In which the United States requires education from Australia

[Medivh]

Someone, please, I beg of you...

Why does the US mainstream media produce turds like this, when, clearly, entertaining and informative current affairs programming can happen?

[Aeron]

Because the US mainstream is a bunch of feckless corporate whores who would tell you eating your own shit is healthy for you if it would make them a profit. Also, the influence of new age hippie liberal bullshit. *

Edit: I don't hold any animosity towards these people at all. Nope. Not one bit.

Edit2: Related, I recently stopped reading the HuffPo because they have a terrible anti-science slant when it comes to alternative medicine crap. The article by (the new anti-vaxx convert) Jim Carrey was the final straw. Back to the International Herald Tribune I go!

Edit3: *This is purposefully over-the-top, btw. I try to be funny, but I usually fail. Imagine this being delivered like a George Carlin sketch, that is the tone I meant it to have.

[Current]

The Huffington Post is hardly the mainstream media.  I would say it is part of the alternative progressive left media.  That said I'm not an American so what do I know.

[Aeron]

I never said it was. Then again, I didn't acknowledge that it isn't when I mentioned it.

I didn't mean to imply that I think the Huffington Post is part of the mainstream media, I don't.

[Current]

I never said it was.

Fair enough.

I've just read the Huffington Post's health page - it doesn't really look that rubbishy.  Not compared to the health supplements in Ireland.

[Medivh]

When they have people advertising for homoeopathy? Under the guise of journalism? Never mind treating Jim Carey as a credible source of medical information, nor the publishing of anti-vaccination bullshit as truth...

Yeah, it's about as bad as it gets.

[rwpikul]

I've just read the Huffington Post's health page - it doesn't really look that rubbishy.  Not compared to the health supplements in Ireland.

Look for the altie and antivax stories, the health editor is a homoeopath and acupuncturist.

Right now it's masked by a flood of swine flu stories.

[Current]

Well, I see what you mean.

I'm still not sure that it's fair to single out the Huffington Post.  Many newspapers promote alternative healthcare these days.  Irish local newspapers seem to have few other sorts of health stories, and Irish national like the Independent have big spreads on alternative medicine every week and stories nearly every day.

If they're really doing something that others aren't doing then it's fair to single them out, I'm not convinced that they are though.

Addendum:
I'm not saying that the HuffPo is a model of journalistic excellence.  I don't think it is.  For example, recently Thom Hartmann leveled accusations at the free-market economists "Ludwig Von Mises, Freidrich Von Hayeck, Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan, Tom Freidman, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Ayn Rand."  That's a total of three misspellings, two in Hayek's name.  On that account alone I doubt he has read the work of two of these folks, and certainly not all.

But this sort of thing is typical of the online press and the dead-tree press are often just as bad or worse.

[Current]

I think I ought to make some admissions now....  I'm sitting in my secret lair stroking my cat and feeling a tinge of guilt.

You see, my minions control the Huffington Post.  The purpose of the health section of that publication is to advance my plans.  If hippies believe what is in the rest of the Huffington Post they will likely believe the health section.  That section though is specifically designed to make them ill.  By doing this I will progressively weaken their kind and remove opposition to my plans.

My minions also control the UK Guardian.  I can't believe anyone in Britain seriously thinks that Seamus Milne is a socialist.  I instruct Seamus to write editorials supporting every South American demagogue in existence.  Not just Hugo Chavez, all of them.  One of them will certainly turn out to be a bad egg and start a war or a bit of genocide or something.  When that happens the Guardian and the rest of the left will have egg all over their faces.

I won't go into the other shadowy organizations I control right now.