HuffPo FAIL

In a NewsBusters expose of what passes for "journalism" at the Huffington Post, my fellow RS front page contributer Warner Todd Huston includes this example:

Then there is the political news that appears every day on HuffPo. For example, a straight out opinion was recently presented as fact by HuffPo writer Jennifer Donahue whose piece makes the claim that the Republican grassroots is lining up behind Mitt Romney, forsaking Sarah Palin, for the 2012 presidential election.

Donahue says it's Mitt rising in the GOP and has two quotes in the story to support her assertion. However, there are no names attached to the quotes and no sources for them is given. She has no pundits from the right pointing to Mitt, no party members saying they like him and no seated politicians raising Mitt's banner. She just says it is so and we are supposed to take it on faith. The whole story is thin as tissue paper. It may be true, but we get nothing to make us sanguine of the fact in Donahue's story. Just her assertions.

Yet, Donahue is billed as the "Political Director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics" and sports a journalism background. She may do a fine job for Saint Anselem College, but for HuffPo, at least, this piece is junk.

WTH is absolutely right. Not only is Donahue's post pretty thin gruel, it flies in the face of the latest polling by Pew Research, which shows Gov. Palin well ahead of Romney (by double digits) with the GOP conservative base (grasssroots) Meanwhile, she has actually improved her favorability ratings among independents (+6 percent) and even among Democrats (+7 percent) since October and November.

HuffPo wants its readers to believe that Romney has the base all fired up, while the empirical data suggests that it's Sarah Palin who continues to be the grassroots favorite, and by no small margin. Reaching beyond the base, she is improving her standing with independents and Democrats. Advantage: Palin (not Romney).

HuffPo FAIL.

- JP