Color of Change Wants Arianna to Dump Breitbart: Add Your Voice - Updated

--- by Teddy Partridge

Color of Change, a great organization with many successes behind them (including the superb action to get Glenn Beck’s advertisers to stop giving FOX News Channel money to air their ads during his program) has a new media action. Please join your voice to all of ours, to ask Arianna Huffington not to provide a platform for infamous race-baiter and notorious liar Andrew Breitbart on her new AOL joint venture.

You can sign the Color of Change letter here:

Dear Ms. Huffington,

I am deeply disappointed that The Huffington Post has chosen to give a platform to the notorious liar and race-baiter Andrew Breitbart. I urge you to stop promoting his work immediately, and publicly explain why Breitbart’s work was promoted to the front page.

Breitbart’s long history of attacking Black people and institutions — from ACORN to Shirley Sherrod to Black farmers who were compensated for years of discrimination — has few parallels among mainstream media figures. Worse, these attacks were based on deceptive editing and willful distortion of the truth. That Huffington Post would choose to elevate Breitbart when news outlets from ABC to Fox News have distanced themselves from him is both tone-deaf and insulting.

It’s especially galling that The Huffington Post seeks to attract Black audiences with its planned “Global Black” venture, even as its main site provides a prominent platform for Breitbart to continue spreading lies that have a real impact on Black people.

If the Huffington Post is to be taken seriously — whether by Black audiences or any other — then prominent placement should not be given to someone like Andrew Breitbart. I urge you not to promote his work at The Huffington Post.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

Please take a moment to add your voice to the many who’ve signed this letter already. We need to hold citizen journalism accountable, just like we hold Legacy Media accountable. The Color of Change action will help do that, and will be stronger with your name on it.

Thanks.

Update: 1:30 p.m: Huffington Post, citing concern by Color of Change and others, has now yanked Breitbart from their front page:

Huffington Post yanks Breitbart from front page
By Greg Sargent

After standing by Andrew Breitbart yesterday, the Huffington Post has made the decision to yank him from their highly-trafficked front page, in the wake of some vicious comments Breitbart has since made about former White House adviser Van Jones, a HuffPo spokesman confirms to me.

HuffPo had come under increasing criticism for giving Breitbart a major platform from groups like Color of Change, which argued that he has a history of racially-charged and factually-challenged political activism that has no place on a reputable news and opinion site. While Breitbart will still be allowed to post at HuffPo, the decision to yank him from the front page and downgrade his visibility effectively gives the critics what they’d asked for.

and, in an e-mail to Teddy:

The Huffington Post is committed to fostering a lively and often provocative debate about the issues of the day and encourages a wide range of voices from all perspectives to participate. Andrew Brietbart’s ad hominem attack on Van Jones in The Daily Caller — right down to calling him a “commie punk” and “a cop killer-supporting, racist, demagogic freak” — violates the tenets of debate and civil discourse we have strived for since the day we launched. As a result, we will no longer feature his posts on the front page.

He is welcome to continue publishing his work on HuffPost provided it adheres to our editorial guidelines, as the two posts he published on HuffPost did — guidelines that include a strict prohibition on ad hominem attacks. Our decision today recognizes that placing posts on the front page is an editorial call that elevates some posts over others, and is an indication of how seriously we take these judgment calls.