{"id":8627,"date":"2011-02-10T19:49:50","date_gmt":"2011-02-11T00:49:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=8627"},"modified":"2011-02-10T19:49:50","modified_gmt":"2011-02-11T00:49:50","slug":"aol-huffpo-merger-shows-hypocrisy-behind-%e2%80%98citizen-journalism%e2%80%99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/8627\/aol-huffpo-merger-shows-hypocrisy-behind-%e2%80%98citizen-journalism%e2%80%99\/","title":{"rendered":"AOL-HuffPo Merger Shows Hypocrisy Behind \u2018Citizen Journalism\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leave it to liberals like Arianna Huffington to treat the little people she champions exactly like a corporate stooge.\u00a0 Debra Saunders highlights the hypocrisy<\/a> fueling this week\u2019s announced merger of AOL News<\/em> with The Huffington Post<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Remember HuffPo’s big scoop during the 2008 presidential election? Writer Mayhill Fowler recorded then-presidential candidate Barack<\/a> Obama<\/a> as he told swells at a San Francisco fundraiser that blue-collar voters “get bitter” and “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”<\/p>\n

Last year, Fowler quit writing for HuffPo because the website refused to pay her. “Citizen journalist,” Mayhill Fowler discovered, has a very specific meaning: Free.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The savings Arianna realizes from not paying many of her contributors undoubtedly helps make her website more profitable.\u00a0 It also lets her hide her lust for money behind the guise of anti-corporate rhetoric.\u00a0 Saunders continues:<\/p>\n

Fowler keeps waiting for the moment when high-profile Democrats realize “that they cannot say one thing and do another: to talk sympathy for working people and yet blog at a site that treats its writers badly.” Fowler should not hold her breath.<\/p>\n

Huffington is an entrepreneurial<\/em> genius at self-promotion. She fiercely surfed the left’s discontent with mainstream – read: corporate – journalism by promising to keep mainstream – read: paid – news media “honest.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, on the one hand Huffington lets \u2018citizen journalists\u2019 like Fowler do the heavy lifting of reporting breaking news while leveraging the resulting readership into a $315 million payday.\u00a0 Not a bad day\u2019s work for the divorced wife of a multi-millionaire.\u00a0 Maybe now folks like Fowler will remember that liberals like Arianna are just as eager to make a buck as anyone else \u2013 they just aren\u2019t as up front about it as the rest.<\/p>\n

H\/T: San Francisco Chronicle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leave it to liberals like Arianna Huffington to treat the little people she champions exactly like a corporate stooge.\u00a0 Debra Saunders highlights the hypocrisy fueling this week\u2019s announced merger of AOL News with The Huffington Post: Remember HuffPo’s big scoop during the 2008 presidential election? Writer Mayhill Fowler recorded then-presidential candidate Barack Obama as he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2388,2385,2387,2390,1890,2389,2386,2355],"class_list":["post-8627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-aol-news","tag-arianna-huffington","tag-citizen-journalist","tag-debra-saunders","tag-huffington-post","tag-mainstream-media","tag-mayhill-fowler","tag-media-bias"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8627"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8632,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8627\/revisions\/8632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}