A quick visit to huffingtonpost.com, cnn.com or Foxnews.com will reveal a news website organized into tabs with options like politics, business, entertainment and tech.
The three news sites have very similar sections, with the exception of the tab labeled “women” on huffingtonpost.com.
Take a brief step back from your computer screen and assess what you know about The Huffington Post. It was created as a liberal alternative, which if you did not know you could probably quickly discern. More relevant perhaps is that the editor-in-chief of the publication is Arianna Huffington.
Though you may not know Huffington’s specific accolades (like being ranked the 12th most influential woman in media by Forbes magazine in 2009), you might have a general idea that she is a powerful woman who has climbed very far up the proverbial ladder.
With all this in mind, at least maybe subconsciously, the naïve female might click on the tab called women expecting to actually find women’s interest stories. What might qualify as women’s interest? Probably the recent Komen/Planned Parenthood scandal. Maybe news pertaining to female politicians or lawmakers. Perhaps the recent court cases about contraceptive use. These are not, however, the major stories in the women section of The Huffington Post.
According to The Huffington Post, women are interested in their “breakup song” or the latest, hard-hitting news on how to know if you’ve had your makeup too long.
At this point, you might be angrily thinking: “I’m sorry, Google; did I type cosmopolitan.com?”
Also, it turns out if you’re a man you clearly have no interest in healthy living or parenting, because those two sections of The Huffington Post are encased under the women tab. Following this train of logic makes one wonder if there is a subtle hint raised by the very presence of a “women” tab that suggests women don’t in fact read politics, business or tech.
Newsflash: they do. The Huffington Post should spend more time reporting news and less time pandering to subjugating topics like “what kind of dress should you buy to get a husband to support you because you clearly can’t do it yourself” (that one has not actually appeared in the women section…yet). Yes, women do like to take quizzes and read insanely long lists of tips, but that is a separate undertaking from reading the news. It is hard to imagine a reader confusing The New York Times and Glamour Magazine. It should be equally as difficult to forget that you are on a news website.
Perhaps The Huffington Post should institute a men’s tab that only talks about video games, “Family Guy” and where to find the meatiest hamburger. At that point, we could at least say the Huffington Post had fair and balanced reporting.
