using the troops as a cudgel against protest wholly misunderstands even our own national fairytale.

So, that’s obvious enough, but what I’m talking about is this. If white athletes can’t fathom kneeling because they feel soldiers fought for their rights and blah blah blah patriotism, it’s because they are treated as full citizens and afforded those rights they imagine soldiers fought for. Interpreting their own experience as something more universal, they struggle to understand why anyone should kneel. Indeed, for them, the anthem and American flag represent promises fulfilled. [JAC: this is really bad writing.]

This is the problem of privilege. It skews our ability to grasp what the world looks like outside our view.

(Note that in his article “Blacks” is capitalized and “whites” is not, which, according to Coyne’s Rule of Social Justice Lexicon, means we’re dealing with a True Authoritarian.)

Benn’s article exemplifies the issue and the problem of the fracturing Left.  Nobody would deny that there’s racism in our society, though I would question whether it should be called systemic—that is, whether unequal rights and treatments of black Americans are actually codified in the machinery and rules of the government.  There are racist cops, but not all cops are racists, and I doubt that any police department systematically tells its officers to kill unarmed blacks. In government, it’s hard to find codification of racism in laws and regulations. The racism that remains in society is largely individual racism, not “systemic” racism, but people like Benn like to call it “systemic” if it happens several times. It’s like saying that murder is systemic in males because most murderers are men and murder is not vanishingly rare.

Regardless, the Left needs to continue its work dismantling the inequities that remain for minorities, whatever their source. What we don’t need to do is call those who agree with us in general—but aren’t as extreme as someone like Benn—”white supremacists”. Many of the players who didn’t kneel down on Sunday were surely sympathetic with moral inequalities in society, but at the same time were in general proud of what America has become, and what in principle and often in practice, it stands for. (Freedom of speech is one of those things, which is why we shouldn’t punish those who kneeled.) I am one of those people glad to be an American: perfectly aware of our country’s problems (electing Trump was a big one), but still glad that I’m an American rather than, say, a Saudi or a North Korean. I am not Noam Chomsky.

You can deal with this issue by working against racism and voting for progressive candidates without “taking a knee”. And if you don’t “take a knee”, that doesn’t make you a white supremacist, for crying out loud. In fact, some of those who didn’t “take a knee”, but did link arms with their teammates were black football players. According to ABC, only one in eight players (about 200) didn’t stand for the National Anthem—out of 1696 players on the rosters. Surely many of the non-demonstrators, including those who neither kneeled nor linked arms, were black, though I don’t have a count.  But how on Earth can you call a non-demonstrating black person a white supremacist? Here’s a photo of an NFL game from Sunday, showing a black white supremacist not only standing up, but actually putting his hand over his heart. 

There are lots of reasons why people might choose to stand, including the fact that (as some of them did), they were in the military and were showing respect for America, or a form of patriotism. Or they simply weighed the effect of such a demonstration against their own feelings about America and decided a public demonstration was ineffectual or personally harmful. Do those considerations mean that you’re also a white supremacist? Only mushbrains like Benn think so. He’s the equivalent of the black Antifa woman who harangued a white Antifa man for not punching Nazis.

If the Left is going to get any political power back, we need to stop calling people “racists” or “white supremacists” when they don’t feel exactly the way we do, or act exactly as we do.

 

 

Richard Dawkins responds to Kerry Walters’s distortions

August 5, 2017 • 10:00 am

Yesterday I reported on a HuffPo hit piece about Richard Dawkins by an academic and Catholic priest named Kerry Walters. I sent the links to Richard, who of course is used to this kind of thing, but wanted to set the record straight about some of Walters’ misrepresentations of his words (Dawkins pulls no punches, calling them “lies”). Richard’s response, which I publish with permission, is below (indented):

There’s not much left of Kerry Walters by the time Jerry Coyne has finished dealing with him. I would add only this.

Walters wrote the following. “Dawkins is also a master of outrageously unjustified moral claims about religion: religious education, he says, is child abuse, religion is responsible for most terrorism (a claim, by the way, that’s time and again proved to be not at all self-evident), and faith makes people “ignorant, stupid, insane, or wicked.” I’ll take his three allegations in order.

First, far from saying religious education is child abuse, I have been a strong and frequent advocate of religious education. I’ve repeated, to the point of tedium, that children need to be taught about religion so they can understand history, current affairs and art. More particularly, I have advocated education in the King James Bible, without which you can’t take your allusions in English literature.

I am opposed to indoctrination in just one particular faith, such as is done in British state-supported faith schools of many denominations. However, I don’t think I’ve ever called even that “child abuse.” What I have called child abuse, and do so again without apology, is terrifying children with threats of hell, and labelling children with the faith of their parents: “You are a Catholic child” or “You are a Muslim child” etc. I have ridiculed this practice by comparing it with “You are an existentialist child” or “You are a logical positivist child” or “You are a Gramscian Marxist child”. I have said that the very phrase “Catholic child” should sound as aversive as fingernails on a blackboard. The proper phrase is “child of Catholic parents.”

Second, the claim that religion is responsible for most terrorism. I agree that it is not self-evident and I have never said it was. I do think an extremely strong case can be made for it, and that is all I have ever said or implied.

But it is Walters’ third allegation that disturbs me most because it is a damaging lie. How could I possibly have said “faith makes people ignorant, stupid, insane, or wicked”? To do so would be to insult such respected friends as the former Bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and the former Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks. If Kerry Walters had read more carefully, he would have noticed this: I wasn’t talking about people of faith but people who don’t believe in evolution! Here are my exact words, in a book review in the New York Times. “It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).” I was careful to add that ignorance is by far the most likely cause of non-belief in evolution. We are all ignorant of many things. I am ignorant of baseball and Polynesian nose flutes. In the time of Martin Luther, the Catholic church regarded ignorance of the Bible as a positive virtue. Though neither a virtue nor bliss, ignorance is no crime. In the light of that and the proven fact of evolution, “Anti-evolutionists are ignorant, stupid or insane” becomes not an insult but a simple statement of fact. An evolution-accepting Catholic like Walters cannot logically deny it.

I have paid Walters the compliment of assuming that he accepts the fact of evolution. Yet his garbling of my statement — missing what, for him as a Catholic, ought to be the massive distinction between people of faith on the one hand and fundamentalist creationists on the other — might be revealing if not positively damning.

Anyway what he wrote is a damaging lie against me. I believe it is customary for a lie that is damaging to elicit a public apology. No doubt it will be forthcoming and I shall accept it graciously.

I’ll put a link to this post on the HuffPo site, and we’ll see about that apology. . .

Did HuffPo use a racist metaphor?

July 27, 2017 • 8:00 am

Over the years, HuffPo has consistently used the term “bamboo ceiling” to refer to the barriers that, it says, are faced by Asian-Americans trying to advance in their careers. The first article below actually had the term “bamboo ceiling” in the big headline, but since yesterday it’s been relegated to the subheading. Click on the screenshots to go to the articles:

From 2013:

From 2014:

From 2016:

 

After all, the term “glass ceiling” as applied to women doesn’t carry any sexist connotations.

Granted, some of these pieces (there are more, but I got tired of looking them up) were written by Asians, but doesn’t the use of “bamboo ceiling” perpetuate a cultural stereotype? Do all Asian-Americans have something to do with bamboo? If HuffPo were writing about barriers to Jewish advancement, would they say “gefilte fish ceiling?”  If it were Mexicans, would they say “cactus ceiling?”

Now I don’t care at all about this, but believe me, the Regressive mindset of the HuffPo would call this out in a second if they thought about it. And Everyday Feminism would write an article about it: “Five ways that we stereotype Asians’ search for the American Dream.”