(1a) Contrast how HuffPost gives top publicity to wrongdoing by people it views as Worthless
(1b) Contrast how HuffPost gives top publicity to, and mocks fake hate crimes reported by people it views as Worthless
(2) Examples of HuffPost legitimizing fake hate crimes against Muslims (11)
(3) Examples of HuffPost legitimizing fake hate crimes against black Americans (4)
(4) Examples of HuffPost legitimizing fake hate crimes against others (3)
(1) Overview
This page contains detailed case studies in which HuffPost perpetrated one or more of the following acts or omissions:
It publicized allegations of hate crimes when there were clearly reasons for suspicion, or substantive indications that they were fake. HuffPost gave detailed, front-page, enduring coverage to allegations of hate crimes against members of its favored groups — particularly Muslims and black Americans — in cases when it knew there was no supporting evidence, and/or the victim(s) had not filed a police report, or school complaint. It did this despite the proliferation of well-documented fake hate crimes against these favored groups in recent years.
It did not alert its readers that they’d been deceived. Upon learning that a hate crime it promoted as being legitimate had never happened, was a hoax, or was perpetrated by the alleged victim, HuffPost posted no new headline on its front page that indicated this reality. In doing so, HuffPost deliberately left its readers, and the publications around the world that ran its original story, with the false impression that the story was legitimate.
It attempted to conceal its deception. It replaced the headline and copy on the original allegation page with new content, that reflected the reality – but made no effort to alert the public that this was the case. In doing so, anyone who searches “Huffington Post” and the content of the story would only find that it appeared to report the story accurately, at the time, as a fake hate crime — when documentary evidence on this page shows it did not.
Has been, deliberately, maliciously smearing America on the world stage, as a rampantly Islamophobic, bigoted, violent culture, all the way down to first-graders.
Has continued feeding the false narrative that Muslims are at disproportionately high risk of being victims of hate crimes in America — when it knows, or should know, that in reality, Muslims are the least-likely victims of religiously-motivated hate crimes in America. Further, as our documentation shows, HuffPost has ignored virtually all of the actual, documented hate crimes against Jews, against whom 4-6 times as many hate crimes are perpetrated than against Muslims, despite having similar population sizes in America.
(1a) Contrast how HuffPost gives top publicity to wrongdoing by people it views as Worthless
As a baseline against which to judge the contents of this page, consider that on November 15, 2016, HuffPost gave detailed, front-page coverage to a weatherman who allegedly started a forest fire to gain Facebook views:
Smokey Bear would not approve. A “wannabe weatherman” in Kentucky was arrested last week after he admitted that he started a forest fire to generate attention for his Facebook videos, The Associated Press reported.
Johnny Mullins, 21, faces a second-degree arson charge for a wildfire that began in Letcher County, Kentucky.
Jenkins Police Chief James Stephens explained Mullins’ “misguided” motive. “He likes to do Facebook videos and have people follow him on his ‘weather forecast,’ so that’s pretty much why he did what he did,” the chief told the AP. “He enjoyed the attention he got from the Facebook stuff.”
Notice that HuffPost included the perpetrator’s face and name in the story, and not only described his motive, but even made fun of it, in the context of a higher power — Smokey Bear — to twist the knife.
(1b) Contrast how HuffPost gives top publicity to, and mocks fake hate crimes reported by people it views as Worthless
On February 27, 2018, HuffPost published this story on its front page:Clicking on that headline brought the reader to this story page:
A North Texas teenager who falsely claimed she was kidnapped and raped by three black men last March will likely serve no jail time. On Thursday, 19-year-old Breana Harmon of Pottsboro pleaded guilty to four felony charges of tampering with physical evidence and government documents in relation to false reports of kidnapping and sexual assault.
“She’s very remorseful for what she did and what she said, and that’s why she decided to plead guilty,” Harmon’s attorney Bob Jarvis told the Sherman Herald Democrat. No suspects were ever identified or arrested in the case.
Harmon will be sentenced March 20. Her plea deal has two possible punishments: regular probation or deferred adjudication, which often involves fulfilling a requirement, such as treatment or community service. Neither involves jail time.
As shown below, this is but one of a string of stories that HuffPost published on its front page, that publicizes what were discovered to be false reports by white people of crimes being perpetrated against them by people of color, in its “Favored Groups.”
As shown in the more than 60 case studies on this page, however, HuffPost refuses to publicize discoveries when the fraudulent complainant is a person within its Favored Group. Further, as documented in the 18 case studies on this page, this holds true even when HuffPost gave top coverage to the original hoax allegations by people within its Favored Groups; when they are discovered to be fakes, HuffPost simply removes the story from its front page, and never puts a new one in its place to alert readers that they had been lied to, thus leaving them with the false impression of rampant hate crimes against people in its Favored Groups.
Audiences for this week’s “Black Panther” premiere went all-out in celebration, and the film’s opening weekend is expected to break records at the box office. Unfortunately, the superhero movie, which boasts an almost entirely black cast and has been hailed for its positive representation of black people and African culture, has also brought the racist trolls out of the woodwork.
Since Thursday, numerous false reports have bubbled up on social media claiming that white viewers were physically attacked by black fans at showings of the movie. Twitter and Facebook users have been taking images from unrelated incidents and reposting them, falsely claiming that they are photos of themselves or loved ones after racially motivated attacks.
In one example, a Twitter user posted a photo showing the blood-covered face of a teenager who had been assaulted at a nightclub in Sweden last month, fact-checking website Snopes reports. The Twitter user, whose account has since been suspended, wrote, “i went to see #BlackPanther with my gf and a black teenager shouted ‘u at the wrong theater’ and smashed a bottle on her face.”
Note that according to HuffPost, it published this story at 12:51pm on Saturday, February 17, 2018 — barely one day into the weekend — and mere hours after these alleged incidents occurred:
In summary, within approximately twelve hours, HuffPost did all the research necessary to:
Sift through these reports of race-motivated hate crimes against white people
Determine they were fake (in part by validating Snopes’ research)
Organized the documentation to support its claims
Constructed this entire story
In contrast, HuffPost never published a single front-page story on any of the more than 60 recent fake hate crimes reported against people in its Favored Groups, as documented on this page:
To the contrary, as documented on this page, HuffPost repeatedly gave front page coverage to reports (often original, detailed stories) of hate crimes against people in its Favored Groups that, given the dozens of recent incidents of fake hate crimes, it should have known or at least suspected were hoaxes. Then, when it was discovered that they were, in fact, hoaxes, HuffPost removed them from its front page, but never put up a new story to inform its readers that they’d been betrayed. Here are but a few examples, from this page:
(2.2) October 2016, Cary, NC: A Muslim father claimed 7-year-old son endured extended physical assault on school bus, in front of witnesses; School, police investigations found zero evidence it ever took place
(2.6) November 2016, Charlotte, NC: A North Carolina teacher was accused of “relentless bullying and harassing” a five-year-old Muslim boy; Investigation revealed it never happened
(2.11) January 2018, Toronto, Canada: An 11-year-old Muslim girl claimed she was attacked by a man who cut her hijab, as she walked to school; Police soon after determined that this attack “did not happen”
Several months earlier, on August 29, 2017, HuffPost published on its front page this story, of a man who admitted he made up a hate crime that he alleged had been perpetrated against him:
A Colorado man who claimed he was stabbed by an antifa militant because of his neo-Nazi haircut now admits he made up the whole story. […]
Investigators reviewed surveillance video from the area, and found nothing resembling what Witt had described. Officers found a man matching the description provided by Witt ― a transient who was quickly cleared of any involvement, according to KUSA-TV.
In all of these cases, HuffPost enthusiastically exposed on its front page the fact that white people lied about what they themselves had done, but blamed on others.
Yet when HuffPost discovers that people in its Favored Groups lied about hate crimes being perpetrated against them… it just quietly removes the stories from its front page, leaving its readers with no indication that they were anything other than legitimate, thus:
Advancing its subversive agenda, to falsely depict America as a place where racist, anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT hate crimes are skyrocketing
Giving false legitimacy to fake hate crimes
Helping to pit Americans against Americans, based on these lies
Stoking resentment among people in its Favored Groups, by falsely causing them to believe that they are the targets of escalating hate crimes
Making it far more difficult for people in its Favored Groups who are victims of actual hate crimes to come forward, and be believed
(2) Examples of HuffPost legitimizing fake hate crimes against Muslims
(2.1) March 2016, New York, NY: A Muslim female alleged an Islamophobe slashed her face on a Manhattan street; She later admitted she did it to herself
(2.2) October 2016, Cary, NC: A Muslim father claimed 7-year-old son endured extended physical assault on school bus, in front of witnesses; School, police investigations found zero evidence it ever took place
(2.3) November 2016, Ann Arbor, MI: A Muslim female alleged she was physically assaulted by Islamophobe at the University of Michigan; She later admitted she made it up
(2.4) November 2016, Lafayette, A LA: Muslim female alleged she was physically assaulted by Islamophobes at the University of Louisiana; She later admitted she made it up
(2.5) November 2016, San Diego, CA: A Muslim female student at San Diego State University reported she was assaulted by two Trump supporters, who also stole her car; Later her story unraveled, and she stopped cooperating with police
(2.6) November 2016, Charlotte, NC: A North Carolina teacher was accused of “relentless bullying and harassing” a five-year-old Muslim boy; Investigation revealed it never happened
(2.7) March 2017, Montreal, CA: A bomb threat against was made against Muslim students at a Canadian university; Within 24 hours, police arrested a Muslim immigrant for perpetrating the hoax
(2.8) Loudon County, VA: Muslim teenager was murdered; It was established early on that this was not a hate crime, due to victim’s faith or skin color; Yet HuffPost showered three headline stories on this incident that falsely alleged both — then never put up a headline that indicated the reality, or that the perpetrator was a Hispanic illegal alien
(2.9)June 2017, Columbus, OH: HuffPost published a headline that strongly insinuated that a violent confrontation between Muslims and a woman and her child was an anti-Muslim hate crime; Yet at the time, HuffPost knew or should have known that the police said this was not a hate crime, and soon after, that indications arose that the Muslims were actually the perpetrators — yet it never updated its story, or published a new one
(2.10) December 2016, New York, NY [belated addition]: Muslim female alleged she was physically assaulted by Islamophobes on New York subway; Later admitted she made it up
(2.11) January 2018, Toronto, Canada: An 11-year-old Muslim girl claimed she was attacked by a man who cut her hijab, as she walked to school; Police soon after determined that this attack “did not happen” — then HuffPost published an article in its Canadian edition claiming she “deserves an apology”
(2.1) March 2016, New York, NY: A Muslim female alleged an Islamophobe slashed her face on a Manhattan street; She later admitted she did it to herself
Summary: On March 31, 2015, a Muslim woman claimed that while walking down a New York City street in her hijab, a white man called her a “terrorist,” then slashed her face with a knife.
A Muslim woman walking down a Manhattan street during Thursday’s rush hour was slashed in the face by a man who called her a “terrorist,” police said. The 20-year-old woman, a student at the private postsecondary school Make-up Designory, was taken to Bellevue Hospital with non-life threatening injuries, police said.
The attack left a two-inch laceration on the left side of her face, police told CBS New York. The woman was walking near 65 Broadway, in Manhattan’s Financial District, just before 5 p.m., when a man grabbed her arm, slashed her across her cheek and ran away, police said.
Proof that this was a fake hate crime
Within hours, after police confronted her with surveillance video of the scene of her alleged attack, the woman admitted that she made the story up, and had slashed her own face:
Police said Friday morning that a woman who claimed a stranger slashed her in the face made the whole story up. The 20-year-old woman had previously said that she was walking on a lower Manhattan sidewalk Thursday when she was slashed in the face by stranger who called her a “terrorist.”
But by the end of the day, she told police that she slashed her own cheek, leaving a two-inch gash on the left side of her face. She was taken to Bellevue Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation Thursday night.
Thanks in part to HuffPost’s rushing this story to near the top of its front page, it was covered by news organizations throughout the world, including theExpress-Tribune(Pakistan), Arab-American News, ABC News, The Nation, and many others.
HuffPost’s complicity in perpetuating the false notion that this was an actual anti-Muslim hate crime
HuffPost never published a follow-up headline on its front page, to indicate that this was a fake hate crime. Instead, on April 1, 2016 (the next day), it replaced the original headline it put on the story page, with a completely new headline: “Muslim Woman Lied About Being Slashed In Face And Called ‘Terrorist’ (UPDATE); Police say the woman cut a 2-inch gash in her own face as part of the lie,” at the same URL.
So, instead of posting anything on its front page to alert its readers that they had been hoaxed, what kinds of “news” stories did HuffPost decide to put on its front page in the three days after it knew this was a fake hate crime, from April 1-3? Here’s a sampling:
This “news” story appeared near the top of HuffPost’s front page on April 3, 2016.
Thus, to anyone who only gets their news only from HuffPost’s front page, and may have clicked through read the original, false story, they would have no reason to know that it was another fake Islamophobia “hate crime.” And to anyone who clicks on the link to the original story, it falsely appears that that version was never published — and that the only story HuffPost published concerning this incident revealed that it was an apparent hoax.
(2.2) October 2016, Cary, NC: A Muslim father claimed 7-year-old son endured extended physical assault on school bus, in front of witnesses; School, police investigations found zero evidence it ever took place
Summary: On October 12, 2016, HuffPost broke an in-depth, original story on its front page, in which it alleged that a 7-year-old Muslim boy, Abdul Aziz Usmani, was beaten by his fellow classmates on a school bus to the point where he had a severely injured arm, and no one did anything to help him:
“I’m done with the U.S.,” Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani’s wife told him on Friday. Seeing her youngest son, just 7 years old, walk off the school bus bruised and battered that afternoon outside their apartment building in Cary, North Carolina, was the final straw.
Little Abdul Aziz, a first-grader and the youngest child of Usmani and Binish Bhagwanee, was traumatized. He told his parents a classmate had tried to force him to eat food that wasn’t halal. When Abdul Aziz refused, five of his classmates ganged up on him, making fun of his name. They punched him in the face, kicked him in the stomach, and twisted his arm while calling him “Muslim” again and again, Usmani said.
“He wants to be president of the United States of America,” Usmani told The Huffington Post on Tuesday, speaking over Skype from Pakistan. Bhagwanee landed in Islamabad on Monday with their three sons. Usmani has an apartment there, and it’s where they all plan to live now, because America doesn’t feel safe.
This screencap shows that HuffPost positioned the story near the top of its front page — and that to the casual viewer, it appeared that the allegation of the attack on this boy was confirmed, as if it had actually happened as described:
HuffPost’s story was based on a Facebook post by Abdul’s father, Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani, in which he described the incident, showed a picture of Abdul with his arm in a sling, and blamed it on American Islamophobia, and Donald Trump:
Welcome to the United States of America of Donald Trump. Meet my son Abdul Aziz. He is in grade 1, bullied and beaten by his own classmates in school bus for being a Muslim
“They keep beating him all the way from school to home on the bus,” Usmani also told BuzzFeed, adding that his son was traumatized by the attack and has a sprained arm.
HuffPost took whatever the boy’s father said as the gospel truth, infused it with a barrage of its other “research” into rampant Islamophobia in America, and heavily promoted its story on social media, to the point where it went viral throughout both the Western and Muslim worlds. HuffPost also never bothered to ask whether a police report had been filed (none was filed), and whether there was a a single item of supporting evidence to support the father’s incendiary allegations (there wasn’t).
Due to the elaborate nature of HuffPost’s “exclusive” on this story, and its lack of even the most basic journalistic vetting — especially given the rash of fake hate crimes in recent months — the story went around the world, from numerousMuslim sites in the U.S. and Pakistan, to the notoriousBuzzFeed (created by HuffPost co-founder Jonah Peretti), and even to an anti-Muslim site in Tanzania.
There was just one tiny problem with HuffPost’s elaborate story: none of it was true.
Proof that this was a fake hate crime
On October 14, two days of HuffPost published this story, the school district and the local police department released the findings of their investigation: there was no evidence whatsoever to support the allegations, or that this incident ever took place.
The Wake County school system and the Cary Police Department say they haven’t found evidence that a 7-year-old Muslim student was assaulted by classmates on a school bus last week. […]
School and law enforcement officials say they’ve taken the allegations seriously and don’t tolerate bullying. But they say their investigations don’t confirm an assault even occurred. […]
The Cary Police Department has been investigating the allegations as well.
“At this time, nothing has been found, and no police report has been filed,” Cary Town Manager Sean R. Stegall said in a written statement. […]
“No students who were interviewed witnessed an altercation,” Chadwick said in the letter to Weatherstone families. “The bus driver did not witness an altercation. The child did not report to the bus driver any injury.”
HuffPost’s complicity in perpetuating the false notion that this was an actual anti-Muslim hate crime
In response, HuffPost never published a follow-up headline on its front page, to indicate that this was a hoax. Instead, on October 16 it dishonestly replaced the original headline it put on the story page, with a completely new headline: “N.C. Authorities: No Evidence To Support Father’s Claim Muslim Boy Was Assaulted On Bus (UPDATE).” Further, it inserted a sub-head, that sarcastically gives undeserved credibility to the father: “Oh and by the way, his dad fights terrorism for a living”:
Thus, to anyone who only gets their news only from HuffPost’s front page, and may have clicked through read the original, false story, they would have no reason to know: (a) that it was another fake Islamophobia “hate crime,” or (b) that HuffPost had acted so irresponsibly in not validating even the barest of facts, before publishing something so incendiary, and causing it to go viral throughout the world.
Further, if anyone now does an Internet search with the string, “Huffington Post Abdul Aziz Islamophobia,” it initially appears as if the original story was never published — and that the only story HuffPost published concerning this incident revealed that it was an apparent hoax.
So instead of posting anything on its front page to alert its readers that they had been hoaxed, what kinds of “news” stories did HuffPost decide to put on its front page in the three days after it knew this was a fake hate crime, from October 15-17? Here’s a sampling:
(2.3) November 2016, Ann Arbor, MI: A Muslim female alleged she was physically assaulted by Islamophobe at the University of Michigan; She later admitted she made it up
Summary: On November 11, 2016, a female Muslim student at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor reported to police that a man ordered her to take off her hijab, or he would set it on fire. Numerous groups, including CAIR, alleged this was the latest in a chronic string of Islamophobic-driven hate crimes.
HuffPost’s role in publicizing this alleged hate crime: On November 16, HuffPost published on its front page a major, original news story, describing how the university had been mobilized to stand up for this student. As shown below, by January 17, 2017 the story had been shared 69,000 times, meaning, it gained global traction:
In outright defiance of the rising levels anti-Muslim hate in America, University of Michigan students joined forces on Monday to protect their own.
After hearing that a Muslim student had reportedly been threatened for her faith, hundreds of students and faculty showed up to stand guard around classmates who had gathered in a main square to perform one of Islam’s five daily prayers.
By November 17, this was one of HuffPost’s most-shared stories:
HuffPost also covered this woman’s allegation, and the outpouring of support for her, in twoother stories, which it also gave top publicity.
Proof that this was a fake hate crime
On December 21, 2017, local police announced that “investigators discovered she [the student] fabricated the entire story,” and that she could face felony-level criminal charges:
A University of Michigan student who told police in November that a man threatened to set her hijab on fire could face charges after investigators discovered she fabricated the entire story, police announced Wednesday. […]
“Investigators conducted witness interviews and reviewed multiple surveillance videos of the area in question,” the department said. “During the course of the investigation, numerous inconsistencies in the statements provided by the alleged victim were identified. Following a thorough investigation, detectives have determined the incident in question did not occur.”
HuffPost refused to correct the false perception that readers of its three stories about this fake hate crime had acquired
HuffPost never updated its main story page about this matter. This screencap was taken on January 17, 2017 — nearly a month after Ann Arbor police and the FBI determined this was a fake hate crime:
And HuffPost own search engine proves that as of January 17, 2017, it never posted a new story to reveal that this hate crime was a hoax. A search using the string “Ann Arbor Muslim hate crime” shows that it has never published another story about this matter.
In regards to the other twostories in which HuffPost referenced this alleged hate crime, it later simply removed the references to it in them, as if it never occurred.
And as of January 12, 2017, HuffPost’s “Islamophobia” website, which it claims provides in-depth reporting on Islamophobic incidents, still listed this fake hate crime as being legitimate:
So instead of posting anything on its front page to alert its readers that they had been hoaxed, what kinds of “news” stories did HuffPost decide to put on its front page in the three days after it knew this was a fake hate crime, from December 22-24? Here is a sampling:
Thus, to anyone who only gets their news only from HuffPost’s front page, and may have clicked through read the original, false story, they would have no reason to know that it was another fake Islamophobia “hate crime.”
(2.4) November 2016, Lafayette, LA: A Muslim female alleged she was physically assaulted by Islamophobes at the University of Louisiana; She later admitted she made it up
Summary: On November 9, a Muslim female student at Louisiana University-Lafayette alleged she had been beaten and robbed, because of her faith, by several male Trump supporters. HuffPost hurriedly wrote an original story about it, and rushed to position it near the top of its front page:
And HuffPost assigned a reporter to cover the story as if it had, in fact, occurred. [Note: This stands in sharp contrast to how HuffPost routinely inserts parenthesis around allegations that Israel makes against documented incidents of terrorism. One recent example was how HuffPost put “terrorists” in quotes on November 25, 2016, after Palestinians set nearly 1,000 fires across the Jewish state simultaneously, and Netanyahu identified them for who and what they were.]
Police are investigating reports that a student wearing a hijab at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette was hit with a metal object and robbed while walking to class on Wednesday morning. One of her attackers was wearing a white hat that read “TRUMP,” a University of Louisiana Police Department notice sent to students and obtained by The Huffington Post states.
The student told police that she was on her way to class when a dark sedan approached her and two white men wearing sweatpants left the car, according to the notice. She said the suspects struck her with “something metal,” causing her to fall to the ground. They hit her again while she was on the ground and “made obscene comments” at her, the alert states.
Thanks to HuffPost’s global influence and eagerness to position this story so prominently (despite its knowledge of the rash of previous fake hate crimes against Muslim Americans), it triggered worldwide awareness of this alleged hate crime. A Google search reveals tens of thousands of references to it.
Proof that this was a fake hate crime
Within 24 hours, the student admitted that she’d made the entire story up, and the next day, was criminally charged for filing a false police report.
A woman will be charged with filing a false report after she admitted to making up a story about two men robbing her near the University of Louisiana at Lafayette campus. Karl Ratcliff, spokesman for the Lafayette Police Department, confirmed the charge Friday. The woman was previously identified as an 18-year-old UL student. […]
On Thursday afternoon, Lafayette police said the woman admitted that she fabricated the story and that the case was no longer under investigation.
HuffPost never put up another headline to indicate this was a fake hate crime
Responsible news organizations that fell for this hoax posted new stories, with new headlines, that indicated the reality behind this student’s crime (example: RealClearPolitics).
HuffPost, did, however, change the headline on the original story page (note same URL) to indicate the reality:
HuffPost’s complicity in perpetuating the false notion that this was an actual anti-Muslim hate crime
As in the Ann Arbor case in 1.1, readers who clicked on HuffPost’s front-page link to this story would have no reason to go back to the story page. If one only gets their news from HuffPost, they would never discover that this was another fake anti-Muslim hate crime. HuffPost decided to just let that false impression stand, to help continue perpetuating the lie of rampant Islamophobia in America — a lie that, in this case, thanks to its efforts, reached all the way to India.
So instead of posting anything on its front page to alert its readers that they had been hoaxed, what kinds of “news” stories did HuffPost decide to put on its front page in the three days after it knew this was a fake hate crime, from, November 12-14? Here’s a sampling:
(2.5) November 2016, San Diego, CA: A Muslim female student at San Diego State University reported she was assaulted by two Trump supporters, who also stole her car; Later her story unraveled, and she stopped cooperating with police
On November 9, 2016, a Muslim student at SDSU reported to police that she’d been robbed by two male Trump supporters, who made hate comments to her based on her faith, then robbed her and stole her car. HuffPost covered her allegation in a story that it published near the top of its front page:
A woman at San Diego State University alleges that two men robbed her after they made comments about Trump and Muslims.
Proof that this was a fake anti-Muslim hate crime
Police and school officials conducted an intensive investigation to find and prosecute the suspects. Soon, however, the alleged victim’s story began to unravel, and she ultimately decided to stop cooperating altogether with the police.
In the initial report, police said the men took the woman’s car keys and ran off. The student’s vehicle was missing from the parking garage. The student’s report of a stolen vehicle was unfounded since the student forgot where she had parked, SDSU Police Lt. Greg Noll said.
“The remaining portion of the investigation included looking at all surveillance video, re-contacting the victim on several occasions and attempting to verify statements related to the entire case,” Noll said. Although the woman has indicated she was attacked, police have suspended the case because the victim no longer wants to cooperate, Noll said.
HuffPost’s complicity in perpetuating the false notion that this was an actual anti-Muslim hate crime
HuffPost never published a follow-up headline on its front page, to indicate that this was a fake hate crime.
So, instead of posting anything on its front page to alert its readers that they had been hoaxed, what kinds of “news” stories did HuffPost decide to put on its front page in the three days after it knew this was a fake hate crime, from January 11-13? Here’s a sampling:
(2.6) November 2016, Charlotte, NC: A North Carolina teacher was accused of “relentless bullying and harassing” a five-year-old Muslim boy; Investigation revealed it never happened
On its Islamophobia website, HuffPost published the following, incendiary allegation of Islamophobic discrimination and physical assault:
WHERE: David Cox Road Elementary School in Charlotte, North Carolina
WHEN: Nov. 16, 2016
In a letter from the Council of American-Islamic Relations to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board, staff attorney Maya Sayed wrote that a 5-year-old student had been subject to “relentless bullying and harassment.” According to the letter, a teacher would “routinely single out [the student] from his classmates and require him to carry a heavy backpack throughout the day. The backpack contained a large textbook and headphones, which caused [the student] to develop significant back pain.” Sayed also wrote that the teacher would treat the student “harshly and reportedly called him ‘bad Muslim boy’ on multiple occasions.” Then, on Nov. 16, the teacher allegedly “grabbed” the student “by the neck and began choking him,” leaving the 5-year-old “crying and extremely shaken.” A spokeswoman for the school district said an investigation into the allegations is underway.
Proof that this was a fake anti-Muslim hate crime
School officials and local police conducted an intensive investigation into these allegations. On January 13, 2017, the school district announced the result of its and the local district attorney’s investigation: that these incidents never took place:
A local elementary school teacher has been cleared of wrongdoing following allegations of religious-based mistreatment of a student.
Celeste Spears-Ellis, the principal of David Cox Road Elementary School, said in a letter home to parents Friday that the teacher, identified only as Ms. Simpson, will be returning to the classroom after a thorough investigation found the claims to be unfounded. […]
The Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office reviewed the findings of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Investigation and concluded that “there is no evidence of an assault other than the complainant’s report.”
HuffPost’s complicity in perpetuating the false notion that this was an actual anti-Muslim hate crime
HuffPost’s own search engine proves that it never published a story to reveal that this was a fake anti-Muslim hate crime. A January 23, 2017 search using the string “David Cox Road Elementary School” reveals zero relevant results.
Further, as of January 23, 2017 — ten days after the results of the investigation were announced — HuffPost has still not updated the item on its Islamophobia site:
If one only gets their news from HuffPost, they would never discover that this was another fake anti-Muslim hate crime. HuffPost decided to just let that false impression stand, to help continue perpetuating the lie of rampant Islamophobia in America.
So instead of posting anything on its front page to alert its readers that they had been hoaxed, what kinds of “news” stories did HuffPost decide to put on its front page in the three days after it knew this was a fake hate crime, from, January 14-16? Here’s a sampling:
This “news” story appeared near the top of HuffPost’s front page on January 14, 2017.
(2.7) March 2017, Montreal, CA: A bomb threat against was made against Muslim students at a Canadian university; Within 24 hours, police arrested a Muslim immigrant for perpetrating the hoax
On March 1, 2017, HuffPost published the following on its front page:
An excerpt from HuffPost’s story page, which was posted at 3:47pm on March 1:
Multiple buildings were evacuated at a Canadian university on Wednesday after a letter sent to media outlets threatened to detonate bombs targeting Muslim students.
Students and staff at Concordia University in downtown Montreal were asked to immediately leave three campus buildings where the letter claimed bombs would be set off. Classes in these buildings were also cancelled for the remainder of the day.
A group calling itself the Council of Conservative Citizens of Canada (C4) reportedly sent a letter complaining about Muslim students on campus via email to several media outlets, including CBC News. Alleged copies of the note were floating on social media on Wednesday, claiming the attacks weren’t meant to kill, but rather to injure, Muslim students.
Proof that this was a fake anti-Muslim hate crime
At 5:57am on March 2 — fourteen hours and ten minutes after HuffPost published this story — the CBC posted a story that revealed this was a fake anti-Muslim hate crime:
Hisham Saadi, 47, has been charged with carrying out a hoax regarding terrorist activity, uttering threats and mischief in connection with the Concordia University bomb threat Wednesday. Saadi appeared in a Montreal courtroom via video link on Thursday afternoon.
He has been ordered to undergo a psychological assessment prior to his bail hearing, scheduled for Friday. […]
The operation came a day after three buildings at Concordia’s busy downtown campus were evacuated. A letter saying explosive devices were placed in various areas of the school was sent to a number of Montreal media outlets, including CBC News.
It should be noted that as (a) Saadi is reported by the CBC to be an immigrant from Lebanon, and (b) Hisham is a traditional Arabic Muslim name for males, we contend it is safe to assume that Mr. Saadi is a Muslim.
HuffPost’s complicity in perpetuating the false notion that this was an actual anti-Muslim hate crime
The following facts demonstrate that HuffPost deliberately allowed its readers to falsely believe that this was an actual anti-Muslim hate crime:
Sometime before 11:45pm on March 2, however, HuffPost completely removed this story from its front page, and put up no new story, to indicate to its readers that they had been duped.
HuffPost never updated its story page, as thesetwo screencaps demonstrate.
As the following screencap shows, a March 3 search using HuffPost’s own search engine using the string, “Hisham Saadi,” returns zero relevant results:
So what sorts of “news” stories did HuffPost decide to put on its front page, in the hours after this was discovered to be another fake anti-Muslim hate crime, instead of anything to indicate to its readers that they’d been duped?
Here is a sampling:
This “news” story appeared on HuffPost’s front page on March 2, 2017, at 2:49pm — nine hours after the CBC and other outlets announced that the Montreal bomb threat was a hoax.
(2.8) Loudon County, VA: Muslim teenager was murdered; It was established early on that this was not a hate crime, due to victim’s faith or skin color; Yet HuffPost showered three headline stories on this incident that falsely alleged both — then never put up a headline that indicated the reality, or that the perpetrator was a Hispanic illegal alien
Note: SaveTheWest acknowledges that unlike the other case studies on this page, this was an actual crime, with with actual victim. The only reason we list it here is because the evidence shows that HuffPost knew or should have known from the start that, contrary to the headlines it repeatedly produced and positioned on its front page, this was not a hate crime motivated by “Islamophobia,” or because of the color of the victim’s skin. Rather, it was motivated by a road-rage incident — period. Despite this, as in the other cases, HuffPost crafted a narrative that served to advance its agenda — then never published a headline that indicated how fundamentally it had misled its readers. It is for these reasons that we opted to include this case study here, because in the end, if one only gets their news from HuffPost’s front page headlines, they would have no reason to know that it was not an anti-Muslim hate crime.
On June 19, 2017, news media (including HuffPost) began reporting that Nabra Hassanen, a 17-year-old Muslim high school student in Northern Virginia, had been murdered after leaving a restaurant, in the early hours of June 18. USA Today published the following story at 9:08am on June 19. Note that it made clear that a) The incident was triggered by a road-rage situation, and b) the police said they did not believe this was a hate crime:
FAIRFAX, Va. – Police believe remains found in a Va. pond belong to a teen who was assaulted and killed after leaving a Virginia mosque early Sunday morning.
Nabra Hassanen, 17, was with a group of friends near the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) Center Mosque following Ramadan prayers early Sunday when they got into a dispute with a man driving a red car, according to police. Hassanen’s friends said the man assaulted the 17-year-old and they ran back to the ADAMS Center and left the teen behind, police said.
Fairfax Police began searching at 4 a.m. Sunday. The body was found Sunday around 3 p.m. floating in a pond in Sterling, Virginia.
Police noticed a car driving suspiciously in the area and stopped it, arresting the driver, who was taken into custody and identified as 22-year-old Darwin Martinez Torres, of Sterling. He has been charged with murder.
Fairfax County police tweeted Monday that they are not investigating the attack as a hate crime.
For its part, HuffPost ran three separate stories about Hassanen’s murder on its front page, each of which featured the victim’s face, within 24 hours concerning the story — two of which were published after USA Today reported that this was not a hate crime, and was not perpetrated because she was a “woman of color”:
Note that in the second of the above stories — published nine hours after the USA Today story — HuffPost acknowledged, in the opening paragraphs of the story, a) That this was not a hate crime driven by Islamophobia, but rather, by a road-rage incident, and b) That it was going to continue beating the false drum, that this was somehow tied into anti-Muslim sentiment in America:
Police have charged a 22-year-old man, Darwin Martinez Torres of Sterling, Va., with the murder. The case is not being treated as a hate crime, and detectives suggested on Monday that a “road rage incident” could have led to the teen’s murder.
Regardless of the motivations behind Hassanen’s tragic death, the crime is a stark reminder of the vulnerable space Muslim women of color occupy in American society.
Then, at 12:46pm on June 20, the Daily Caller revealed that not only was this not a hate crime, but that it was perpetrated by a Hispanic man of color, who is also an illegal alien, from El Salvador — and took to task those in the media and activism who automatically claimed this was a hate crime:
Liberals on Twitter are blaming white supremacy and Donald Trump for the murder of a Muslim teen, despite the fact that the suspected murderer is an illegal immigrant from El Salvador. Darwin A. Martinez Torres was arrested Sunday as a suspect in the death of Nabra Hassanen, a 17-year-old Muslim high school student from Virginia.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed with The Daily Caller that Torres is an illegal immigrant from El Salvador. Investigators believe the attack was the result of road rage and is not being investigated as an anti-Muslim hate crime.
In its article, the Daily Caller provided nearly a dozen examples of media personalities, “educators” and activists who falsely spread the accusation that Hassanen was murdered by a white male Islamophobe, etc.
Then, at 8:22pm on June 20, the Washington Post published the following story, which again asserted that this murder was not committed because Hassanen’s faith or skin color, but because of a road-rage incident:
HuffPost never put up a headline that indicated that indicated Hassanen’s murder was motivated by anything other than her faith and/or skin color, thus continuing the false narratives that it and others were propagating
HuffPost never posted any new headlines that revealed this reality, presumably because it would have revealed its original narrative as completely false. To prove that HuffPost never put up new headlines to reveal this reality, see the following full-page screencaps from the Wayback Machine, on June 19-21:
The evidence proves that this was not an isolated incident of HuffPost acting in such a grossly irresponsible way. To the contrary:
HuffPost knew early on that this was not an anti-Muslim hate crime, nor was it perpetrated due to the victim’s skin color; to the contrary, the illegal alien who did it apparently has darker skin color than she did
HuffPost consciously decided to allow readers who get their news from its headlines to get the false impression that this was an anti-Muslim hate crime, then to share the articles with their friends, to ensure the deception reached its maximum impact
As shown in the rest of the case studies in Section 2 on this page, this is the most recent example of HuffPost’s continuing pattern of acts and omissions that could only be designed to falsely legitimize anti-Muslim hate crimes, for which there was no original evidence, or, as in this case, in which the evidence obliterated that narrative, practically from the start
June 28, 2017 update: Police acknowledge that one week before he murdered Hassanen, Torres beat and raped a woman in Northern Virginia — but that none of his crimes were “unrelated to a hate crime motivation”
A week before Torres was arrested for the murder, he allegedly beat and sexually assaulted a Loudoun County woman, according to a Child Protective Services report shared with the Washington Post. The woman told emergency room staff that a man punched and kicked her in the presence of a child, and that the assailant, whom she declined to identify by name, was a member of the violent MS-13 street gang.
Authorities were able to identify Torres as the attacker in that incident, following his arrest for Hassanen’s murder. As the WaPo article noted, the CPS report confirms that Torres has previously committed violent acts “unrelated to a hate crime motivation.”
HuffPost’s search engine proves it completely ignored this new development in the story
A July 2, 2017 search using the string “Darwin A. Martinez Torres beat Loudoun County woman” returned zero results. Here’s a sampling of “news” stories that appeared on its front page, instead, in the three days following this disclosure (June 29):
(2.9) June 2017, Columbus, OH: HuffPost published a headline that strongly insinuated that a violent confrontation between Muslims and a woman and her child was an anti-Muslim hate crime; Yet at the time, HuffPost knew or should have known that the police said this was not a hate crime, and soon after, that indications arose that the Muslims were actually the perpetrators — yet it never updated its story, or published a new one
A fight at an apartment complex in Columbus, Ohio, late Saturday left a Somali-American woman hospitalized, a neighbor facing eviction and police looking for answers.
Columbus police on Monday released information about the brawl, which was allegedly marked by racist threats, in an effort to dispel “rumors and speculation” circulating on social media, they said. […]
Columbus police have not made arrests “due to the lack of physical evidence and conflicting stories by all parties at the scene.” They said they were unable to determine “who the primary aggressor was” in Saturday’s incident, but said there is no evidence to suggest it was a hate crime.
Two women offered to HuffPost strikingly different accounts of what happened Saturday. Both say the encounter grew violent. Beyond that, there is little they agree on. […]
Despite the loaded headline, up to this point in the article, HuffPost was responsibly reporting the incident. But then, HuffPost injected completely unfounded claims by the notoriousIslamistfront group Council on American-Islamic Relations:
Rahma Warsame, a 45-year-old Somali-American woman, was hospitalized with facial fractures and “some knocked out teeth” following the Saturday night melee, according to Jennifer Nemir, legal director for the Columbus chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Nemir says Warsame was beaten when she tried to intervene in a situation where a male neighbor was in a “verbal altercation” with another woman.
One day earlier, however, on June 5, Cincinnati.com, part of the USA Today network, reported in a headline that local police flatly denied that this was a hate crime:
One incident of violence has resulted in two viewpoints on the proper response to it. Despite urging from a local civil rights organization, the Columbus Division of Police will not be investigating the alleged beating of a Somali woman as a hate crime.
And one day after HuffPost’s story, on June 7, the Daily Caller revealed that CAIR’s account of the incident is unraveling, and that evidence strongly indicates that the Somali-American “victims” in this case, were actually the perpetrators:
A viral “hate crime” story spread by left-wing figures Linda Sarsour and Shaun King is now unraveling.
Rahma Warsame, a Somali Muslim resident of Columbus, Ohio, claimed to be brutally beaten by a white man in a hate crime attack. Warsame reportedly said that her attacker told her, “you all will be shipped back to Africa.” […]
However, The Daily Caller reported Monday that key parts of Warsame’s story may not be correct and that the man who allegedly hit her did it to defend a friend who was being tased and brutally beaten by a mob that Warsame may have been part of herself. He also denies ever saying anything racist to her. (RELATED: Linda Sarsour Has Raised $80K For Anti-Muslim Hate Crime That Allegedly Did Not Happen)
Columbus police have now reportedly said there was no evidence to make arrests or warrant a hate crime investigation.
Yet HuffPost’s own search engine proves that it never updated its original story, or posted a new story about this incident, to inform its readers of the unfolding reality.
A July 1, 2017 search using the string “Rahma Warsame” returned only one result: HuffPost’s original story on the matter:
Thus, anyone who gets their news only from HuffPost’s headlines and front page, would have no idea that they had been misled — and that there were strong indications that as in so many cases before, this was appearing more likely to be a fake hate crime.
(2.10) December 2016, New York, NY: Muslim female alleged she was physically assaulted by Islamophobes on New York subway; Later admitted she made it up
Summary: An 18-year-old Muslim female in New York, Yasmin Seweid, posted on Facebook and told CBS News that on December 1, while riding on a train, she was verbally assaulted by three Trump supporter because of her faith, and that they threatened her — but no one on the train helped her:
HuffPost published Seweid’s smiling face and allegations on its front page on December 5, as part of a story about an actual anti-Muslim hate crime, and both soon went viral throughout the world. [UPDATE, January 2, 2017: HuffPost has now omitted all content relating to Yasmin Seweid in this article.]
Proof that it was a fake hate crime: After an exhaustive investigation by the NYPD, however, Seweid confessed to fabricating the whole story:
Yasmin Seweid, 18, is charged with obstructing governmental administration and filing a false report, according to a high-ranking police source. Both charges are misdemeanors punishable by up to a year in jail. […]
Hate-crimes investigators called the Baruch College business major in on Wednesday to work on another sketch of her “attackers,” and confronted her with the inconsistencies, another source said.
That’s when she cracked, admitting she had been out late drinking with friends and made up the attack story to distract her angry father, sources said.
Seweid had been having problems with her strict Muslim Egyptian family in North New Hyde Park because she is becoming “Westernized,” one source said. Those problems were aggravated when they learned she was dating a Catholic, the source said.
The next day, the NY Daily News published more details:
As of January 2, 2017, however — more than two weeks after her December 14 confession, and arrest — HuffPost has still not put up a new headline, or new story about Seweid, that reveals it was a hoax (or that it was the latest in a long string of fake anti-Muslim hate crimes). The only entry in its search engine about her is one that announces the fact that she was found on December 10, after having gone missing for a few days:
Thus, to anyone who only gets their news only from HuffPost’s front page, they would have no reason to know that this was another fake anti-Muslim hate crime. This page documents numerous incidents in which HuffPost perpetrated this deception.
The Muslim college student who lied to cops about getting attacked on the subway by drunken Trump supporters took a plea deal on Friday. Yasmin Seweid, 19, copped to falsely reporting an incident and disorderly conduct for the bogus claim.
She must go through six months of counseling and complete three days of community service. If Seweid fulfills the terms of her deal, the top charge against her will be tossed and she’ll be left with just a violation.
The prosecutor read an apology letter from Seweid. “I was stupid,” the teen wrote. “I plan to continue to find ways to better myself.”
HuffPost’s search engine proves it completely ignored this story.
A September 10, 2017 search using the string “Yasmin Seweid” returns only one result: the same, lone story as documented above — that she has been found, after going missing in December 2016. No headlines about the fact that the whole story was made up. Instead, here’s a sampling of the “news” stories that HuffPost published on its front page, from September 8-10, instead:
This “news” story appeared at the top of HuffPost’s front page on September 10, 2017.
(2.11) January 2018, Toronto, Canada: An 11-year-old Muslim girl claimed she was attacked by a man who cut her hijab, as she walked to school; Police soon after determined that this attack “did not happen” — then HuffPost published an article in its Canadian edition claiming she “deserves an apology”
For two straight days, on January 12 and 13, 2018, HuffPost featured this story on its front page:Clicking on that headline brought the reader to this page:
Notice that HuffPost included the girl’s name, Khawlah Noman, and face, in both the front page teaser, and the story page, along with her personal feelings about the alleged “attack” on her — during which she suffered not so much as a paper cut or bruise of any kind:
Further, as HuffPost’s own story page confirms, there was not a shred of evidence that any of this girl’s allegations were true, such as eyewitnesses or surveillance camera footage.
Three days later, police announced that their investigation revealed the attack on this girl “did not happen”
At 8:01am on January 15, 2018, the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) published the following Tweet, confirming that this was afake hate crime:
Incident in which 11-year-old Toronto girl alleged a man tried to cut off her hijab did not occur, police say. They say conclusion was reached on basis of interviews, evidence.
An 11-year-old girl’s report last week that a man tried to cut off her hijab as she walked to school didn’t occur, Toronto police said Monday.
“After a detailed investigation, police have determined that the events described in the original news release did not happen,” police said in a release. “The investigation is concluded.” […]
Her story captured national attention and drew public condemnation from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Toronto Mayor John Tory.
“These allegations were extremely serious and not surprisingly, they received national and international attention,” police spokesman Mark Pugash said in an interview.
Police told CBC News that a team of investigators conducted numerous interviews throughout the probe, adding that the girl who reported the incident will not face any legal consequences.
HuffPost’s complicity in perpetuating the notion that this was an actual hate crime
A January 15, 2018 search at 6:15p using the string “Khawlah Noman” reveals that HuffPost published only one story using her name: the original allegation:
Thus, to anyone who only gets their news only from HuffPost, they would have no reason to know that this was another fake anti-Muslim hate crime.
UPDATE: Days later, HuffPost published an article in its Canadian edition claiming she “deserves an apology”
Note that nowhere in this Orwellian screed is the Khawlah Noman’s name mentioned, thus continuing HuffPost’s efforts to: (a) sweep the issue under the rug, (b) transform the perpetrator into the victim, (c) ignore the role that Islamist propaganda groups in Canada played in propelling her to the international spotlight, and (d) deflect its responsibility for falsely legitimize her hoax:
A girl, for reasons we will never know,felt the need to create a story that quickly got away from her. Did she call a press conference? That seems unlikely. Did she ask the police to release the report to the media? Also rather unlikely.
As a human rights educator, a mother and grandmother, I have had quite a few 11-year-old girls in my life. They can be bossy, rude, mean, angry, independent, easily influenced, sweet, kind, vulnerable, confused, frightened and deeply in need of attention, all at the same time. […]
Rather than call for an apology (what good would that do?) from the girl and her family, I believe we owe her an apology for not remembering that, even though she is well-spoken, she is still a child. She even told us, although it was while describing her fear at the fictitious attack: “I am a kid.” Exactly.
(3) Examples of HuffPost legitimizing fake hate crimes against black Americans
(3.1) March 2013, Austin, TX: Leftist “social justice” activist lawyer vandalized businesses with hoax “whites only” signs
(3.2) September 2013: Black waitress at Red Lobster alleged that white customers left her a racist message on receipt; they later sued the company, and achieved an out-of-court settlement
(3.3) September 2017, Las Vegas, NV: A black professional football player apparently lied about police perpetrating a hate crime against him, because of his skin color
(3.4) November 2017, Colorado Springs, CO: Racist graffiti targeting black cadets was found at the U.S. Air Force Academy; The black cadet who reported finding the graffiti admitted that he did it
(3.1) March 2015, Austin, TX: Leftist “social justice” activist lawyer vandalized businesses with hoax “whites only” signs
The following is adapted from a detailed article at the Huff-Watch blog.
On March 19, 2015 HuffPost published a front-page news story with the headline:
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 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. As it turned out, he wasn’t a racist; to the contrary, he was a “social justice” 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 Reposaposted 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):
By the following morning, March 21, however, HuffPost still had the original story posted.
Proof that HuffPost knew that this was a hoax, and who perpetrated it
We know this because HuffPost openly admitted it spoke to Adam Reposa, at the “updated” 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, then revisited it, days later:
HuffPost published no notices on its front page that this was a fake hate crime. Here, however, are some of the “news” items it published on its front page, instead, in the following days.
In the three days following the confirmation that this was a fake hate crime, from March 22-24, HuffPost published nothing on its front page notifying its readers that this was a fake hate crime. For confirmation, see these full-page screencaps from the Wayback Machine:
Instead, here are some of the “news” stories that HuffPost published on its front page in the following days, instead of anything to indicate to its readers that they had been victimized by a racial hoax:
Note: HuffPost left this first “news” story on its front page for two straight days
(3.2) September 2013: Black waitress at Red Lobster alleged that white customers left her a racist message on receipt; they later sued the company, and achieved an out-of-court settlement
On September 9, 2013, HuffPost ran this headline on its front page, and left it there for two straight days:
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 (below). This stands in stark contrast to the doubt it casts on any allegation made by American soldiers, police officers, the Israeli government.
It did this knowing that the only evidence for this incident was a screencap of the receipt, which the alleged victim, Toni Christina Jenkins, posted on her Facebook page.
Clicking on that headline brought the reader to this story page:
A waitress at a Red Lobster in Franklin, Tenn., was reportedly left a racist messageon a receipt over the weekend, according to multiple reports. In the tip section, instead of leaving a gratuity, the customer apparently wrote, “None n**ger.”
Red Lobster waitress Tori Christina Jenkins, who is black, allegedly received the shameful message on Saturday. Her father posted a screenshot of the message to Facebook Sunday night, saying he hopes it will make people more aware “[t]hat we still have much ignorance to overcome.”
The credibility that HuffPost gave to this allegation, and given its reach and influence, helped to generate more than $10,000 in donations to Jenkins.
Soon after the story was published, however, it began to unravel.
On September 10, 2013 — the day after HuffPost first reported the allegation — the attorney of the customer whose name appeared on the receipt that the Jenkins posted, Devin Barnes, publicly stated that he denied writing that message.
On October 30, 2013, the Daily Caller revealed that two separate handwriting experts concluded that Barnes had not written the message on the receipt.
On May 24, 2014, the NY Daily News reported that Barnes filed a lawsuit against Red Lobster and Watkins.
HuffPost published nothing about Watkins’ unraveling story untilMay 28, 2014 – but not on its front page. Here is the story page, date-stamped as being published on May 28:
We know that HuffPost did not publish this story on its front page on May 28, 29 or 30, thanks to the Wayback Machine (Internet Archive). Below are the links to HuffPost’s entire front pages for those three days:
So what kinds of “news” stories did HuffPost decide to put on its front page during these three days, instead of the unraveling story behind another apparently outrageous hoax that it helped to publicize? Here is a sampling — the first of which was on its front page for two straight days:
Update: SaveTheWest.com has confirmed through Devin Barnes’s attorney, Richard Dugger, that their lawsuit against Red Lobster was settled out of court, under terms of confidentiality. HuffPost’s search engine shows that it has not reported this fact. A March 26, 2017 search using the string “Devin Barnes settle Red Lobster” returns no results:
(3.3) September 2017, Las Vegas, NV: A black professional football player apparently lied about police perpetrating a hate crime against him, because of his skin color
On September 6, 2017, this news story appeared near the top of HuffPost’s front page:
Seattle Seahawks defensive end and activist Michael Bennett posted a letter to Twitter on Wednesday stating that a Las Vegas cop threatened to shoot him in the head after the Mayweather-McGregor fight in late August.
In the letter, Bennett said that he was heading back to his hotel after the fight when he heard gunshots. He said he and many others in the area ran for safety, and that’s when the cops stopped him “for doing nothing more than simply being a black man in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He said they ordered him to the ground.
HuffPost also produced a custom “news” video about Bennett’s allegations — which automatically assumed they were true, even though it knew there was zero evidence to support his claims — and positioned it at the top of the story page:
Proof that this was a fake hate crime
On September 19, 2017, the Daily Wire published the following story:
New video evidence appears to suggest that Seattle Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett lied about why police officers took him down in Las Vegas in late August.
Bennett claimed that he was the victim of racial profiling when police officers detained him outside the Cromwell Hotel following the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight as they were searching for a possible active shooter.
TMZ previously reported that everyone in the club was told by the police to get down and not move, at which point Bennett reportedly took off running.
On September 6, Bennett said that police “singled me out and pointed their guns at me for doing nothing more than simply being a black man in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
However, newly-released footage shows that Bennett did not tell the truth about why he was detained. […]
Bennett also claimed that one of the police officers threated to “blow my f**king head off,” of which there is no proof.
The Daily Wire story was based on one from TMZ, which obtained the police videos:
Bennett had claimed he was racially profiled in the early hours of August 27 — when cops detained him outside the Cromwell hotel following the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight.
The footage shows a 3-man police team — made up of 2 hispanic officers and 1 black officer — identify Bennett as a suspicious person who did not get down on the ground as ordered during the hotel sweep.
Video shows Bennett crouching and running in the casino before bolting out of a hotel door, jumping over a gate and running to the street.
One of the officers quickly asks if the man running had a gun and then gives chase.
Once Bennett was detained, cops determined Bennett was not a shooter. They asked for ID. He said, “Michael Bennett. Seattle Seahawks. Look it up.” Cops took his advice and looked him up on their cell phones. Cops say the body cam 100% proves the incident had nothing to do with race.
HuffPost’s complicity in helping to legitimize this fake hate crime
HuffPost’s own search engine proves that it never posted the story about the police video emerging that revealed the reality of Bennett’s allegations. A September 29, 2017 search using the string “Michael Bennett police video” returned zero relevant results:
Note: While this search shows that HuffPost did publish a story that indicated police “disputed” Bennett’s claims, it was posted the day after the original story, on September 7, 2017 — and was never updated:
Note also that HuffPost featured the same propaganda video at the top of the page, as if to emphasize that it was assuming everything Bennett said was true.
Thus, to anyone who only gets their news only from HuffPost’s front page, they would have no reason to know that this was another fake anti-black hate crime.
(3.4) November 2017, Colorado Springs, CO: Racist graffiti targeting black cadets was found at the U.S. Air Force Academy; The black cadet who reported finding the graffiti admitted that he did it
On September 29, 2017, HuffPost produced an original story about racist graffiti targeting black cadets being found at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and positioned the item near the top of its front page:
In a poignant defense of equality, the United States Air Force Academy’s superintendent made it crystal clear that the institution will not tolerate any form of disrespectful behavior toward someone of another race or gender.
The Academy’s Preparatory School found racial slurs written on message boards of five African-American cadets, leading Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria to express his disgust to the Academy’s more than 5,000 cadets, faculty and staff in Colorado Springs.
“If you’re outraged by those words, then you’re in the right place,” he said Thursday. “You should be outraged not only as an airman, but as a human being.”
On September 30, HuffPost moved the story up to the top of is front page, directly atop an original story about its effort to “find a white supremacist meeting in a Tennessee forest”
The proof that this was a fake hate crime
On November 7, 2017 the Air Force Academy announced that it had concluded its investigation into this incident — and that the perpetrator, the black cadet who reported the graffiti, was identified as the perpetrator, and admitted to doing it. As reported by the local NBC TV affiliate:
One of the cadet candidates who claimed to be the target of racist remarks at the U.S. Air Force Academy in El Paso County admitted to writing the slurs, the academy said on Tuesday.
In late September, racist graffiti was found on the doors of five black cadet candidates. This spurred an impassioned speech from Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, superintendent of the Air Force Academy, where he told both Air Force cadets and preparatory students they needed to treat others with dignity and respect or “get out.”
USAFA’s investigation revealed the student, once thought to be a victim, actually wrote the slurs on the doors, including their own.
“We can confirm that one of the cadet candidates who was allegedly targeted by racist remarks written outside of their dorm room was actually responsible for the act,” USAFA said in a statement.
The release went on to say that cadet candidate, who was not named, is no longer at the school.
Soon after, other local news organizations published versions of this discovery, including the Miami Herald, Later, the Daily Caller, ABCNews.com and others news outlets publicized the story.
HuffPost’s complicity in helping to legitimize this fake hate crime
(4) Examples of HuffPost legitimizing fake hate crimes against others
(4.1) September 2015: A gay man in North Dakota claimed he was physically assaulted because of his sexual orientation; police soon determined that he made the story up, and was the one who attacked others
(4.2) March 2017: Leftist college group admitted creating and distributing fake white supremacist, anti-illegal alien flyers — as “part of a series of educational ‘invisible theater’ events”
(4.3) May 2017: A gay church employee admitted he vandalized the facility with anti-gay and swastika graffiti, in apparent support of Trump — which was blamed on conservatives
(4.1) September 2015: A gay man in North Dakota claimed he was physically assaulted because of his sexual orientation; police soon determined that he made the story up, and was the one who attacked others
On September 4, 2015, HuffPost published the following story (note that URL now leads only to its Gay Voices section, and a search
A gay man believes his outfit of metallic red shorts and a tank top was what triggered what he said was an assault and homophobic taunting during a weekend incident at a University of North Dakota fraternity house that police are investigating.
Haakon Gisvold, 18, said Thursday he was called anti-gay slurs, choked and stripped down Sunday while attending a party at the Lambda Chi Alpha house in Grand Forks. The fraternity chapter has been placed on limited operations as the University of North Dakota and Grand Forks police departments investigate.
Gisvold said he attended the party with a friend and spent at least an hour there before a member of the fraternity asked him to leave because of what he was wearing.
“I said `Look at these girls. They’re wearing short clothes, too. I don’t see what the big deal is,'” said Gisvold, adding that he then heard homophobic slurs.
Five weeks later, local police determined that Gisvold made a false police complaint, and that it was he — not the accused — who initiated physical violence:
Police in Grand Forks, North Dakota, determined that a man who claimed to have been the victim of a vicious anti-gay attack at a University of North Dakota fraternity made up the entire story.
Haakon Gisvold is accused of lying to police in August about a brutal assault and robbery at the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. He claimed that fraternity members shouted anti-gay slurs as they beat him, choked him, stripped him down to his underwear and robbed him. He said he hid in a bush until someone brought him clothes, The Daily Caller reported.
“I just want those guys to learn from this,” he told The Associated Press at the time. “They could go to jail, sure, but they could go to jail and then come out with the same mindset that they don’t like homosexuals.
[But] during a monthlong investigation, which included identifying 150 potential witnesses, police determined that Mr. Gisvold concocted the entire story. There was a physical altercation, but police determined that Mr. Gisvold instigated it. Investigators recommended charging him with providing false information to police, but county prosecutor David Jones decided not to file charges.
HuffPost’s complicity in perpetuating the false notion that this was an actual anti-Muslim hate crime
Rather than publishing an update to this story, HuffPost has now almost completely removed the story from its site, apparently to try to hide from its readers the fact that they had fallen for another fake hate crime.
Yet when one clicks on that link, it leads to HuffPost’s Gay Voices page — the story itself has been removed.
Thus, to anyone who only gets their news only from HuffPost’s front page, and may have clicked through read the original, false story, they would have no reason to know that it was another fake anti-gay hate crime.
(4.2) March 2017: Leftist college group admitted creating and distributing fake white supremacist, anti-illegal alien flyers — as “part of a series of educational ‘invisible theater’ events”
On March 16, 2017, this news story appeared on HuffPost’s front page:
Clicking on that headline brought the reader to this page:
Colleges across the U.S. continue to be plagued with fliers promoting racism.
On Monday, multiple fliers posted by members of Vanguard America ― a white supremacy group ― were found on the University of Maryland Campus.
“A notice to all white Americans,” one flier read. “It is your civic duty to report any and all illegal aliens. …They are criminals. America is a white nation.”
“Carry the torch of your people,” another said. It was the third time in three months that fliers were found on the campus, according to The Washington Post.
Similar fliers were found the same day at George Washington University in D.C.
While the flyers are actually from the racist Vanguard America website, as CampusReformdisclosed on March 23, a leftist activist group on one U.S. college campus admitted that they posted these flyers — as “part of a series of educational ‘invisible theater’ events by numerous student groups:
The “Diversity Leadership Council” at Gustavus Adolphus College has admitted to posting racially offensive posters around campus after the school’s Bias Response Team received multiple reports on the matter.
The signs, which are now being labeled a social experiment, notified “all white Americans” to report “any and all illegal aliens to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement” because “they are criminals.”
“You hurt a lot of people, tarnished the college’s reputation, and will be losing alumni donations.”
Provocatively declaring that “America is a white nation,” the flyers assert that it is the “civic duty” of white Americans to turn illegal immigrants in to law enforcement. […]
[One alumna] took to Facebook again to explain that a friend of hers, who had also filed a complaint with the school’s Bias Response Team, had received a response from Dean of Students Jones VanHecke explaining that the offensive flyers were actually “part of a series of educational ‘invisible theater’ events taking place this week that have been planned by I Am We Are theater troupe, the Diversity Leadership Team, and the Bystander Intervention Committee.”
Instead, here is a sampling of the “news” stories that HuffPost published on its front page in the following three days, from March 24-26, instead of anything about the fact that this had been a fake hate crime:
This “news” story appeared on HuffPost’s front page on March 25, 2017.
Thus, to anyone who only gets their news only from HuffPost’s front page, and may have clicked through read the original, false story, they would have no reason to know (a) that it was another fake hate crime, or (b) that HuffPost had apparently decided to legitimize this fraud, by not notifying its readers that they had been duped.
(4.3) May 2017: A gay church employee admitted he vandalized the facility with anti-gay and swastika graffiti, in apparent support of Trump — which was blamed on conservatives
On November 14, 2016, HuffPost reported that a church in
In Bean Blossom, Indiana, a swastika and the messages “Heil Trump” and “fag church” were spray-painted on St. David’s Episcopal Church Saturday night. The Episcopal Church is open to LGBT members, and local news station WTHR notes that the St. David’s once performed a same-sex wedding.
“We are disappointed that our safe haven has been vandalized but will not let the actions of a few damper our love of Christ and the world,” the Rev. Kelsey Hutto, priest in charge for St. David’s, wrote on Facebook.
Proof that this was another fake hate crime
On May 3, 2017, the local newspaper reported that after an investigation, a gay employee of the church admitted that he had perpetrated this vandalism, and was being charged with numerous crimes:
The organist at St. David’s Episcopal Church has been charged for spray-painting hate messages on the church shortly after Election Day last November.
George “Nathan” Stang, 26, of Bloomington, called the Rev. Kelsey Hutto on Sunday morning, Nov. 13 before services began to report the vandalism.
On April 28, he admitted to Brown County Det. Brian Shrader that he spray-painted a swastika, “Heil Trump” and “Fag Church” on the building, according to a probable-cause affidavit filed May 3 in Brown Circuit Court.
“Stang, who is gay, stated he felt scared and alone because of the election results,” the court document said. He told the detective that his parents were not very supportive of him because of that and he wanted to “mobilize a movement,” but he didn’t want it to generate the amount of media attention that the vandalism caused, the document said.
HuffPost’s complicity in perpetuating the false notion that this was an actual hate crime
Thus, to anyone who only gets their news only from HuffPost’s front page, and may have clicked through read the original, false story, they would have no reason to know that it was another fake anti-gay hate crime.
So what kinds of “news” stories did HuffPost decide to publish on its front page, instead of anything about this latest fake hate crime?
Here is a sampling of the “news” stories that HuffPost published on its front page in the following three days, from May 4-6, instead of anything about the fact that this had been a fake hate crime:
HuffPost featured this “news” story on its front page on May 6, 2017.
Aspiring Weatherman Started Forest Fire To Get Facebook Views, Police Say, by Steven Hoffer Senior Editor, Huffington Post, November 14, 2016. Excerpt:
Clicking on that headline brought the reader to this story page:
Man Who Claimed His Neo-Nazi Haircut Provoked Stabbing Admits He Made It Up; The suspect confessed he accidentally cut himself and feared his insurance wouldn’t cover treatment, by David Moye, Huffington Post, August 29, 2017. Excerpt:
Kato Kaelin Says Actor’s Portrayal Of Him In O.J. Miniseries Is ‘Incorrect’
Summary: On October 12, 2016, HuffPost broke an in-depth, original story on its front page, in which it alleged that a 7-year-old Muslim boy, Abdul Aziz Usmani, was beaten by his fellow classmates on a school bus to the point where he had a severely injured arm, and no one did anything to help him:
Note that in the second of the above stories — published nine hours after the USA Today story — HuffPost acknowledged, in the opening paragraphs of the story, a) That this was not a hate crime driven by Islamophobia, but rather, by a road-rage incident, and b) That it was going to continue beating the false drum, that this was somehow tied into anti-Muslim sentiment in America:
The Muslim teen who claimed three drunks taunted her as a “terrorist” on a Manhattan subway train now admits she lied to cops — who arrested her on Wednesday.
Clicking on that headline brought the reader to this page:
HuffPost kept the story on its front page for three days, through March 21.
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 (below). This stands in stark contrast to the doubt it casts on any allegation made by American soldiers, police officers, the Israeli government.
That headline led to this story page:
Head Of Air Force Academy Tells Cadets: ‘You Should Be Outraged’ By Racial Slurs, by Willa Frej, Huffington Post, September 29, 2017. Excerpt:
Clicking on that headline brought the reader to this page:On Monday, multiple fliers posted by members of Vanguard America ― a white supremacy group ― were found on the University of Maryland Campus.
