Huff Post: Trump Reads Positive Stories About Himself Daily

The Huffington Post has a curious relationship with integrity.  Allegations of journalistic malpractice made against the Huffington Post are wide ranging, and include claims of biased journalism, revisionist historical reporting, and fake polling.  A better way of describing Huff Post’s relationship with integrity might be to say that it is nonexistent.

Perhaps the only truly curious thing about the Huffington Post is how it manages to remain in business, considering that it basically functions as a propaganda outfit.  But I suppose I just answered my own question.  Evidence of Huff Post’s propagandizing was in full effect today, and may be seen in the article titled “Trump Staffer Responsible For Finding Positive News Stories Resigns”, written by senior editor Rebecca Shapiro.

In what started as a story about the resignation of White House communications team director Andy Hemming, the article would take a sharp turn towards disinformation.  Things began well enough, as the author described Hemming’s role within the Trump administration.  Mr. Hemming’s job was to find “positive mainstream media news stories” and “recirculate those reports to key reporters and talking heads”.  It is here, that Rebecca shoehorned in a separate (and unrelated) statement from a Vice News report, alleging that President Trump receives a specially prepared folder containing only positive news about himself, twice a day.  She concludes her piece by listing other high-profile resignations, and manages to further drag the President’s name through the mud by connecting him to the incident in Charlottesville.

I’m baffled – can someone explain this to me?  What does an unrelated report by Vice News (an organization with similar credibility problems) have to do with the resignation of a White House staffer?  How does one idea even connect to the next?  Where is the rationale behind ham-fistedly doubling down on the “Trump is a narcissist” narrative (a narrative which Rebecca Shapiro was too lazy to even set up in her own article)?

Forget truth-telling for a moment here, this article is all wrong simply from a narrative structure perspective.  What story is Rebecca Shapiro trying to tell?  Can a coherent message be extracted from her article?  Her article reads like a Frankenstein’s-monster of anti-Trump clichés.  Given the lack of cohesiveness (and frankly intelligence) to her writing, I’m convinced that the purpose of this article is simply to remind Huff Post’s audience that they are supposed to hate Donald Trump.

Shapiro is also inaccurate in claiming that President Trump “regularly picks public feuds” with journalists and outlets.  Donald Trump has never drawn first blood, and readily admits so.  Whether it’s Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, Rosie O’Donnell, or any of the “haters and losers” that all seem to accumulate in the shadow of Trump’s success, he has never made the first transgression.  Shapiro’s ignorance of this serves as a reminder of the lack of self-awareness in journalism and news.

In trying to smear Donald Trump, The Huffington Post revealed itself yet again, to be fake news.