HuffPost, your hypocrisy is showing.
As the 2019 World Economic Forum (WEF) meetings began in Davos, Switzerland, the left-wing HuffPost blasted the gathering. This was a complete 180 for the liberal outlet, which has strongly supported and participated in Davos in the past.
HuffPost’s International Director Louise Roug emphasized arguments against the event, turning to a harsh critic who argues “Davos has to end.” No defenders of Davos were quoted in the Jan. 21, article: “Elites Gather in Davos to Rich-splain Poverty As the World Spirals Into Crisis.”
“To its critics, Davos embodies everything that’s wrong with the current moment,” Roug continued. That criticism included blame for “the plutocrats who shattered the world order,” wealth disparity and the wealth of many attendees, as well as political divisions.
The critic Roug turned to was author and former New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas who argued Davos is a week of “rich-splaining” and shifting “the conversation away from actual social change” on liberal agenda issues like social justice, maternity leave and wealth taxes.
“These elites have essentially used the rhetoric of changing the world to prevent change,” Giridharadas claimed to HuffPost.
My how times have changed for the liberal website that once attended and heralded the annual WEF meeting.
In 2009, with Arianna Huffington still at the helm of the site she founded, The Huffington Post viewed the World Economic Forum’s annual conference in Davos, Switzerland as a “meeting of the minds.” The site even promoted to readers how to “Win a Trip to Davos.” (Huffington sold the site to AOL in 2011).
Susan Sawyer wrote the 2009 post publicizing a YouTube/WEF contest inviting people to join the Davos conversation through video posts answering one of several questions about the global economy, environmentalism, the Obama administration and corporate ethics. One winner would be chosen to attend as a “citizen reporter” for the conference.
That year, the site was focused so much on Davos it had a “Davos Big News page” devoted to its content.
Huffington herself attended, speaking on panels and going to “off-the-record” conversations with world leaders, throughout the “interesting panels, speeches and roundtables — and, of course, the unexpected, unplanned, off-the-schedule hook ups that make Davos such a unique gathering.”
She shared a series of “Davos notes” with HuffPost readers. Looking forward to it, she wrote of the panels and dinners she was speaking on or moderating. But what she “most” looked forward to was a discussion of “PhilanthroCapitalism” or “‘How the rich can save the world’ by taking a businesslike approach to charitable giving.”
Now that’s irony.
Ultimately, what this “10 Year Challenge” proves is that over the decade HuffPost has moved even further to the left than it was already.
