Arianna Huffington

The broadcast network evening and morning newscast blackout, of the Obama administration plan to force health insurance offered by Catholic charities and hospitals to cover sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs and contraception without a co-pay, continued over the weekend, yet the ABC and NBC Sunday morning talk shows took up the topic.

Meanwhile, the media double standard in ignoring the ObamaCare imposition on religious institutions while jumping to defend Planned Parenthood when Komen pulled funding, is being noticed by media observers ranging from from Fox News to even a New York Times columnist.

Politico turned five years old yesterday and self-importantly celebrated its survival of infancy with a roast video featuring journalists and pundits celebrating the paper with biting comments.

Perhaps the best, and most spot-on quip came from NBC Meet the Press host David Gregory about 30 seconds into the spot (video embedded below):

To give you an idea just how perilously liberal Bill Moyers is, in a media discussion with Arianna Huffington Friday, he actually sung the praises of America-hating billionaire George Soros.

Not only that, Moyers also claimed Soros "has been the victim, of course, of Glenn Beck and the right-wing, the Fox News assassins" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Bill Maher had an article published at the Huffington Post's front page Wednesday.

This appears to be an indication the website is going back on the ad hominem attack rule it used to ban conservative publisher Andrew Breitbart from its front page in March:

Arianna Huffington wants media outlets to stop obsessing on the sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain. Except at the liberal news site bearing her name.

During a "Both Sides Now" radio broadcast on which she occasionally appears with GOP political consultant Mary Matalin, Ron Reagan and others, the Huffington Post co-founder likened media coverage of the Cain controversy to the media's singular focus on the "balloon boy" incident from October 2009. (audio clip after page break) --

These things take time, especially when it comes to a politician initially touted as walking on water.

But it's finally happening with liberal media mogul Arianna Huffington -- a willingness to criticize the Obama administration's penchant for theatrics over substance. (video after page break)

The Occupy Wall Street crowd squatting in lower Manhattan and elsewhere while the rest of us are working has a not-at-all surprising ally: Arianna Huffington.

The limo liberal epitomized, Huffington is embroiled in a lawsuit with former bloggers who alleged she stiffed them on decent compensation for content at her site.

UPDATE AT END OF POST: AOL HuffPo responds.

Joining our growing list of media members willing to flat out lie on national television to advance their political agendas is Arianna Huffington who falsely claimed this week that securities firm JPMorgan warned its clients the debt ceiling agreement "is going to reduce our growth by a point-and-a-half."

Such was dishonestly said during a segment of CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" aired Sunday (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In the wake of liberal disappointment over December's budget agreement and this week's debt ceiling deal - both not including tax hikes - there's been a lot of squabbling from far-left media members about Barack Obama betraying them.

On Wednesday, AOL Huffington Post editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington told MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell that nobody believes the President's top priority is jobs - it's getting reelected (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Liberal shill Arianna Huffington predictably echoed left-wing talking points on ABC's "This Week" Sunday concerning Fox News's coverage of the British hacking scandal being "embarrassing for journalism."

Fortunately for the sake of accuracy, Fox Business Network's Charlie Gasparino was there to set the record straight (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Media critics, decidedly un-conservative for the most part, are piling on Arianna-OL in the wake of  what is increasingly being seen as a disastrous merger. Don't blame the right, this is coming from Poynter, MediaBistro, Business Insider and elsewhere, Forbes being perhaps the only "conservative" outlet.

Four months ago, when AOL chairman Tim Armstrong needed something to revitalize his news department, he found what he thought was his savior in the Huffington Post. The popular news site already had three things that AOL hadn’t been able to previously accomplish: a clear editorial voice, continued and growing traffic growth, and deep engagement from its users. Although AOL had executed a series of bad mergers and new product launches in recent years, Armstrong pushed forward, forking over $300 million dollars into the coffers of the far left Arianna Huffington and her initial investors.

"Saturday Night Live's" Seth Meyers headlined Saturday's White House Correspondents' Association dinner, and somewhat surprisingly went after media outlets on both sides of the aisle.

Apart from jibes at Fox News, the New York Times, and NPR, Meyers said of MSNBC's event after party, "President Obama makes the Kool-Aid, and everyone there drinks it" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Something tells me that future Huffington Post coverage of Rachel Maddow will be a tad less adulatory.

In a remark on her MSNBC show last night that has to be heard to be believed, Maddow mocked the influential liberal website for ... not being liberal. Seriously, Maddow really said this.

[video after page break]

A freelance blogger on Tuesday filed a class action lawsuit against Arianna Huffington for $105 million. The suit alleges that the Huffington Post's legion of unpaid bloggers are entitled to one third of the revenue from the site's sale to AOL in February.

Jonathan Tasini, who filed the lawsuit, compared Huffington to a "robber baron" in a blog post on Tuesday, and called her site a "blogger plantation - where her slaves work to build her fortune."

Tasini's hard-left perspective came through in his complaint (students of Marx will no doubt recognize his labor theory of value):

Following its controversial decision to ban Andrew Breitbart from publishing articles at its front page, the Huffington Post has found itself in quite a pickle now that one of its regular contributors, comedian Bill Maher, made disgustingly vulgar references to former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

As NewsBusters previously reported, Breitbart made some comments about President Obama's former green czar Van Jones that precipitated the following hypocritical statement from HuffPo spokesman Mario Ruiz last Thursday (readers are warned of vulgar content in full article):

Conservative publisher Andrew Breitbart told NewsBusters Friday his less than two week stint as a Huffington Post front page contributor was abruptly terminated as part of an ongoing scheme by liberal media members to depict the Tea Party as racist.

After caving to pressure from the far-left to have Breitbart dumped, HuffPo spokesman Mario Ruiz issued the following statement Thursday:

If New York Times editor Bill Keller was a woman, conservatives would be calling the battle he's having with Arianna Huffington a liberal cat fight.

Given his possession of a Y-chromosome, those on the right have to settle watching two left-wing media tycoons squabble over which is the bigger hypocrite:

University of Virginia media professor Siva Vaidhyanathan on Sunday said the Huffington Post is a bigger threat to journalism than Google.

Such occurred during a discussion about the internet behemoth on CNN's "Reliable Sources" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Being consistently pro-union puts one in an awkward position when unions start making some very inconvenient demands. The Huffington Post is learning that lesson the hard way.

On the heels of AOL's $315 million HuffPo buyout - the largest such acquisition in the blogosphere's short history - the Newspaper Guild said the following in a letter to Arianna Huffington (h/t Joe Pompeo):

As we look to the future, we look to you, Arianna Huffington, as a leader in web-based news coverage, to demonstrate your commitment to the value of journalism, and to help prevent independent journalists from having to settle for third-world wages.

What would be worse: if Norah actually believes it--or if she doesn't?

Norah O'Donnell has claimed that the Washington Post and the New York Times provide straight-up information, without bias, of the sort that would be appealing to members of the putatively non-partisan "No Labels" group.

Norah's mind-boggling assertion came on today's Morning Joe during a discussion of AOL's acquisition of HuffPo for $315 million.  Reacting to indications that Arianna Huffington may be guiding her creation toward the center and away from its leftist roots, WaPo's Jonathan Capehart argued the move made sense on the theory that people such as those at No Labels are hungry for straight-up reporting. That's when Norah broke in to claim that such unbiased reporting is already being provided by, yup, WaPo and the Times.

View video after the jump.

MSNBC's Ed Schultz began his show Monday railing against American corporations sitting on trillions of dollars of cash while refusing to exhibit "economic patriotism" by using those funds to add to their payrolls.

In a demonstration of classic liberal hypocrisy, the host of the "Ed Show" finished his program calling AOL's purchase of the Huffington Post "a big f-in deal" while not once asking the website's editor Roy Sekoff if any new jobs would be created with the $315 million the owners are receiving or if all the writers would finally be paid for their contributions (videos follow with transcripts and commentary):

 On Monday’s CBS Evening News, as anchor Katie Couric read a short item on AOL’s purchase of the left-wing Huffington Post Web site, she neglected to mention the ideological lean of the Web site as she merely called it "one of the leading news Web sites."

NBC’s Brian Williams did tag the Web site as "liberal" as he also read a an item on the acquisition. Williams: "A big payday for Arianna Huffington as AOL becomes the new owner of Huffington Post, the liberal Web site she created six years ago."

ABC’s World News, which devoted much of its program to anchor Diane Sawyer’s interview with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, did not mention the deal. 

While both CBS's Early Show and ABC's Good Morning America identified The Huffington Post as a liberal blog when discussing AOL purchasing the web site for $315 million, on NBC's Today, news reader Ann Curry simply described it as an "online news site" co-founded by "pundit" Arianna Huffington.

On Good Morning America, news reader JuJu Chang referred to The Huffington Post as a "top-ten news site" but accurately described it as being "co-founded by liberal commentator Arianna Huffington." The Early Show's Jeff Glor did not label the blog a news site at all and was the most direct in pointing out its ideological slant: "Huffington Post, a left-leaning site, was founded in 2005."

Editor's Note: Following news reports today that AOL News would pay $315 million to acquire The Huffington Post, NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center president Brent Bozell issued the following statement:

This proves AOL News has lost its mind. They must be in such dire straits that they’ve been blinded by the millions and think an acquisition of The Huffington Post is worth sacrificing credibility and objectivity. AOL News is fooling only itself in thinking there is no journalistic conflict in merging with a hate-filled, vicious, radically left-wing rag.