I subscribed to HuffPo on Facebook and read their articles if they’re mildly interesting. I’m pretty far left-of-center, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m reading the equivalent of a liberal Fox News. The stories are obviously slanted left, and seem to be telling me exactly what I want to hear.
I do listen to NPR and BBC also. Is HuffPo biased enough that I can no longer consider it a reliable news source? Should I drop my readership?
I like the Huffpo. But I view it much like I do ice cream. It’s a tasty treat but not something you want to over indulge in.
One thing that annoys me to no end is their insistent use of one word teasers. I mean, come on, I know teasers are supposed to spark the interest of the reader. But when you use one word teasers you don’t even give the vaguest clue as to what the damn article is about.
You are reading the equivalent of a liberal Fox News. Personally I can’t stand that kind of thing. I’m very far left but I don’t consider things like HuffPo and MSNBC to be news. I consider them to be entire networks dedicated to editorializing.
So my personal opinion is that it’s very hard to learn anything when you’re constantly surrounding yourself with the sound of your own voice.
On the nosey.
Probably.
I wouldn’t. I enjoy reading what I want to hear, and their bias is so obvious it can hardly be overlooked. My biggest bitch is with the website itself, riddled with links that don’t deliver, and the “teasers” mentioned upthread.
This is what I would have said if I could have said it this well.
You’re all talking about the left side of the page, don’t forget the right side column which is pure tabloid crap.
Dunno about slant but it’s ugly as all get-out. Looks like the Internet puked onto a billboard.
That’s another reason I’m reluctant to click their links.
That’s ridiculous. The problem with Fox News is not that they are opinionated, but that they pervert the news and push their opinions as fact. HuffPo does not do this. In fact, it’s technically just a reblogging service. They just report what other people have reported. And MSNBC clearly separates their opinion shows and their other shows.
In fact, the only people I’ve seen that try to equate these are Fox News supporters. It’s a Fox News thing to try and say that they are just like everyone else, when they aren’t, at all. Shame on you for falling for that.
Did you make the naughty naughty gesture and say “tsk tsk tsk” after typing that? If you did you should be ashamed for shaming someone and making them feel shame.
I treat HuffPo as a news and opinion aggregator as it doesn’t seem to produce much itself. Its thrust is definitely left-leaning, no doubt, but that in no way makes it the left equivalent of FOX News.
I agree with everyone here about the one-word teasers. They are bloody annoying. I still remember after the first presidential debate the huge
**OBAMEH **
link at the top of the main page.
The one thing that really annoys me about the site, however, is their penchant for article links on the main page that go just one step further than the actual content of the article, so you’ll see an image of, say, Mitch McConnell with a caption above that says Senator Makes Startling Admission, but when you click on the link the article is about something he said on a news program that is neither much of an admission nor startling.
Their **Tech **section is pretty good though, I must say.
I don’t notice the one-worders but I get annoyed by their constant use of deliberately uninformative teaser headlines: stuff like “Television star dies”.
Does it lie on a regular basis? If not, then it isn’t the equivalent of Fox.
The only reason I ever go on there is if someone links to it on FB. I prefer the New York Times or the New Republic for liberal news/opinion.
They’ve certainly had more than their fair share of pseudoscience woo bullshit, if you want to count that. At least, that’s my recollection from a few years ago, when I swore off reading them after a particularly ridiculous article. Maybe things have changed since then.
I like HuffPo. It’s colorful and I like the layout. I think it leans left, but not nearly as far as Fox leans right.
I like the HuffPo. I read it just for opinion, it doesn’t really work as a first line for the news for me. It’s too all over the place. But they have very interesting articles, nothing wrong with that.
I really like that they completely describe and often transcribe videos that they post. I hate watching videos to get the news!
Other than that, I don’t have much of an opinion. I only click through when someone shares a link, I don’t read it on the reg.
To me, it’s just a liberally biased AP wire service. They subscribe to feeds and collect news articles and blogs from all manner of sources. The main issue I have is that most people cannot understand or distinguish between what should be a fact-based news article (say, from the Associated Press) from some blogger’s random opinion, thus blurring the lines between fact and opinion. Then people criticize the HuffPo for writing crap, when all they are doing is linking you to some random blogger’s crap that was never intended to be presented as news at all.
Note: Sometimes, they even feature links and news straight from Fox News. But still, I don’t think anyone could argue that HP isn’t biased toward the left. If they weren’t biased, there would be more Drudge/Fox/whatever else the right reads and Al-Jazeera AND BBC and any other news source you’d care to collect. I like the idea of a news portal, but HuffPo only pulls in liberal stuff for the most part.
Yup! This is my biggest peeve about HuffPo. I accept it is biased/slanted left and when something interests me I usually try to cross-reference the subject/claim with other sourced articles. However, their tendency to use an inflammatory headline then the content doesn’t back up the claim in the headline really bugs me.
MeanJoe