MEDIA WATCH | HUFFINGTON POST

Huffington Post Found Nurturing a Religious Hater

Tony Ortega is the caliber of researcher best employed by the likes of Ali—someone so utterly devoid of ethics that any claim, false or embellished, will do for his attack-dog writing.

November 6, 2017

Managing Editor Newsdesk
Huffington Post

Dear Ms. Baitcher,

I am not one to write “Letters to the Editor,” but after reading your article regarding the Church of Scientology, I feel I can’t just sit back and say nothing and allow your anti-Scientology smear to go unrebutted.

Even with the current hatred, shootings, knifings, bombings, car attacks against innocent people, you somehow consider it acceptable to fan these flames of hatred? How you do so in good conscience is beyond me.

Yet to cap it, you assign Yashar Ali to write this piece. He has been devoted to attacking Scientology, by his own admission, for the last 17 years. Ali then calls upon Tony Ortega, best remembered as the editor of Village Voice when it harbored Backpage.com, which, according to numerous media reports, was the nation’s leading facilitator of the sale of minors for sex. Its three owners have been under U.S. Senate Subcommittee investigation.

Under Ortega’s editorship, Backpage.com included advertising linked to:

A 14-year-old pregnant girl who was beaten with a taser and forced to work as a prostitute in Atlanta.
In Minnesota a girl who was picked up days before her 14th birthday, held captive, raped and beaten and made to work as a prostitute.
A 16-year-old Illinois girl who had her nose broken by her pimp after she refused to see a john.
Another 13-year-old girl who was kicked down a stairwell as part of her ordeal in the sex trade.

Is this the level to which Huff Post has fallen?

Tony Ortega is the caliber of researcher best employed by the likes of Ali—someone so utterly devoid of ethics that any claim, false or embellished, will do for his attack-dog writing.

When you print an article that attacks a religion, you promote hatred against it. In this case, that religion is mine and hatred must stop.

Sincerely,
Richard W.