Monday, March 23, 2015

HuffPost continues using deception to whip up racial hatred: Austin, TX edition

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Previously: Did Huffington Post's incitement and bias contribute to the murders of two NYPD officers?
Fresh on the heels of HUFF-WATCH's recent expose' on how HuffPost deliberately manipulated facts and suppressed others in order to whip up racial hatred.... on Thursday, March 19, HuffPost published a front-page "news" story with the headline:
Someone In Austin Is Putting Up 'Exclusively For White People' Stickers
There were at least four good reason to instantly suspect, however, that these stickers were a stunt, and as demonstrably fake as Arianna Huffington's repeated claims that HuffPost is a "nonpartisan" newspaper:
(1) A simple search of actual fliers produced by racists demonstrates that they are about 159 notches down the scale of design ability.
(2) All the words were spelled correctly.
(3) There was no statement of attribution from the local pointed-white-hat crowd.
(4) Austin is the most liberal city in Texas, and one of the most liberal in America.
HuffPost kept the story on its front page for three days, through March 21.

Then, the story mysteriously disappeared from HuffPost's front page.  If one relied exclusively on HuffPost for their news, they would have been left to think that the perpetrator/s behind these outrageous stickers had neither been discovered, nor arrested. 




The story was revealed as a hoax - perpetrated by a "social activist" attorney

The reality is that on Friday, March 20 at 3:55pm, KXAN, the Austin NBC-TV affiliate, reported that the perpetrator has been identified, and openly admitted, on video, what he had done.  Turns out he isn't a racist; to the contrary, he's a "social justice" (translation: radical leftist) attorney.  Excerpt:
An Austin lawyer is claiming responsibility for several stickers placed on East Austin businesses that claimed they were “exclusively for white people.”  Adam Reposa posted the video on YouTube and made a statement on Facebook saying he was trying promote the issue of gentrification in East Austin. “They’re getting pushed out, and pretty quick. This area of town is turning into white’s only,” Reposa said in the clip. “Not by law like it used to be, and everyone’s going to jump on, ‘that’s racist!’ ‘that’s racist!’ Man, this town, the way **** works is racist! And I knew I could just bait all of y’all into being as stupid as you are.”
Here's Reposa's video (Caution: explicit language):



The story of this hoax was soon picked up within a few hours by other (actual) news outlets, including the Austin Chronicle, Raw Story, the New York Daily News, and others.

By the following morning, March 21, however, HuffPost still had the original story posted. 




On March 21, HuffPost abruptly removed all mention of the story from its front page

Later on March 21, however, HuffPost removed the story from its front page.  Instead, here are some of the "news" stories that HuffPost felt were more important to post on its front page, than to update its readers on the reality of this stunt.  The first "news" story, below, was left up for two straight days:

 
 




Was HuffPost unaware of the hoax, and who had perpetrated it?  No - it spoke to the perpetrator, on March 22.

We know this because HuffPost openly admitted it spoke to Adam Reposa, at the original story link - which no one would know even exists, if they hadn't seen and bookmarked the original story when it appeared on the front page:



And yet, as of March 23, HuffPost still has posted not a single mention on its front page of anything concerning this story, and the fact that it was a hoax - that it was not, as implied, a racist who was posting these stickers, but rather was a "social activist attorney," who intended to elicit sympathy for black Americans.




This is merely the latest episode of a chronic series of such outrageous actions by HuffPost

Rather than being an isolated incident, this is merely the latest example of HuffPost giving top-line coverage to outrageous, incendiary allegations that on the surface reek of suspicion - then deliberately removing the fact that the "news" story had been completely debunked.


The 2013 Red Lobster "racist receipt" hoax

On March 9, 2013, HuffPost ran this headline on its front page, and left it there for two straight days:
Racist Receipt Apparently Left By Red Lobster Customer (PHOTO)
Note that HuffPost's front page headline said, de facto, that a racist note was left on a Red Lobster receipt - not "apparently," as in the story page.  HuffPost gave its trademark sympathetic coverage to the waitress who alleged this was done to her, Toni Christina Jenkins, and who posted it on her Facebook page.

On October 31, 2013, however, it was reported at the Opposing Views blog that the customer whose name appeared on the receipt that the Jenkins posted, Devin Barnes, had filed a $1 million suit against Jenkins and Red Lobster, after a handwriting expert concluded that neither Barnes nor his wife wrote that racist message. 

HuffPost made no mention of those facts.  In fact, it didn't publish the story until six months later, on May 28, 2014 - but not on its front page. 

Instead, HuffPost decided that these "news" stories such as these (the first of which was posted for two straight days on its front page) were far more important for its readers to be aware of, than the truth behind yet another outrageous hoax that HuffPost helped to publicize:
 
 

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The "pack of Jews" lie

On August 8, 2012, mere weeks before the presidential election, HuffPost ran the following incendiary headline allegation on its front page:


HuffPost claimed in its "news" story and an associated slide show that Romney was "chased off" by a "pack of Jews" (actually, a Jewish wedding party; just imagine for a moment if any other "newspaper" had published a headline alleging that a "pack of (insert minority here) had chased anyone.... HuffPost would have been first out of the block to call that publication "racist.") 


As HUFF-WATCH documented, however, the entire story was a lie; the "pack of Jews" that ran after Romney's motorcade were actually supporters, who wanted to greet the candidate, and have their picture taken with him.  HuffPost never posted a new headline to reflect this fact and apologize - and it has kept the slide show allegation exactly as it was, to this day (March 23, 2015):



Here are a few more examples of the dozens and dozens of examples* of HuffPost's outrageous headlines, representing incendiary hoaxes, lies and half-truths, which could only be employed in an effort to deceive its readers -- and which it never posted new headlines to indicate the truth concerning:
(*If HuffPost disagrees with this assessment, PLEASE, go ahead and sue HUFF-WATCH, and we'll let the general public pore over the physical evidence and decide for itself who's telling the truth.)




How does this all compare to Arianna Huffington's claims that HuffPost is a professional, nonpartisan "newspaper," and better than its competitors?
“We are aiming to go beyond just facts, to create a narrative. We think bringing journalism to a new level is exactly what people are looking for.”
- Arianna Huffington
"If you're going to produce great journalism, you have to build a team of people who are working together and driving toward the same goals editorially.”
- Arianna Huffington
“[T]oo many reporters have forgotten that the highest calling of journalists is to ferret out the truth, consequences be damned."
- Arianna Huffington

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