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Summary: Whenever a Muslim alleges a “hate crime” of any kind, HuffPost rushes the story to its front page, often without any evidence to support the claim. It then either ignores the evidence that emerges that shows the claim was a hoax, or which indicates it never happened – or buries it beyond causal view, thus leaving the impression that the original story remains valid. HuffPost has even set up and widely promotes an entire sub-site, containing a day-by-day account of what it alleges are acts of “Islamophobia,” which includes items such as Americans saying anything unkind about Muslims, or exposing their leaders’ chronic incitements to violence, hatred, etc.
In contrast, HuffPost all but completely ignores reported hate crimes against Jews, who between 2002-2015 have suffered between two and six times more hate crimes than Muslims in America, even though they have similar populations.
Here are just a few recent examples, during the presidential campaign, to indicate the depth to which HuffPost practices this bias, which can only serve to create the false twin impression that there is rampant “Islamophobia” in America – and that there are little if any anti-Jewish hate crimes.
December 23, 2016:
US issues federal warning as Isis calls for attacks on churches over Christmas: FBI warning came after a publicly available list of US churches was posted on a militant social media site, by the Guardian (UK), December 23, 2016. Excerpt:
Federal authorities warned local law enforcement authorities across the US on Friday that Islamic State sympathizers were continuing to call for attacks on churches and other holiday gathering sites.
As they did so, President-elect Donald Trump used Twitter to broadcast his potentially inflammatory thoughts on the truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market on Monday.
Isis militants claimed responsibility for the attack, in which 12 people died and 56 were injured, but did not offer proof. The suspect in the attack, a Tunisian national, was shot dead in Italy on Friday.
Huffington Post completely ignored this federal warning. Instead, it posted other news stories on its front page the following day, Christmas Eve, including:
Berlin jihadi’s family blasts police for shooting son, says he didn’t do it alone, other son arrested; HP nothing
December 21, 2016: HuffPost ignored several months of swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti being posted on walls at a NY college — as well as the arrest of a Muslim student who admitted doing it
[Original stories, pictures] A December 21, 2016 search of the term “Nassau Community College” revealed zero relevant results. And a JPG screencap of the entire search results page confirms that as of that date, it had not published a single story about the rash of anti-Semitic graffiti at the school.
Then, on December 21, local police arrested a Muslim student who confessed to the crimes:
Nassau Community College hate graffiti leads to student’s arrest, by News12 (Long Island, NY), December 21, 2016. Excerpt:
GARDEN CITY – Police say they have arrested a student who allegedly drew swastikas inside a Nassau Community College bathroom.
They accuse Jasskirat Saini, 20, of scrawling the graffiti in the college’s G building on Friday, Dec. 17 and several other acts of vandalism — including two fresh incidents on Tuesday and some dating back to October.
In addition to the symbols, the words “Germany” and “Heil Hitler” appeared. Police say Saini did it because he felt he was being harassed by the Jewish community in his hometown of Plainview. […]
During the investigation Tuesday, Nassau County Police said they found Saini drawing two swastikas on the exterior wall of Building H, and a KKK on the floor of F Building Cluster 225 at Nassau Community College.
Saini has been charged with aggravated harassment and will be arraigned on Wednesday in Hempstead.
The charges are connected with 110 anti-Semitic drawings, involving 10 cases at Nassau Community College, said Nassau Acting Police Commissioner Thomas Krumpter. Each count is punishable by up to four years in prison.
HuffPost’s search engine proves it completely ignored this story.
A December 23 search [detail]
(1) HuffPost touted on its front page report indicating a dramatic rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes – but ignored another one that indicates a similarly dramatic rise in violent anti-Semitic assaults:
- On November 14: HuffPost published on its front page excerpts from a report from the FBI regarding hate crimes, framed with the headline, “Anti-Muslim Hate Crimes Up By 67 Percent In 2015, FBI Says.” HuffPost buried near the bottom of the article this reality: “Though there was a steep increase in anti-Muslim crimes in 2015, anti-Semitic crimes continued to be the most frequent form of religious hate crime.”
- Yet HuffPost ignored a June 2016 report by the Anti-Defamation League that claimed violent anti-Semitic hate crimes grew by 50% between 2014-2015.
(2) On October 12, HuffPost published an incendiary, front-page headline alleging an Islamophobic attack on a child in North Carolina, as if it had been proven to have actually occurred — then never updated the headline to reveal that the evidence indicates it was a hoax.
HuffPost gave this “story” the headline, “Islamophobia Just Drove This Boy And His Family Out Of America.” The story page led with this account (emphasis added):
“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.
HuffPost simply took the father’s word for all of this, without apparently asking for a copy of the police report, or the school complaint, or any documentation to support any of it.
As it turns out, all the evidence indicates that this was a complete hoax, from start to finish. And while HuffPost updated the story page four days later, it never published a new headline to reflect the facts contained in its update (emphasis added).
The Cary Police Dept. and the Wake County School System say they have not found any evidence to corroborate Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani’s claim that his son was assaulted aboard a school bus on Oct. 7. “Our police department has been coordinating with the school system to uncover details related to this matter,” Town Manager Sean Stegall said in a statement. “At this time, nothing has been found, and no police report has been filed.” In a letter to parents with children at Weatherstone Elementary School, Principal Tim Chadwick wrote that information from an investigation “does not support an altercation.” He added, “No students who were interviewed witnessed an altercation. The bus driver did not witness an altercation. The child did not report to the bus driver any injury.”
To anyone who causally scans 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 likely yet another phony case of a fake Islamophobia “hate crime,” nor (b) that HuffPost had acted so irresponsibly in not validating even the barest of facts, before publishing something so incendiary. This was just one of multiple incidents of HuffPost going all-out to publicize fake “hate crimes” against Muslims, while all but ignoring actual hate crimes – including murders – against Jews.
(3) On November 11, HuffPost published a headline on its front page, “Muslim Women Across America Face Attacks In The Wake Of Donald Trump’s Win.” The story page, however, refers only to allegations of physical attacks in Champaign, Illinois and Albuquerque, New Mexico, two of which were reported by the complainants only on Twitter.
The third, who reported her allegations to the Lafayette, LA police, retracted her complaint the next day, admitting that she made the whole story up.
HuffPost never featured a headline that indicated this fact, and as of November 16 at 2:30pm, never inserted an addendum to correct the record.
Instead, between November 12-16, HuffPost featured “news” stories on its front page including A, B, C.
Rather than being an isolated phenomenon, HuffPost’s pro-Islamist, anti-Semitic bias has been documented in detail in numerous other reports.