Political Propaganda Disguised As Local News Is Just So Hot Right Now
from the disinformation-nation dept
For decades, academics have been trying to warn anybody who’d listen that the death of your local newspaper and the steady consolidation of local TV broadcasters has created either “news deserts,” or local news reporting that’s mostly just low-calorie puffery and simulacrum. Despite claims that the “internet would fix this,” fixing local news just wasn’t profitable enough, so the internet… didn’t.
Those same academics will then tell you that the end result is an American populace that’s decidedly less informed and more divided, something that not only has a measurable impact on electoral outcomes, but paves the way for more state and local corruption (since fewer journalists are reporting on stuff like local city council meetings or local political decisions).
But that’s just the start of the problem. Every six months or so, a news report will emerge showing how all manner of political propagandists and bullshit artists have rushed to fill the vacuum created by longstanding policy failures and our refusal to competently fund local journalism at scale.
These reports have repeated noted that increasingly, what uninformed Americans think is local news is actually just political or corporate propaganda. It’s something the original Deadspin highlighted in that popular Sinclair Broadcasting video a few years back:
More recently, outlets like the Washington Post and NPR have documented how political operatives are increasingly creating free, fake “pink slime” local newspapers that look like the kind of newspapers and local news websites locals are used to, but are just propaganda designed to mislead and misinform, usually to the benefit of a local politician or company.
While some Democratic politicians have embraced the tactic, researchers say the overwhelming majority of the efforts are the product of Republican operatives who’ve increasingly embraced conspiracy theories and propaganda to try and counter unfavorably shifting electoral demographics:
[Pri Bengani, a senior researcher at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University] notes the difference in scale. She counts 64 such pro-Democratic newspapers and news sites. That’s equal to about 5% of the right-wing publications she has been monitoring.
Last week the Washington Post profiled how top Republican political campaigns in Illinois used a private online portal last year to directly shape coverage and request favorable stories and op-eds via a large network of “media outlets” that present themselves as local newspapers, but, well, aren’t:
Screenshots show that the password-protected portal, called Lumen, allowed users to pitch stories; provide interview subjects as well as questions; place announcements and submit op-eds to be “published verbatim” in any of about 30 sites that form part of the Illinois-focused media network, called Local Government Information Services.
The portal was created by a man the Post says pretends to be helping to fix local news, but, well, isn’t:
The network is run by Brian Timpone, a businessman and former television broadcaster who told federal regulators in 2016 that his publishing company was filling the void left by the decline of community news, “delivering hundreds and sometimes thousands of local news stories each week.” He did not respond to requests for comment.
While the portal was widely used by Republicans in the state to influence voters, the Post says that Democratic politicians weren’t invited and didn’t even know of the portal’s existence. The end result, again, is a flood of websites (and sometimes actual, physical papers passed around for free) designed to look like local news, despite being anything but. . ."
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