Marjorie Taylor Greene rips HuffPost for ‘shooting them’ lies about ad
September 28, 2022
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), speaking with Accuracy in Media, reiterated a demand for a retraction from HuffPost over a fake headline that HuffPost used just to generate traffic.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene Likens Dems To Hogs, Wants Help Shooting Them Dead,” says HuffPost’s headline of a piece on the newest campaign ad from the Greene re-election bid, a story that has been picked up by Apple News and Yahoo News.
In the ad, Greene talks about Democratic legislation that has created a fiscal mess affecting farmers, a problem she compares to the feral hogs in Georgia that are now destroying farmers’ fields.
“We’ve got skyrocketing inflation, high diesel fuel, and Democrats’ America Last policies. Democrats aren’t the only ones destroying farmers’ ability to put food on the table. We’ve got wild hogs destroying farmer’s fields,” Greene says in the ad.
Greene then goes on to show herself shooting at feral hogs from a helicopter in order to combat the problem and asks people to join a contest to go with her to kill wild hogs and help the farmers.
It’s kind of standard fare for hunters, really.
Even HuffPost agreed that the feral pig problem in Georgia is real, writing, after quoting Greene from the video, “she continued, noting (correctly) that wild hogs have destroyed farmers’ fields,” and included embedded links to show the problem exists.
But nowhere in the 150-odd word piece does the HuffPost mention that Greene wants help shooting them (Democrats) dead.
Either HuffPost cleverly crafted the ambiguous “them” referred to in the headline to make it appear that “them” refers to Democrats when HuffPost really mean that the hogs are the “them” referred to in the headline, or they just mean Greene wants people to shoot Democrats dead.
“They have created a character of me that does not exist and they sell it to the to the public, and the American people, they sell it to the world day-in and day-out, and they need to take the consequences,” Greene told Accuracy in Media. She also noted that the media routinely calls Republicans Nazis, fascists and racists.
“None of us [elected Republicans] behave that way. We believe we believe in the equality of all Americans and they [the media] lie and they lie and they lie,” Greene said.
Greene was outraged at HuffPost’s attempt to turn her ad into clickbait with deceptive headlines.
“@HuffPost I demand you change this headline and your lies about me immediately. Your freedom of press is not freedom to lie about me. I NEVER said anything like this and did NOT call for violence on Democrats,” Greene tweeted .
Even the liberal Twitter posts that panned the Greene hunting giveaway HuffPost linked in the story didn’t go so far as to suggest that the ad had anything to do with hunting Democrats.
“Nothing will stop the media until they are held accountable and reined in. They have no reason [to stop] because they’ve been too successful at what they’re trying to do to people,” Greene told AIM.
Indeed the headline looks like a fabrication by editors at HuffPost who are eager to buoy their sinking business model by using fake, clickbait headlines.
HuffPost’s parent company, clickbait leader BuzzFeed, has seen its stock lose more than 80 percent of its value since it went public in December, as AIM previously reported.
“A dangerous crossroads is fast approaching, sales and marketing investment is necessary to keep the brand pertinent in the media scene, but it would also be beneficial to adjust variable expenses to reduce losses in consideration of the headwinds,” Seeking Alpha wrote about BuzzFeed last month, noting that the short-term prospects for the company aren’t great.
One of those expenses is the news division at HuffPost. In 2021, the company laid off massive numbers of staff in the news division at HuffPost and companywide.