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."

Comments

Now there's an old tradition.

[sabbede]

One that goes back to our oldest elections, though I think those papers were mostly focused on slandering opponents.

Re:Now there's an old tradition.

[Archtech]

It's 148 years since Mark Twain wrote this highly relevant satire:

"Running for Governor"

http://twainquotes.com/Galaxy/...

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Re: Now there's an old tradition.

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Re: Now there's an old tradition.

[RedShoeRider]

To add to that, a little WHOIS:

Domain Name: theohiostar.com
Registry Domain ID: 2090314152_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: WHOIS.ENOM.COM
Registrar URL: WWW.ENOM.COM
Updated Date: 2019-01-01T04:37:07.00Z
Creation Date: 2017-01-15T20:10:00.00Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2020-01-15T20:10:53.00Z
Registrar: ENOM, INC.
Registrar IANA ID: 48 Domain Status: clienttransferprohibited https://www.icann.org/epp#clie...
Registrant Name: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
Registrant Organization: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY
Registrant Street: REDACTED FOR PRIVACY

It's the same story for the other two websites. All three are registered though the same registrant.

I realize that's not completely odd, but what news organization has all of their registration information redacted?

Re: Now there's an old tradition.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Now there's an old tradition.

[Cyberax]

ONLY major news organization that does not actively try to twist every word that comes out of his mouth

You mean, the only "news" organization that is willing to overlook his constant lies?

it's kind of funny,

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:it's kind of funny,

[nucrash]

Ironic that they use projection?

As with Donald Trump's hiding of his grades when asking for Obama to show his, yeah, that's a conservative trait.

Re:it's kind of funny,

[bigdavex]

The term "fake news" wasn't invented by Republicans.

Re:it's kind of funny,

[hey!]

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.

Re:it's kind of funny,

[e3m4n]

Actually the rumor was that the reason the transcripts were never released was that he got a foreign student scholarship by claiming to be kenyan. It would have been fuel for the birther movement. Personally, knowing that his mother is a citizen, automatically makes him a citizen. McCain was born in Panama BTW. However, the transcript would be more damning, if true, than actually having been born in kenya. It would have shown some level of fraud in order to get into college. It would have been unclear how that would have been received. There are a lot of people struggling to pay for college. Lying to get a free ride, and potentially displacing someone who was legitimately eligible, would be an integrity problem for a president. Most people kept holding onto how they could invalidate his presidency based on some geographical limitation of where he was born. That would have never survived a SCOTUS challenge since his mother is a citizen, extending his citizenship as a right of birth.

Re:it's kind of funny,

[Kyr Arvin]

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.

Re:it's kind of funny,

[SoftwareArtist]

Who are "the Democrats"? I know a lot of people who belong to the Democratic party. I can't think of a single one I'd describe as a socialist. I haven't seen any polls suggesting they're unusual in that.

Maybe you mean the party leadership. Are you claiming Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are socialists? Seriously??? Sorry, but no. Not even close.

So when you say "the Democrats", I guess you mean some group that doesn't include either the party leaders or most members of the party. That's a very interesting use of language.

Maybe you just don't understand what socialism is. Maybe you somehow got the idea that Elizabeth Warren proposing to break up big tech companies makes her a socialist? It doesn't. If she were a socialist she would want to nationalize them, not break them up. The goal of breaking up monopolies is to increase competition. That's a totally capitalist goal, and basically the opposite of socialism.

WHY is this on /. ?

[Anonymous Coward]

This has nothing to do with nerds. Nor is it news...
Salon is the biggest piece of shit masquerading as journalism out there right next to Mother Jones and The Daily Stormer. Who gives a rat's ass what they think?
Do better, /.

Re:WHY is this on /. ?

[xpiotr]

It's here because it matters.
Fake News sites like this, gives troll accounts a "valid" source to point too.
So when ever "references needed", this will be the answer.

When did slashdot become used as a political site?

[Munky101]

When did slashdot become a politics site where propaganda sources are allowed like salon? Np, we do not want this in our nerd news. Keep this crap on twitter.

Re:So, balance it out a little

[lessthan]

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.

Stop posting this crap on Slashdot.

[satan666]

Why are political news on Slashdot all of a sudden? Actually there has been an increase of this garbage. I don't give a fuck if you are Republican, Democrat, anarchist, whatever, don't post your garbage here. Fuck off already.

Re:The real fake news is the headline

[Nidi62]

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.

Re:Yeah, and CNN-MSNBC-CBS-ABC are liberal fronts

[Nidi62]

Maybe Salon doesn't know this but it been like FOREVER that CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, etc are all in bed with the democrats. Clinton or Obama says something and the media forwards it on as truth but if Bush or Trumps says something they are suddenly obligated to "fact check" and doubt everything the say and filter it to the people with "the Republican is claiming that allegedly water is wet and the sky is blue but we have some political pundits here who disagree with those outrageous claims".

If the Republican's want people to stop accusing them of lying and fact checking everything they could, you know, try to stop lying.

Re: So, balance it out a little

[pecosdave]

You know Fox is basically controlled opposition and that any time one of their, in many cases real conservative hosts, start talking too close to the core about what's wrong they get shit-canned right? Fox news is right-wing news with a restraining bolt.

Re: So, balance it out a little

[omnichad]

If that's restrained, I don't even want to know what they be like totally unhinged.

Re:So, balance it out a little

[e3m4n]

Its probably true, but Snopes is no longer a reliable source. They compromised integrity for partisanship a couple years ago and its going to take a long time to regain credibility. Snopes is supposed to call out misinformation. Deciding to rank certain and provable false claims as a 'we arent sure, its possible but we just dont know' for DNC related stuff was a stupid ass move. If your going to call out misinformation, you have to have a religious level of commitment to the truth, regardless where it leads you. Using influence to sway opinion was never what the site was intended for. Thats an abuse of trust that is hard to regain. I have never seen them call a truth a lie, but I have seen them abuse the in-between-ratings and thats poor journalism if you ask me.

You are right

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct. The GOP managed to...

Get Buzzfeed to run a story that Trump told Cohen to lie to Congress, which CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, ... all ran as well.
They then got them all to run the story on how racist the kids from Covengton were despite overwhelming evidence showing otherwise. Now WaPo and CNN are both being sued for $250 million for these "Fake News" stories.
The GOP followed that up with all those same outlets running the fake Jussie Sommellet story as well.

They are getting good at planting blatantly "Fake News" stories in NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and so on. They have gotten so good at it those news outlets have lost all credibility.

So you are correct GOP has managed to destroy the left's credibility on issues.
OR
The left is so dip shit stupid they can't figure out a fact to save their own lives.

Which is more believable?

Re:You are right

[ilsaloving]

Or maybe you're intentionally confusing ambulance chasing journalism with intentional propaganda.

I've been generally avoiding the news cause I'm sick of of all this, but your post is yet another example of the right trying to muddy the waters in order to establish a false equivalence.

Some quick google searching shows that the Mueller articles in question all discuss things like, "If Buzzfeed's assertions are true..." or "According to Buzzfeed", etc. Most importantly, barely a day later there are new stories referring to how Mueller's office specifically contradicted what was reported previously.

This was ambulence chasing and yes, the media outlets should have known better, but apparently the story was too juicy for them to help themselves.

But as usual, you take one instance and extrapolate that to be standard modus operandi of "the left".

Meanwhile, look at what the right is doing. They have a full feedback machine where bullshit stories are invented out of whole cloth, repeated by major right-wing networks, repeated by *the president*, and suddenly all republicans are treating it as fact. The sheer number of times that this has happened is astonishingly large, and instead of having checks and balances to curb disinformation, you all step over yourselves to embellish the lies further because you care more about feeding your outrage machine than having an informed populace.

And this happens to such an extent that it triggers the truely paranoid into action, like that whole nonsense with the child prostitution thing happening in a pizzaria.

Hell, I've found myself *still* arguing with idiots over the size of the crowd during Trump's inauguration.

This is a fundamental difference between "the left" (which by US standards also includes the centrists) and the right. At least attempts are made at getting the story correct, even if there's an initial WTF moment. The right instead doubles-down on the lie than admits they were wrong.

Re:You are right

[cybrthng]

The "Convington boys" were bused to an anti-abortion march and allowed to wear MAGA hats by their school. Many things failed to create the circumstances that lead to those boys feeling the need to do what they did and none of those failures were the media. Making boys as part of their school field trip decide the fate of women's reproductive rights was failure number one and failure number two as allowing school children to wear MAGA hats and incite the coverage they deserved their own own actions. Why would school bus boys from OK to protest women's reproductive rights and allow them to wear MAGA hats and then let them get involved in making political statements that they then sued to hide? Why would these boys or the school need a PR Firm?

What you are doing is projection. You're blaming others for your own actions as if being a liberal or having liberal media is the problem. The media reported on these kids and if they didn't want to be used for the propaganda they shouldn't have been sent for propaganda.

Not projection, tactics

[rsilvergun]

It's an old Soviet tactic that was borrowed and perfected by a GOP operative named Karl Rove. Take whatever your faults are and accuse your opponent of them. It puts them on the defensive and distracts from you and your problems. It wouldn't work if we had a media that wasn't owned lock, stock and barrel by mega corps but, well, we do.

Re: So, balance it out a little

[skam240]

I think it's funny you pointing to Salon's political bias (which it certainly does have) while making claims of an eminent communist revolution in this country. You either don't understand what communism is or have a personal political bias so far departed from reality that you're consciously choosing to characterize the mild Leftist push the Democrats are actually experiencing as communism.

Re:Can you list some hard examples?

[e3m4n]

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.

Re:Can you list some hard examples?

[e3m4n]

heres an earlier forbes article where they outlined other credibility issues with snopes

https://www.forbes.com/sites/k...

Re: So, balance it out a little

[skam240]

"I think it funny that you believe that AOC is "mild Leftist"."

I think it's funny that you think that AOC is the entirety of the Democratic party and not just one of 235 Democratic house members who represent's only one of New York's 27 congressional districts. Is the entire Republican party libertarian because the people of Kentucky elected Rand Paul to the Senate?

" What they want is to take my money so that the politicians can decide who deserves it."

Every government, no matter where on the political spectrum, does this. It's what governments do and the odds are fairly certain you're in favor of government doing this in some sort of context so you can quit with the delusion that only those on the Left practice what you describe.

Re:Can you list some hard examples?

[e3m4n]

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.

Re:Can you list some hard examples?

[Kyr Arvin]

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.