The mainstream media is so full of right wing and
centrist news coverage that many of us who
desire social change take to the internet to find
out what's happening in the world
The Huffington Post a so called progressive
liberal newsblogs that you may have heard of
was founded in 2005 by Arianna Huffington
she wanted to create a liberal counterpoint to
right wing sites such as the Drudge Report
I'm all for liberal and progressive news blogs but
the problem with HuffPo is they are continually
throwing women under the bus
the website is dripping with sexism
Progressive politics includes issues around
racism and sexism, class, disability and
sexuality. According to Alexa.com the Huffington
Post is the 36th most viewed site in the US
It beats out the Wall Street Journal and the LA
Times. In order to entice viewers they use a tactic
called Link baiting. It's any content within a
website design specifically to gain attention.
Linkbaiting is an internet marketing strategy that
bring in viewers which then
generates more ad revenue. In this case they
regularly show women's nipples, cleavage and
asses in order to entice views, and they even
have a section called Celebrity Skin because
apparently they aren't shy at all about their
objectification. And let's be clear now
objectification isn't just showing women's bodies
it's using women's bodies to sell something
so in this case they're selling "real" news stories
but they are bringing people in by talking about
celebrity nipples and which female politician is
hotter. They often have images of half naked
women right next to the "legitimate" news stories
Or they will feature a popular news story like the
one about the proposed mosque in New York City
but they will use a nearly full screen image of a
woman's body stratling a stripper pole
This is fundamentally an issue about racism in
America yet they're using a woman's body to
gain attention. Since it's a powerful image to use
as linkbait, they used it repeatedly on the site
over and over and over and over again
This would of course bother me in general
but I'm specifically pissed off at this site because
they claim to be liberal and progressive
when they are clearly not when it comes to
women. They have categories like Obama, Sarah
Palin, economy, housing, Glenn Beck, the war
And then they have an Entertainment section
with categories like celebrity skin, sex tapes
Lindsay Lohan, Jersey Shore, and these are all
readily and easily available, they show up
regularly on the home page yet I have to dig
in order to find Women's Rights tucked away
in the World section, which hardly ever shows up
on the front page. Apparently women's rights
don't rise to the level of importance as naked
celebrities.
Activism section which is also tucked away and
hard to find because the first three featured
articles are of half naked women, you can thank
PETA for that one. Because of this it's not
surprising that women bloggers on the site are
also treated with a similar disrespect. Although
there are female and feminist bloggers on
Huffington Post they rarely get featured as
news items. So if it doesn't make it to the front
page or the front page of their respective
sections it's going to get very few views because
there is so much content filtering through HuffPo
everyday. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
did a study that found that only 23% of featured
content was written by women.
I know what you are thinking, it was founded by
a woman, a powerful woman and yes but Sarah
Palin is also a powerful woman and look at how
disgraceful she is when it comes to women's
rights. Just because it's female fronted doesn't
change the fact that it's structurally and
institutionally excluding women from the
intellectual sphere and most often only featuring
women as linkbait. The popularity of this site
serves to define progressive politics and they're
saying that woman aren't really included in any
substantial capacity. Too often websites like the
Huffington Post gets to claim a progressive slant
while treating women in ways that liberals would
be pretty pissed off about if they saw it on Fox
News. Any progressive news site worth following
clearly and transparently includes race, gender,
sexuality, class and ability throughout the entire
site, not just when it's convenient for their
marketing strategy.
relies on sensationalism to
This is even more apparently on their