Replacing Mehdi at HuffPo is:
I have some news. I will be joining HuffingtonPost UK as their Executive Editor, Politics after the general election.
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) February 13, 2015
Following on from Sam McCrory’s move to the BBC this means struggling Dods have now lost their two most senior editorial staff in two months. Smart move by AOL, Mehdi was more of a polemicist and interviewer than a news man. Comment is cheap and over-supplied, news is in more demand. Waugh has a better nose for news than his predecessor. Congratulations… It’s still Waugh!
“I’m fed up with the hypocrisy of the free speech fundamentalists,” says Mehdi Hasan as he finally gives his two cents on the Paris terror attack. He asks: “Has your publication, for example, run cartoons mocking the Holocaust? No? How about caricatures of the 9/11 victims falling from the twin towers? I didn’t think so (and I am glad it hasn’t).”
Actually, Mehdi, US cartoons constantly make jokes about 9/11, and pretty mainstream, much-loved ones too. Here are just three such gags from Family Guy:
And look, a “cartoon mocking the Holocaust”:
And yet no one reached for their Kalashnikov…
Terrible news: Mehdi is leaving Al-HuffPo to join Al-Jazeera in DC. After the letter to Mr Dacre didn’t pay off, it looks like the one to AJ did. “Dear Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani”…
Joking apart, we’ll miss you Mehdi. Congratulations.
UPDATE:
Al Jazeera America averaged 17,000 viewers during prime time since the beginning of 2014 according to Nielsen. Not so big in America.
— Media Guido (@MediaGuido) December 18, 2014
For a sense of perspective Al Jazeera America has 1% of the audience that Fox News does…
How far will the Huffington Post stoop to attack a commercial rival? Today they have published a story promoting a video from Iranian state propaganda TV channel Press TV, best known for its anti-Semitic broadcasts, spinning for Ahmadinejad and promoting the country’s nuclear programme. And there was Guido thinking Al-HuffPo were only doing the Qataris’ dirty work…
“Did you know that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis, was trained by Mossad and the CIA?” asks Mehdi Hasan sarcastically in his HuffPo column this afternoon. It’s a good piece and worth reading, in it Mehdi argues that many Muslims around the world too often fall for loony conspiracy theories. He asks:
“Why are so many of my fellow Muslims so gullible and so quick to believe bonkers conspiracy theories? How have the pedlars of paranoia amassed such influence within Muslim communities?”
Who would peddle such nonsense? HuffPo UK, of which Mehdi is Political Director, ran this as their splash just three weeks ago:
What next @HuffPostUK? Mossad-backed Illuminati lizards did 9/11? pic.twitter.com/k6N062Y45A
— Alex Wickham (@alexwickham) August 14, 2014
‘Password 360’ is one of the main ISIS conspiracy theories, alleging that the latest great threat to civilisation is all a big CIA plot. Three weeks ago HuffPo thought it was worth running as their lead story. Where do people get their crazy ideas, eh?
UPDATE: Guido has been reminded that Mehdi once peddled his own conspiracy theory that 535 people controlled by the “American Israel lobby” were “blocking peace in the Middle East“? Why, indeed, is the Muslim world in thrall to conspiracy theories?
The Huffington Post UK’s founding editor Carla Buzasi is out of the job. Media Guardian remain tactful:
“The move is a blow to HuffPo UK, which tried to keep Buzasi’s hankering for life beyond news sated by promoting her to lead global editorial strategy for lifestyle…”
Poor Mehdi seems to have been overlooked for the top job.
Perhaps new editor Stephen Hull could clear up the vanity project’s greatest conundrum. Why does a website that campaigns against Page 3 and the exploitation of women, rely so heavily on pictures of naked girls to boost their flat-lining traffic numbers? Here are Carla’s Greatest Tits:
- Carla In Jealous Bikini Huff
- HuffPo Cynically Uses Pictures of Under-Age Girls in Bikinis
- HuffPo Has Photo of Couple Having Sex on Front Page
- HuffPo Upskirt New Lo
- HuffPo Abreast of Page 3
- Why the Weight, Carla?
- HuffPoUK Sink to Incest Low in Desperate Traffic Quest
- Tit-Tastic Day For HuffPost UK
- HuffPo’s Carla Boobs
- Anti-Page 3 HuffPo’s Top Story is Topless Model Photo
Boobing Buzasi claimed to be fighting the feminist cause, while editing a site littered with content every day that bordered on soft porn.
So long Carla, it’s been tit-tastic.
