From Jake Tapper’s Tweet:

Progressive talking heads and journolisters meeting the President?

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Is it a coincidence that four days after Nancy Pelosi sat and gave an exclusive pep talk/schmooze session with AOL’s Arianna Huffington and an all-female editorial meeting in the offices of AOL/HuffPo, Arianna’s Washington Bureau Chief phoned-in a “nothing-to-see-here” apologia for the former-Speaker’s congressional insider trading scandal?

Huffington Post's wishful thinking headline a few hours after a "60 Minutes" report on congressional insider trading.

As liberal news outlets like CBS News, Daily Beast/Newsweek and even MSNBC saw fit to report the fact that former Speaker Nancy Pelosi was involved in a sweetheart IPO for VISA, while at the same time ensuring that tough regulations that would have stifled VISA’s profits stayed bottled up in the Pelosi-controlled House of Representatives, AOL/HuffPo opted to re-print Pelosi’s talking points and obfuscations in lieu of doing actual reporting.

With the awkward and ham-handed headline “Hit Job Falls Flat,” you can almost see Arianna herself hammering out bullet points on her blackberry, firing them off to reporter Ryan Grim in an effort to put her elegant fingers in the metaphorical dyke to stop the gushing in the most serious corruption story to hit Pelosi’s long career.  The banner headline, full of wishful thinking, ran just hours after the “60 Minutes” story.  First thing on a Monday morning at the beginning of a news cycle is a curious time to declare that a story “fell flat.”

In fact, the story was talked about on cable news and in the halls of congress all day.  It inspired new legislation to finally make the corrupt practice of congressional insider trading illegal.  Presidential candidate Rick Perry produced a 30-second ad featuring the story and calling for jail-time for any politician who profited from insider information.  If this is “falling flat” I would like to see AOL/HuffPo’s idea of a successful investigative report.

Seriously, I’d really like to see one.  Do they even do anything like that, or do they just sit back and let the rest of us do all of the real reporting?

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- Forbes discovers that in addition to starving Gilad Shalit, the Red Cross didn’t get a chance to examine him before fame-seeking Shahira Amin shoved a microphone in his face for Egyptian TV in a likely forced interview:

This is no small detail: The issue of Shalit’s medical condition (physical and mental) lies at the very heart of why the interview should never have taken place.  So does the fact that a masked Hamas soldier – from the group’s armed wing – stood with a camera in that interview room. Just how “released” could Shalit have felt at that moment – in an Israel-unfriendly country such as Egypt – to freely consent to an interview?  Considering that masked Hamas men were the only people he could see for five years, did he feel he was in any position to say no?

- The dream job for people who want to work at a network that nobody watches has arrived: CurrentTV is hiring. This could be your boss!

- “60 Minutes” lands the exclusive Ruth Madoff interview

- Twitter mulls over a revamp. Cue Facebook-level complaining.

- Former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett created a new sitcom, “1600 Penn,” about a dysfunctional First Family. From the NRO comments:

Hasn’t this show already been on for nearly three years on all four broadcast networks plus FNC, CNN, MSDNC, CDNC and all three C-SPAN channels? Personally I never found it funny or interesting, and I can’t wait until it gets cancelled next November. (Although we’ll still be stuck watching the remaining episodes until the following January.)
Later,
Joe

I hear the critics already panned the reality show version.

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-  Newsweek continues its victory lap around the toilet bowl.

- Female Mexican journalists killed because of their gender.

- You can’t call Ed Schultz’s ideology “extreme liberalism.” It’s an insult to classical liberalism. A “raging socialist on steroids” is more appropriate.

- Online video finally chipping away at broadcast TV:

A quarter of people in countries with access to high-speed broadband are streaming video to their TV, although more than 80 percent still watch broadcast television as well. But that’s slowly beginning to change: According to survey data from Ericsson, there’s been a slight decrease from 2010 to 2011 in the percentage of folks watching broadcast TV, while Internet-enabled options, such as long-form streaming sites like Netflix, short-form videos aggregators like YouTube and downloaded content are all on the rise.

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The AOL/Huffington Post is certainly doing a spectacular job of keeping their readers completely in the dark about the entire story of their caving to pressure from the group Color of Change and banning Andrew Breitbart from their front page. This story has been covered by Slate, Mediaite, the New Yorker and a host of conservative sites but there hasn’t been one single word mentioned about it in the AOL/Huffington Post, which has an entire section devoted to covering Media. (Paging Jason Linkins.) Not a peep. No stories, articles, statements of clarification.

As far as Arianna and her bosses at AOL are concerned THIS NEVER HAPPENED.

Furthermore, they are now in full hush-up mode to the outside world, too. Huffington Post’s poor flack Mario Ruiz has gone from simply giving nonanswers when pressed to explain this new policy to completely ignoring his emails on the subject.

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You must not read any further before you click here.

According to America Online, Andrew Breitbart will no longer be published on the AOL/Huffington Post front page due to a policy (no one knew about) that AOL/HuffPo spokesman Mario Ruiz dropped completely out of nowhere on March 24. Among other things, Breitbart called 9/11 truther Van Jones a “commie punk” during an interview with the Daily Caller and now, according to Ruiz, AOL suddenly has a policy prohibiting front page placement on the Huffington Post whenever one of their contributors engages in what they consider to be ad hominem … even if it’s not on the Huffington Post.

Fine. I totally disagree with the policy, but we live in a free country and AOL can choose to run their business however they like. There could be a problem, though, if what the publicly traded AOL is really up to here is a form of ideological blacklisting. Will only Breitbart be held to this standard? Will only conservatives? Or will every HuffPo contributor who engages in ad hominem be forced to sit in the back of the blog? Which brings me to …

All together now: How do you solve a problem like Bill Maher?

First, let’s back up just a bit.

Since AOL dropped this “Back of the Blog” policy on Breitbart, we and many others have had no problem gathering together glaring examples of AOL/HuffPo front page authors, not only participating in the worst kind of ad hominem elsewhere, but also — incredibly! — on the front page of the Huffington Post. Which means that only two possibilities exist for what’s going on here. Either 9/11 truther Van Jones has convinced AOL to single out individuals he doesn’t like for “Back of the Blog” discrimination, or he convinced AOL to start a brand new rule.

Which brings us back to Mr. Maher …

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Try to remember how you felt on the days after the horrible events of September 11, 2001. I remember our country experiencing something close to Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous stages of grief. Except instead of “acceptance” being the final stage,  our nation swelled with an enormous sense of patriotism and resolve best represented by the bi-partisan members of Congress singing “God Bless America” on the steps of the Capitol, President George W. Bush’s rallying rescue workers on a pile of rubble, and flags being flown on almost every porch in America. Do you remember those days and those feelings? Now, ask yourself:  What kind of person would instead take the occasion of the day after the attack to lead a rally condemning America and holding the terrorist murderers up as martyred heroes?

Van Jones is that kind of person.

In a recently discovered video, the former White House appointee and current hero of the liberal elite and de-facto Huffington Post/AOL editorial director is seen telling the adoring crowd,  “It’s the bombs that the government has been dropping around the world that are now blowing up inside the U.S. borders.”  He said this after a whole host of speakers from the radical fringe fringe denounced our country and her policies and hijacked the tragedy to justify unloading a laundry list of cliched, left-wing reasons to blame America for the acts perpetrated by radical Islamist totalitarian terrorists.

Remember, this rally was taking place while the bodies of 3,000 Americans were still smoldering in the rubble of the World Trade Center and American heroes were putting their lives at risk at ground zero in a massive humanitarian effort.  What kind of monsters would use this occasion to turn Americans against one another?

It’s no wonder that this man is embraced and honored by groups like the once-relevant, now-radical NAACP and was given the high honor of holding a Presidential appointment in the first year of the Obama Presidency.  He speaks the revolutionary “blame America first” rhetoric of Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and Malik Zulu Shabazz. (more…)

It’s taken a long time, but Huffington Post/AOL founder Arianna Huffington and Huffington Post/AOL editor Roy Sekoff have finally acknowledged that I am not a racist–despite the popular left wing website’s campaign to frame me as one.

From a letter crafted by Huffington Post editor Roy Sekoff to the Daily Caller:

…I want to make it as clear as possible that neither I nor Arianna believe that Andrew Breitbart is a racist.  If we did believe that, we never would have allowed him to blog on HuffPost — let alone featured him on our front page.

I am grateful for Huffington and Sekoff’s true courage to go against many of their partisan bloggers and ideological editors, many of whom threatened to quit if I wasn’t ousted from its “progressive” waters.

For the last six months the Huffington Post, recently purchased by AOL for $315 million, has been running a vengeful propaganda campaign led by a far left wing anti-free speech organization called “Color of Change,” created by former Obama White House “green czar” Van Jones – whose resignation was sealed, to a great degree, by facts revealed in reporting at one of my websites. (more…)

On March 24, HuffPost once again revealed its subversive, hypocritical, double-jointed double standards — this time, in regards to the standards of conduct it applies to actions and statements by its authors (“bloggers”)… even off-site.

Early yesterday morning, the Daily Caller published an interview with Andrew Breitbart where the Big Journalism publisher had some choice words on Color of Change founder, former Green Jobs Czar, and HuffPo blogger Van Jones.

“Van Jones is a cop killer-supporting, racist, demagogic freak. And a commie. And an eco-fraudster,” Breitbart said. A few kind words were volunteered for Jones: praise for being “spectacularly well-dressed.”

Mario Ruiz, The Huffington Post’s senior vice president for media relations, told TheDC that Breitbart will not be censored in response to the campaign.

Later in the day, HuffPo caved to Color of Change pressure to blacklist Breitbart.  Color of Change is famous for leading an advertising boycott against Glenn Beck’s show and took credit for Breitbart’s ouster from ABC News’s election night coverage.  HuffPo SVP Mario Ruiz issued the following statement; pay attention to their specific reasoning, emphasis mine:

The Huffington Post is committed to fostering a lively and often provocative debate about the issues of the day and encourages a wide range of voices from all perspectives to participate. Andrew Brietbart’s ad hominem attack on Van Jones in The Daily Caller — right down to calling him a “commie punk” and “a cop killer-supporting, racist, demagogic freak” — violates the tenets of debate and civil discourse we have strived for since the day we launched. As a result, we will no longer feature his posts on the front page.

He is welcome to continue publishing his work on HuffPost provided it adheres to our editorial guidelines, as the two posts he published on HuffPost did — guidelines that include a strict prohibition on ad hominem attacks. Our decision today recognizes that placing posts on the front page is an editorial call that elevates some posts over others, and is an indication of how seriously we take these judgment calls.

So Breitbart is no longer allowed to publish on the front page of HuffPo because he made an ad hominem attack?  By this logic, the same standard will be applied to all AOL/HuffPo writers going forward.  If Breitbart is being thrown under the bus for making ad hominem remarks off the site, then that means… no other AOL/HuffPo bloggers can make them either.

We’ve never seen the Huffington Post make an effort like this to suppress the speech of any of their other (mostly left-wing) personalities.  The hypocrisy is laughably obvious, and it was left-of-center bloggers Mickey Kaus of the Daily Caller, Alex Pareene of Salon, and Dave Weigel of Slate who were quickest to point it out.  Pareene sums it up this way: (more…)

“Famous for its extensive comprehensive coverage of things other people produced and put on the Internet. Now hopefully Huffpo will be a great source of revenue for AOL whose income currently depends on 82-year old Delaware Claire Meyers and the 10 bucks an hour she still pays for dial-up service.”

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I have been a subscriber to AOL since I first bought a laptop computer way back in the dark ages of 1991. That’s right my friends I am the last person in the country who is still paying for AOL! That may end soon.

I even bought stock on in AOL way back before the tech boom of the late 90’s and wish I would have sold out long ago. As an early player in the ISP business I thought AOL could have been a market leader. They have floundered both in their business model and in their content. I kept waiting for them to find their way. It’s my optimistic nature.

AOL announced last week they were buying the Huffington Post. It was announced that Ms Huffington, one of the greatest political chameleons of all time, would control the content.  This may have surprised a number of analysts but to anyone who has been reading the “news” as provided by AOL over the last two years it was no big deal. Little in their content would change. It would be hard for anyone to imagine the content of AOL could get more left wing than it has been lately. The following three stories are illustrative of the general tone of AOL’s recent content.

Item 1- Sportswriter Kevin Blackstone posted a piece on dumping the National Anthem from sporting events. His logic is that the singing of the Star Spangled Banner is too political! After starting his column with some non-sequitur about the singing of the National Anthem in Congress in 1955 he concludes,

“But if our lawmakers don’t sing it every day to begin the country’s business, spectators of a mere sporting event shouldn’t be forced to sit through it, either, especially during the time we are living through right now.”

It seems that Mr. Blackstone views the celebration of our nation before a large public event as a punishment to be endured. He also feels, I gather from the quote above, that when things are tough in the USA we should ignore it rather than trying to find something all American’s can agree on – we live in an awesome country! If the National Anthem is too political for Mr. Blackstone maybe he thinks the flying of the flag should be stopped as well. Maybe politicians should be banned from attending sports events. Ok, I have to admit I may support that as well!

Item 2- Columnist David Corn pontificates on the sanity and political opinions of conservative icon Glenn Beck. The ultra liberal Mr. Corn, who has written for every far left rag other than the Daily Worker, sees Mr. Beck’s opinion that the uprising in Egypt may turn out to be more that a blooming democracy as an insane conspiracy theory. He belittles Mr. Beck’s suspicions of Acorn and the Tides Foundation as more ultra right kookiness. In Mr. Corn’s opinion the uprising in Egypt is a pure democracy movement and to consider it as anything else is unconscionable crazy talk! I only hope our President, who has show his rank amateurism at foreign policy during this crisis, has his staff drawing up some sort of contingency plans if things in Egypt take a turn for the worst.

Item 3- Why attack just one conservative value or person when you can you can group them into bunches and deride them as a whole? Journalism Professor Sharon Fish does that when she lumps Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Sharon Angle into a pile and labels that unelectable right wing morons. Sharon Fish seem to think all Conservative women are blundering dunderheads who couldn’t hold Mr. Obama’s jacket. They lack refinement in speech and presentation.

My solace is that I am old enough to remember another conservative icon that the media and elitists derided as a fool and bumbler a few years back. He was so dangerous to their ideology that even today they are trying to rewrite history to diminish is greatness. He would have been 100 this year.

An interesting article comparing the success and pathways of the Daily Beast’s Tina Brown and Arianna Huffington.

The same day that Huffington’s $315 million deal with AOL was announced,Media Week’s Brian Morrissey reported that Tina Brown’s merged Newsweek-Daily Beast had yet to find a revenue model to match its glamorous masthead.

According to comScore, The Daily Beast drew 2.9 million visitors in December, up only slightly from the same month a year before. Newsweek had traditionally done better, but its audience has shrunk and its traffic deal with MSNBC.com was dissolved, leaving the NewsBeast with a combined audience of about 5.2 million.

Compare that with the Huffington Post’s reported 25 million unique monthly visitors – a figure rivaling the traffic of the New York Times website – and it becomes clear that comparing Brown’s and Huffington’s sitesis like comparing apples and oranges.

Yes, both are middle-aged, English-educated women whose personal brands are in some ways greater than the brands that they created. And yes, they have been friends for 30 years.

[...]

“Ms. Huffington has thousands of raucous voices on her site, many of them emanating from her high-profile friends, as well as large-scale aggregation of news from around the web. Ms. Brown’s formula is more like that of a magazine – rather than compile mounds of material and offer a platform to almost anyone with a laptop, she chooses what she likes.”

Yes, and even some whose names Huffington used without permission. Then there was the HuffPo blogger who carried out an incestuous affair with his daughter. Then there were all the stories about plagiarism.

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NEW YORK (AP) – Online company AOL Inc. is buying highly-trafficked website Huffington Post in a $315 million deal that represents a big bet on the future of online news.

The acquisition, which will put Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington in charge of all AOL content, brings AOL an additional 25 million unique visitors a day.

That could help AOL begin to turn around its display advertising business, which has struggled to grow as the company tries to turn itself into a content provider and moves farther away from its roots providing dial-up Internet.

The deal “will create a next-generation American media company with global reach that combines content, community, and social experiences for consumers,” AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said in a statement announcing the deal early Monday.

Founded in 2005, Huffington Post is owned by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and a group of other investors. AOL will pay $300 million of the purchase price in cash. (more…)

The February edition of Vanity Fair contains an article by William D. Cohan entitled, “Huffing And Puffing,” which extensively discusses the lawsuit brought against Arianna Huffington and The Huffington Post by Peter Daou and James Boyce.  Daou and Boyce claim that they played a critical role in helping Huffington create her popular website but have not been credited or compensated; they are demanding monetary damages.

There are multiple factual errors in the article that Vanity Fair ought to correct.

In the article, Vanity Fair claims, “in January 2005, Huffington and Lerer hired Breitbart….” This assertion is incorrect; Breitbart was not hired in January 2005.

Elsewhere in the article, Vanity Fair claims that, “for his part, Breitbart said the fighting among the four protagonists amuses him, especially since Huffington fired him after six months.” The assertion that Breitbart was fired after six months is also incorrect; Breitbart was never fired. (more…)

One can imagine the screeds emanating from the media half-wits that mutter at Media Matters for America (MMFA) had an Andrew Breitbart blogger been accused of incest; however, it appears that Arianna Huffington has not just one, but at least two prominent bloggers with serious allegations of incest on their resume. Most readers are probably familiar with the recent news of Huffington Post blogger David Epstein.

… it appears that Palin-hating Huffington Post blogger and Ivy League Professor, David Epstein stands accused of maintaining a 3-year incestuous relationship with his daughter.

Yet, Huffington Post blogger and personality Tony Hendra seems to still have his place under Arianna’s masthead, even if he hasn’t used it since earlier this year. That despite far more troubling allegations involving incest and exploitative, seemingly sadistic behavior toward children that go back years.

Tony Hendra, author of the international best-seller Father Joe, attended Cambridge University where he performed with Pythons-to-be John Cleese and Graham Chapman. He was an original editor of The National Lampoon and editor-in-Chief of Spy. He also played Ian Faith in This is Spinal Tap. For lots more egregious self-promotion from a long and varied career visit: tony-hendra.com

In fact, they were chronicled by his daughter, Jessica Hendra,  in book form back in 2005. (more…)

Especially after this headline:

Irony Alert: Accused Plagiarist Arianna Huffington Accuses Bush of Plagiarizing… His Own Words

HuffPo’s Plagiarism Crier: Toking Soros Minion?

Still crickets from HuffPo on the issue.

Bush Derangement Syndrome is rampant this week, triggered by the release of former President George W. Bush’s book Decision Points.  I’m almost waiting for George Soros to jump back onto CNN and compare the former President with the Nazi regime again.

Big Journalism editor Dana Loesch points out the comical hypocrisy going on over at the Huffington Post.  While several of the tabloid-like site’s contributors have been criticizing one thing or another about the book, one in particular is prattling on about what he dubs as plagiarism in Decision Points.  Let’s just say, if you’re going to snitch, at least make sure your own crib’s in order.  Dana reminds readers that Arianna Huffington is herself no stranger to plagiarism.

Besides, a closer look at the post reveals more about the post’s author, Ryan Grim, than it does anything else.  Grim seems barely able to temper his disdain for the former President as he inventories a barrage of so-called “for instances”, like this one. [emphasis Grim's]

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It was only a matter of time before the nutroots at Huffington Post would resort to desperation and utter ridiculousness in their frenzied Bush-bashing; behold, the unintentionally comical headline atop Huffington Post:

Before we go into the nitty gritty, can I just note the delicious irony of a website of repeatedly accused plagiarist like Arianna Huffington – who settled out of court for, what else, plagiarism! – falsely accusing another of plagiarism? Remember this?

Seemingly plagiarizing Larry King transcripts so she could crow about having a Clooney byline. The result was an embarrassing smackdown from an A-list celebrity and loss of credibility.

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Big Journalism called out Arianna Huffington’s Post for an ethics violation on October 27th by pointing out their role in manufacturing a smear aimed at Libertarian philanthropist Charles Koch, while pretending to simply be reporting it. Unfortunately, the White House Press Corp credentialed Huffington Post has opted to respond by quietly updating a previous post in an attempt to salvage some credibility, while including an update that only impugns their credibility even more.

Its post-publication update for accuracy is bad enough; their unnecessary and inaccurate casting of aspersions, again against Koch, is far worse.

**Disclosure: Since Joel and Gabe both experienced technical difficulties with their phones, I let Joel use my cell to place the call to Charles Koch’s office.**

Evidently Huffington Post propagandist Brendan DeMelle never put forth any effort to determine what Big Journalism was able to confirm with relative ease.

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