Looking for anti-vaccine conspiracy theories? You can find them on HuffPost. And a reminder of who RFK Jr son hangs around with
Here kleptocrat socialism took from Venezuelans what could have been used more effectively at home to subsidize Americans who lived better for ideological not productive reasons. And, look at where it has gotten them.
By David Sharp Associated Press,March 21, 2017, 7:55 p.m.
The decision by Venezuela’s Citgo Petroleum Corp. to bow out of the program founded by Joseph P. Kennedy II, which has helped hundreds of thousands of US residents, coincides with plummeting oil prices and corresponding economic problems in oil-rich Venezuela.(BIZUAYEHU TESFAYE/AP/FILE 2009)
Amid continuing economic turmoil, Venezuela skipped heating oil contributions to an energy assistance program based in Massachusetts for a second consecutive winter, imperiling the popular program.
The decision by Venezuela’s Citgo Petroleum Corp. to bow out of the program founded by Joseph P. Kennedy II, which has helped hundreds of thousands of US residents, coincides with plummeting oil prices and corresponding economic problems in oil-rich Venezuela.
Hopes of a late contribution to the ‘‘Joe-4-Oil’’ program — part of the nonprofit Citizens Energy Corp. — faded with spring’s arrival this week, Kennedy said.
‘‘While this is not good news, it certainly isn’t surprising,’’ the businessman and former congressman said.Citgo officials declined to comment.
The Citgo heating oil program was launched after Katrina damaged US refining capacity in 2005, causing energy costs to spike as winter approached.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the fiery leader who died in 2013, responded to an appeal from Kennedy to help out after criticizing then-Republican President George W. Bush for failing to do enough for the poor. Houston-based Citgo is a subsidiary of the Venezuelan national oil company.Over the years, the program has provided $500 million in heating assistance to 2 million program participants in 25 states and the District of Columbia, supplementing federal energy assistance.
Rita Soucier, 80, said she and her husband received assistance many times over the years, helping the couple stay warm in their trailer in the town of Howland, Maine.
This year, there was no help, said Soucier, whose husband, a retired paper mill worker, died last month. But she said she’s grateful for past help, typically 100 gallons of heating oil.
‘‘It helps a lot when you’re not the richest people in the world,’’ said Soucier, who said her needs are few. ‘‘As long as I can get by, I don’t want any more or any less.’’
Venezuela, which has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, has been hurt by declining prices. The unraveling economy, cuts to social programs, and growing political divisions have rocked the country, leading to food shortages and a dramatic drop in currency value.
Citizens Energy continues to operate other programs. The company was created in 1979 to channel revenue from commercial enterprises to charitable programs.
But the heating oil program may cease to exist. The ‘‘Joe-4-Oil’’ television advertisements did not run this year or last, and a message online said that applications for winter heating oil help were not being accepted.
The nonprofit isn’t giving up hope, however. The Citgo program was suspended in 2009, only to return a few months later.
Citizens Energy continues to operate solar, wind, and transmission projects that provide assistance including solar panels for low-income homes, energy grants for homeless shelters, and natural gas subsidies for low-income households.
‘‘The good news is, Citizens Energy continues to grow and prosper and provide significant benefits to low-income people around our country as a result of businesses which provide the financial firepower to fulfill our mission,’’ Kennedy said.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (left) and Jenny McCarthy (right) contributed anti-vaccine articles to HuffPost, founded by Arianna Huffington (center).All photographs: Getty Images
The news website HuffPost published dozens of articles and blog posts by anti-vaccine activists and vaccine skeptics under its former editor-in-chief, Arianna Huffington.
Most of the articles were written by unpaid contributors, including a number of professional writers, while others were written by celebrities like Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey.
Huffington personally recruited at least one writer who claims vaccines may be harmful to children.
Health authorities have blamed the most recent outbreak of measles on anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, but none of the articles on HuffPost have been updated with a disclaimer about their accuracy.
Two days after INSIDER asked HuffPost about the posts on its platform, the site's editor-in-chief announced that the site would begin removing them.
YouTube, Facebook, and Amazon have recently come under witheringcriticism from journalists and lawmakers for their role in amplifying unfounded and occasionally dangerous conspiracy theories, including the false but persistent belief that vaccines cause autism. The uproar caused Facebook to pledge to make it harder to find vaccine conspiracies on its platform, and Amazon has removed misleading documentaries from its video streaming service. But as false beliefs continue to fuel an unprecedented outbreak of measles, it's not just social media platforms that bear responsibility for keeping the conspiracy alive.
HuffPost, the left-leaning internet news site owned by Verizon, currently positions itself squarely against vaccine conspiracy theories. But it continues to host dozens of articles that either falsely allege a link between childhood vaccines and autism or misrepresent scientific research on the subject, almost all of which were published between 2005 and 2011, when the site's co-founder and namesake, Arianna Huffington, served as editor-in-chief. While many were written by contributors to the site's defunct community blog, others were written by household names like Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Under Huffington's leadership in the 2000s, the site was one of the largest platforms for the then-novel allegation that vaccines, or certain ingredients used in vaccines, could trigger autism in young children. It was in part through their frequent posts on the site, then known as the Huffington Post, that McCarthy and Kennedy became so publicly associated with the discredited theory. But it wasn't just by virtue of HuffPost's status as an open platform for celebrities that the conspiracy theory took hold there; INSIDER has learned that Huffington actively recruited at least one writer who questioned the safety of vaccines to air his views on her site.
Here are just a few examples of misleading anti-vaccine conspiracies from the Huffington era that remain available on HuffPost, without any correction or editor's note indicating their falsehood:
In 2006, Kennedy, a vocal critic of vaccines, wrote: "Thimerosal is the mercury-based vaccine preservative that has been linked to epidemics of neurological disorders, including autism, in American children born after 1989." (Thimerosal is indeed a "mercury-based vaccine preservative," but no scientific study has shown its use in vaccines causes "neurological disorders," including autism.)
In 2007, Kennedy wrote: "Thimerosal-based vaccines continue to sicken millions of children around the world."
In 2010, McCarthy, another vocal anti-vaccinationist, wrote: "With so many kids with autism, the environment has to be to blame, and vaccines are an obvious culprit."
In 2011, McCarthy wrote: "I know children regress"—i.e., begin to exhibit symptoms associated with autism—"after vaccination because it happened to my own son."
You can find comparable efforts from other writers here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. It's unclear exactly how many articles HuffPost has published since 2005 that link vaccines to autism or misrepresent existing research on the subject.
INSIDER reached out to HuffPost on Wednesday, and received a reply from a spokesperson for Verizon Media, who asked for additional time to respond to our questions because certain employees were returningfrom the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The spokesperson did not respond to follow-up emails or phone calls.
On Friday morning, HuffPost editor-in-chief Lydia Polgreen asked an editor at INSIDER for an hour to respond to our questions. Several minutes later, she announced on HuffPost that, "After a monthslong review, HuffPost has decided to remove dozens of blogs that perpetuate the unfounded opinion that vaccines pose a health risk to the public." The Verizon spokesperson then emailed INSIDER a link to the announcement. The posts appear to remain up at the moment.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., speaks against legislation to narrow exemptions to state mandated vaccines during a rally at the state Capitol Tuesday, May 14, 2019, in Albany, N.Y.AP Photo/Hans Pennink
HuffPost launched as a platform for celebrity opinions
When The Huffington Post launched in 2005, the news site envisioned itself as an unfettered forum for public figures to write about virtually any subject. "Picture a nonstop, ever-changing group conversation," co-founder Arianna Huffington told potential contributors, "with input from 100 of the most interesting people from the worlds of politics, entertainment, business, and publishing."
The plan worked out and then some. Huffington and co-founder Ken Lerer sold the venture to AOL for $315 million, and the site has managed to win a Pulitzer Prize and recruit a prominent New York Times editor to oversee their growing newsroom. It now draws more than 115 million readers per month.
Still, issues with accuracy have dogged HuffPost since its beginning. This was partly because Huffington's desire for "authentic" and "unfiltered" opinions meant refusing to "censor" or "edit" the site's famous contributors. Another culprit, as Salon noted in 2009, was Huffington's habit of hiring editors based on her personal connection to them, rather than their training or experience in journalism.
Huffington is famous for experimenting with controversial remedies and unproven procedures to treat various ailments. In her 2006 memoir, "On Becoming Fearless . . . in Love, Work, and Life," she claimed to regularly undergo "mercury detoxes," an unproven method alleged to offer mental and physical benefits. (Some opponents of vaccines, including Jenny McCarthy, have touted the procedure as a potential cure for symptoms of autism.) Huffington's affinity for alternative medicine almost certainly influenced her site's early identity.
David Kirby, an author and former New York Times freelancer who began contributing to HuffPost in 2005, recalled attending a dinner party in Los Angeles shortly after the publication of his book, "Evidence of Harm," which drew criticism and praise for documenting the efforts of parents who suspected trace amounts of mercury in vaccines had caused autism in their children.
The pieces show up on internal HuffPost tag pages and continue to crop up in search results, thanks in part to the site's mastery of Google's algorithm. Searching for "vaccines autism huffington post," for instance, returns as the third result the aforementioned Jenny McCarthy post from 2011 in which she writes, "I know children regress after vaccination because it happened to my own son."
Some bear a disclaimer in small, light-grey lettering: "This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site." But other articles lack the disclaimer, and appear to have belonged to a curated section known as "The Blog."
HuffPost's archive illustrates the shifting landscape around vaccines
HuffPost continues to make these articles available to readers, without any corrections or editors' notes, in the midst of the worst measles outbreak in 25 years — one driven almost entirely by the baseless claims of the anti-vaccination movement. Its decision to do so is noteworthy given the site's recent coverage of the role played by social media platforms and the news media in fomenting baseless fears about vaccines. Earlier this month, when the Today show's Twitter account posed the question, "Are vaccines safe?", HuffPost called the message "dreadfully irresponsible" and "sensationalist" given the "current nationwide measles outbreak."
Arianna Huffington declined to comment on the specifics of this article. "Arianna has never commented on HuffPost articles or any other HuffPost issues since she's left," said Monica Lee, a spokesperson for Thrive Global, a wellness company Huffington launched in 2016. "Thrive Global is 100% based on the latest science. Since the science on vaccines is crystal clear, we do not allow anti-vaccine posts on our contributor platform. The importance of vaccines for public health is not up for debate."
Huffington's business partner and former Huffington Post chairman Ken Lerer also declined to comment.
A spokesperson for Child's Health Defense, a non-profit established by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., told INSIDER that Kennedy wanted to comment but later said he changed his mind.
Representatives for Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey did not return requests for comment.
