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Salon: Republicans Are Launching Fake Local News Sites To Spread 'Propaganda' (salon.com)
"The Tennessee Star claims to be the 'most reliable' online local paper in the state," reports Salon. "In fact it's just a GOP front." An anonymous reader quotes their report:
An investigation by the fact-checking outlet Snopes found that several new local news websites are actually being launched by Republican consultants whose company is funded in part by the candidates the sites cover. Politico first reported last year that Tea Party-linked conservative activists Michael Patrick Leahy, Steve Gill and Christina Botteri were behind the "Tennessee Star," a website that purported to be a local news website but mostly posted content licensed from groups linked to big Republican donors. Snopes discovered that the trio has since launched similar sites in other battleground states ahead of the 2020 elections: the Ohio Star and the Minnesota Sun...
The group behind the sites does not appear content with just three outlets. According to Politico, Leahy has purchased domain names associated with Missouri, New England, the Dakotas, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, most of which are electoral battleground states that will be vital in 2020.
Kathleen Bartzen Culver, who heads the Center of Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told Snopes that political operatives are free to launch their own news platforms, but it's a problem if they are trying to deceive readers into believing the sites are nonpartisan local news. "I have no problem with advocacy organizations creating content that reinforces the positions they take on public policy issues on the left, right or center. The issue comes in when they're not transparent about that advocacy," Culver said... "The information sphere is so polluted right now that the average citizen has trouble telling what is real and what is not," Culver told Snopes. "I find that very troubling within a democracy."
An investigation by the fact-checking outlet Snopes found that several new local news websites are actually being launched by Republican consultants whose company is funded in part by the candidates the sites cover. Politico first reported last year that Tea Party-linked conservative activists Michael Patrick Leahy, Steve Gill and Christina Botteri were behind the "Tennessee Star," a website that purported to be a local news website but mostly posted content licensed from groups linked to big Republican donors. Snopes discovered that the trio has since launched similar sites in other battleground states ahead of the 2020 elections: the Ohio Star and the Minnesota Sun...
The group behind the sites does not appear content with just three outlets. According to Politico, Leahy has purchased domain names associated with Missouri, New England, the Dakotas, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, most of which are electoral battleground states that will be vital in 2020.
Kathleen Bartzen Culver, who heads the Center of Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told Snopes that political operatives are free to launch their own news platforms, but it's a problem if they are trying to deceive readers into believing the sites are nonpartisan local news. "I have no problem with advocacy organizations creating content that reinforces the positions they take on public policy issues on the left, right or center. The issue comes in when they're not transparent about that advocacy," Culver said... "The information sphere is so polluted right now that the average citizen has trouble telling what is real and what is not," Culver told Snopes. "I find that very troubling within a democracy."
No. None of what you said is true. Even "Let the GOP have one too." Fox News is a prominent "news" source, wholly run for the Republican party. You have got to be troll to claim to be unaware of Fox. You might not know of Sinclair, which is also a conservative news organization, that has been buying up local stations. They are converting local news programs into propaganda machines for the Republicans. So the right is not hurting for "news" outlets.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
Simply because a website sources some of their news from large national sources does not make it fake news. Local news companies source stories from Reuters and the Associated Press all the time. Why do you think you can find the exact same article in a range of news outlets?
Presuming news to be fake simply because it comes from a different political perspective is hubris at best.
I'm sure a local news service founded by a man with the following description (taken directly from his publisher's website):
Michael Patrick Leahy is an innovative leader in both the tactics and strategy of grassroots conservative new-media activism. As cofounder of Top Conservatives on Twitter, Leahy helped to form the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition....He lives in Tennessee
will be a bastion of fair, accurate and unbiased reporting. And, while I can see him being concerned about local news in TN since he lives there, it is hard to see what ties he may have to Missouri, New England, the Dakotas, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, as mentioned in the summary. Unless he is just really concerned about local news.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
for the party the coined the term 'fake news' (and 'alternative facts'), the Republicans seem to generate more of it than the rest of the world combined.
That's like giving Apple credit for inventing the smart phone, or Edison for inviting the light bulb.
Trump may have popularized the expression "fake news", but it was already beginning to gain a foothold several years before he ran for President. He took a phrase he liked and ran with it.
"Alternative Facts" however- that's ALL the Trump Whitehouse, they came up with that one.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Fortunately you don't need to take their word for it, you can easily confirm that these sites are fake by looking at them yourself. Here are the links:
http://theohiostar.com/
http://tennesseestar.com/
http://theminnesotasun.com/
Notice how they all use the same Wordpress template and have extremely similar content. All lack any information on who owns or operates them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It's not a *conservative* trait. Philosophical conservatism -- that is to say skepticism of Utopian schemes -- has a long and honorable history. Projection is a *radical* trait, which is why radical groups tend to splinter and break down when they're under pressure -- e.g. when they gain power and have to get things done. As their underlying differences are unmasked, they turn on each other ruthlessly.
Conservative *branding* isn't the same thing as conservatism.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Well TBH whoever named it "The Minnesota Sun" clearly knows nothing about Minnesota:
a) Two major papers in the state that everyone knows, regardless of whether the papers themselves are in decline: (Minneapolis) Star Tribune and (St. Paul) Pioneer Press;
a) Minnesota identifies with the North Star. Yes, it gets sunny here but we leave "Sun" for the Southwest US and Florida.
So it's hard to imagine that too many people in MN would even give "The Minnesota Sun" a first glance, much less a second.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_Mountain_Publishing
Have at it. All of the local news sites owned by the same company. You'll see they're a division of an even larger conglomerate. Start going through the sites all owned by them and you'll see they are all strangely similar.
Figure it's easier to just link the wiki page rather than the individual pages, as this provides a clear link that they're all owned by the same company, and also saves me posting a long list of links.
sure, It was pretty dissapointing when it happened. I did not know before then it was just a husband and wife and after they got caught, it then came to life all the photos with high level players in politics, specifically left leaning. While Im digging that up though, read this. Its not political but it is from a left-leaning site that outed them for doing the same pretending a false is a 'maybe true' thing, this time for monsanto.
https://foodbabe.com/do-you-tr...
I find it highly concerning that googling 'snopes fails to report false' that the first 5 hits are articles written BY SNOPES about how non-biased snopes is. Thats like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coup.
heres an earlier forbes article where they outlined other credibility issues with snopes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/k...
crap I hate citing this source, because using a right-leaning source to discredit an alleged left-leaning one is subjective at best... the takeaway is that you'll need to independently verify the claims outlined here..
https://dailycaller.com/2019/0...
it its true then its a very recent excample of what I saw them do a couple years ago. Are you any good at using the wayback machine? I never used it and would need to verify this screenshot that showed they were both on the board of that PAC.
As with Donald Trump's hiding of his grades when asking for Obama to show his, yeah, that's a conservative trait.
Or the President, who has spread memes from Stormfront, saying that the Democrats are the party of antisemitism.
here is one where WaPo attacked their credibility and I wouldnt call WaPo right-leaning at all.
https://www.washingtontimes.co...
That's the Washington Times, not Washington Post. Washington Times was created as the conservative alternative. It was created be Unification's Revered Moon, and a prominent proponent of the Obama birther conspiracy.