Saturday, March 19, 2011

The Breitbart Effect: Is The Huffington Post Becoming Influenced By Right-Wing Fear-Mongering

The Huffington Post published a story yesterday titled "Rising Food Prices Intensify Poverty, Hunger In U.S. And World," and in the article The Huffington Post cited a poll conducted by Gallup from over two years ago that lumped The United States with all of North and South America.
According to Gallup Polls conducted between 2006 and 2008, 16 percent of people in the Americas have gone hungry due to finances. And the trend of rising food prices is going to push more and more families into that category.

The U.S. Labor Department released its consumer price index survey this week. It reports that the price of grains such as corn, wheat and soybeans has roughly doubled since last summer, due mainly to bad harvests and also the use of corn for ethanol. Wholesale food prices rose by 3.9 percent in February -- the sharpest increase in more than 36 years. Meat and dairy prices also rose, as did fresh vegetable prices, leaping by nearly 50 percent in February. And the Department predicted that "food costs are likely to keep climbing for most of this year."
I am not saying hunger and poverty do not exist in America, but this article has all the makings of a Glenn Beck special.  All that it is missing is advertisements for food insurance.

I find this article somewhat misleading in part because it uses a poll from a few years ago that lumps the U.S. with the rest of the hemisphere.

When I think of articles like the one above, I cannot help but think of things like the ruling of the Canadian Supreme Court in favor of bio-tech giant Monsanto against a farmer because Monsanto held a patent on a gene in a canola plant.

What impact do corporations have on food costs in America?

The presence of this article, with its citation of a years-old poll from gallup make me wonder if Huffington Post is compromising their integrity to entice the fans of recently acquired contributor to visit their site.

1 comment:

  1. Huffington Post has been going right-wing for quite sometime. Their posting of old polls to mis-lead the public fits right in with the Fauk Noose crowd.

    ReplyDelete

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