I know there have been a couple of other diaries complaining about Mayhill Fowler on Huffington Post and her "citizen-journalism" coverage of the Obama campaign. She claims to have given more money to Obama than Hillary (and also contributed to Fred Thompson just to support her home state!), and claims to be somewhat of an Obama supporter, but what she writes are without a doubt hit pieces on Obama and she's even fabricates stories to make him look bad. If that's citizen journalism, it's no better (and maybe even worse) than the MSM.
Today when I logged onto the Huff Post site, Fowler's newest headline jumped out at me, and I decided I couldn't take it any more. So I wrote emails to the addresses I could find for Huffington Post. Here's what I wrote:
I almost stopped reading Mayhill Fowler after her "bitter" piece. A previous one on Obama's "cockiness," (so shocking -- a presidential candidate is a little cocky, oh my!) was bad enough but I gave her another chance, figuring that sometimes she'd be positive and sometimes negative.
Then I read the one about Obama not knowing where he was and Clinton always knowing where she was -- and the completely fabricated description of the interaction between Obama and Jean Weiss: Fowler quoted Weiss as saying "don't hit on Hillary," verbally tying her to the other older women Fowler allegedly talked to who (also allegedly) stated they were disgusted with Obama hitting on Hillary. Somehow Fowler managed to leave out 99% of what actually happened between Obama and Weiss -- the parts in which Weiss made clear that she was a huge supporter of Obama and wanted Obama to continue with his positive campaign, not fall into the negative ditch dug by Hillary. Weiss was anti-Hillary, not anti-Obama. But anyone reading Fowler would have thought it was quite the opposite.
Despite my disgust with Fowler's dishonesty, I've kept reading Huffington Post (but not Off the Bus anymore). However, with today's Fowler headline "Little Sign of Obama in North Carolina..." spreading her contamination to the larger site, I really can no longer justify reading your site.
I am not a robotic follower of Obama, only chose him after a long a hard examination of all the candidates and was torn for a long time between him and Hillary. I would welcome reasonable coverage about Obama's good and bad points. But Fowler is so incredibly biased against him while pretending not to be that I can no longer stomach seeing her name.
The HuffingtonPost should be ashamed of promoting such skewed and false coverage of any candidate.
My hope is that lots of other people will write (many have already, and Jay Rosen, her boss at Huff Post wrote a self-serving pointless defense of Fowler.)
I felt the same way when people gratuitously attacked Clinton, calling her cold bitch, etc.
But there's something pretty disgusting about Obama getting harassed for criticizing Hillary when the personal attacks and viciousness are in exactly the opposite direction.