Fresh off of letting go Radley Balko and Felicia Sonmez and letting March Theiessen lie about crime, WaPo does an exposes on s local outlets that call themselves "news" but are ideologically liberal and just do the equivalent of press releases for liberal candidates. The first 6 paragraphs (Kevin Drum says 4 - not my count), all detail this "liberal" scourge, counting 51 such sites nationwide! Axios reported recently on a group of at least 51 sites in key swing states with recent or upcoming elections. They include Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. The sites market themselves as local news and do provide some of that — in the form of aggregated content from other sources in addition to a few original write-ups about, say, enjoyable hiking destinations or options for “spooky season” family fun. But they’re also chock full of “stories” that boost liberal candidates in the upcoming midterms or blast conservative ones. Sometimes, these missives are little more than press releases. “Shapiro Busy Campaigning and Opening Offices Throughout Pennsylvania,” reads one headline. The sites are disguised as community periodicals, but their “About Us” pages indicate they’re run by a company called Local Report Inc.; IF you make it down to the 7th paragraph decrying this abuse of journalism by liberals, you get this, at the bottom of the paragraph This media masquerade is not exactly news, nor is it exactly fake. The American Independent argues that its articles are by writers producing real stories under their real names and that their work is fact-checked and verified. This, defenders claim, is in contrast to efforts on the right where stories are generated by robots and sometimes stuffed full of made-up quotes — a trend known as “pink-slime journalism.” The name is borrowed from a pasty meat byproduct added to ground beef sold in supermarkets to unsuspecting consumers. A tally of these websites by Columbia Journalism Review researcher Priyanjana Bengani found that hyperpartisan liberal “local news” sites were dwarfed by their conservative counterparts. The number is staggering: at least 1,100 sites through numerous networks run by at least five distinct corporate entities, in every state, all of them traceable through a confusing web of limited-liability companies to businessman Brian Timpone. But it's still liberals' fault, and they deserve the scorn from WaPo! Why? Correct as Democrats might be that Republicans did pink slime first and do it worst, that doesn’t mean the right answer is to go low with them. Apologists on both sides of the political spectrum argue that all outlets these days are biased, even when they don’t admit it — so what’s the difference? Liberals are therefore responsible for destroying trust, because they run 51 biased sites in response to 1100 lying sites. It's just both sides! This type of untransparent pseudo-journalism pumped full of dark money does not, as some of its backers argue, revitalize local news but instead does the opposite. By dressing themselves up as community-based coverage to manipulate readers, these networks sap the very faith in hometown papers that they’re exploiting. Democracy, in the end, becomes a casualty twice over. Readers are sucked in without knowing who’s paying — or even that someone is paying at all. And trust in the sputtering engine of local news fades even further.
