Huffington Post Removes Poll With Anti-Transgender Slur

[Shana A]

Huffington Post Removes Poll With Anti-Transgender Slur
Monday, November 7, 2011 - 6:01pm by Aaron McQuade, GLAAD's Director of News and Field Media

http://www.glaad.org/blog/huffington-post-removes-poll-anti-transgender-slur

The Huffington Post has removed an article from last week, which asked its readers, in a poll, whether actress Sofia Vergara or actress Blake Lively "has got the more 'tr*nny' look."

The question stemmed from separate interviews with both actresses, in which each of them compared her appearance to that of drag performers – heavily made-up, big hair, lots of jewelry, etc.

[Shana A]

'Huffington Post' Asks: Do Sofia Vergara, Blake Lively Have 'The ->-bleeped-<- Look?'
By On Top Magazine Staff
Published: November 07, 2011

http://www.ontopmag.com/article.aspx?id=10015&MediaType=1&Category=26

Liberal news site The Huffington Post is being criticized for asking whether Sofia Vergara or Blake Lively have "the ->-bleeped-<- look."

The site's Ellie Krupnick paired up quotes from Vergara, the 39-year-old co-star of ABC's gay-inclusive Wednesday night comedy Modern Family, and Lively, the 24-year-old co-star of the CW's nighttime teenage drama Gossip Girl, and then asked readers to vote on which star has "got the more ->-bleeped-<- look."

During an appearance on Good Morning America, Vergara was asked to expand on what she meant when she said that when dressed as her Modern Family character, Gloria, she looks "like a ->-bleeped-<-."

[Shana A]

HuffPost's '->-bleeped-<-' Joke Didn't Go Over Too Well

Adam Clark Estes 
Nov 9, 2011

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/11/huffposts-->-bleeped-<--joke-didnt-go-over-well/44752/

Even though there's a Tumblr dedicated to pointing out its questionable headlines, The Huffington Post almost never apologizes for offending people. But when gay rights organizations started complaining about a post bearing the headline "Blake Lively or Sophia Vergara: Who's Got the ->-bleeped-<- Look?" on Monday morning, HuffPost took down the post, and Ellie Krupnick, the fresh-out-of-college associate style editor who filed the original story, issued an apologetic editor's note. Since the post had already been on the site for four days, the damage had presumably been done to the transgender community, and GLAAD scolded the internet newspaper for using the slur. GLAAD also said they'd "reached out to offer to further educate their editorial staff about transgender issues." (This should prove helpful for HuffPost's new vertical Gay Voices, which is devoted to these issues.) This is just the latest slip-up from a young HuffPost editor, though, and the other recent apologies along those lines suggest that there might be a supervision problem in the HuffPost newsroom.

In some cases, HuffPost apologizes in the name of journalism, whether for breaching ethical standards or misreporting stories.