As Ukraine meets increased violence from pro-Russian forces and Iraq suffers near collapse with hundreds murdered by Islamic radicals, The Huffington Post thought it was most important to feature the news that President Obama is “at last” taking on the issue of “LGBT discrimination.”
All day on June 16, while everyone else was reporting on the crisis in Iraq, The Huffington Post was more interested in another example of Obama’s pandering to special interest groups with his proposed executive order to ban workplace discrimination against LGBT employees.
“The move is the clearest indication to date,” HuffPo’s Jennifer Bendery and Sam Stein wrote, “that the administration is prepared to take action on LGBT rights where Congress has fallen short.”
With all HuffPo’s banner headlines and back patting of the President, one might think that Obama has already published his executive order, yet the truth is he’s only thinking about writing such an order. For all of HuffPo’s ballyhooing, nothing has really been done on what the lefty blog site feels is such a vitally important issue.
Meanwhile, at the time this piece was posted, the top two stories at ABC News were about the terror attacks in Iraq. NBC News also prominently featured news on the incursions in Iraq. Even The New York Times was reporting heavily on Iraq during the day on June 16.
As to this executive order, most other news outlets that bothered to report it – and not that many did – relegated the story to their blogs or back pages.
For an example of the less enthusiastic coverage of most other outlets, readers can turn to Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post who pointed out that Obama’s “executive order won’t be terribly earth-shattering.”
Capehart noted that even LGBT activist groups like Human Rights Campaign say that there are few cases of discrimination against gays in the US and most companies are already working against such discrimination, making Obama’s executive order less than critical.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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