Follow the money: Right-wing funding of ‘pink slime’ websites tracked in new study

Photo (cc) 2016 by Kurayba

Previously published at GBH News.

Here are a few stories you missed if you haven’t been perusing the North Boston News: a report that the libertarian Cato Institute has given Gov. Charlie Baker a “D” for fiscal management; a claim by the Tax Foundation that the marginal tax rate for Massachusetts residents could rise to 54.34% if President Joe Biden’s tax proposal becomes law; and an interview with a voter from Salem on why she casts her ballot on the basis of “values.”

All of these prominently featured stories, by the way, are from last fall. But lest you think I’ve merely stumbled upon a ghost website, there are also a number of nearly identical reports from just this past week on teachers from Peabody, Lynn, Andover and other communities who have pledged to teach critical race theory in their classrooms.

So what weird manner of website is this? And where is North Boston, anyway?

The answer to the first question is it’s part of Metric Media, a network of some 1,200 websites in all 50 states that purport to be sources of local news. In fact, they are right-wing propaganda projects funded by wealthy conservative interests with ties to the Tea Party movement and a Catholic group that spent nearly $10 million in an effort to defeat President Joe Biden last fall, to name just two of many examples. And there are 14 of these sites in Massachusetts alone.

As for the second question — well, I can’t help you. North of South Boston? South of the North End? East of the sun and west of the moon?

These sites are sometimes called “pink slime,” no doubt because the head of Metric Media, Brian Timpone, was involved in an earlier venture nearly a decade ago that was also referred to as “pink slime.” That project, Journatic, produced local content for newspapers using grossly underpaid, out-of-town reporters — including cheap Filipino workers who wrote articles under fake bylines.

Metric Media, by contrast, is a political play. Right-wing interests give money through a series of interlocking organizations in return for publishing indoctrination disguised as local news. And if the out-of-date content makes sites like the North Boston News seem harmless, well, just wait until 2022, when the mid-term election campaigns start heating up and the websites spring back to life.

Priyanjana Bengani, the author of a major new report on pink-slime sites published by the Tow Center at the Columbia Journalism School, puts it this way: “Increasingly, we are seeing political campaigning which uses news as a cloak for campaigning activities potentially further undermining trust in legitimate local news outlets. For such operations to be successful, the network does not have to be widely read or deliver broad impact, it simply has to gnaw away at the edges of the consciousness of the voting public.”

The phenomenon has been called out before, most notably in a New York Times story last year. And it is not exclusively the province of right-wingers; as the Times reported, there are some Democratic-leaning sites as well. But the overwhelming preponderance of pink slime is on the right, with Timpone the biggest player.

The study that Bengani oversaw, published in two parts by the Columbia Journalism Review, comprises a blizzard of details — related ventures, a multiplicity of business partners and a range of political players. Her team relied on specialized software, IRS filings, Facebook and Google ad libraries and an internal analytics tool to ultimately trace the spiderweb of connections between Metric Media and right-wing interests.

Consider one such relationship: Local Government Information Services, or LGIS, is a collaboration between Timpone and Illinois right-wing activist Dan Proft. One of Proft’s associates at LGIS is John Tillman, who, according to IRS filings, has been involved in multiple organizations that have paid Timpone’s various groups. Tillman’s financial backing, in turn, has come from wealthy Illinois interests as well as foundations affiliated with the Koch, Mercer and Uihlein families.

Of course, the Kochs are already well known. The Mercers came to prominence during the Trump era as backers of Breitbart.com and Steve Bannon. The Uihleins, though, are new to me and maybe to you as well. They shouldn’t be. According to a 2018 profile in The New York Times, Liz and Dick Uihlein are “the most powerful conservative couple you’ve never heard of,” spending tens of millions of dollars “to advance a combative, hard-right conservatism, from Washington to the smallest town.”

Another organization with ties to Timpone’s sites is the Convention of States, affiliated with Mark Meckler, who in turn appears to have what Bengani refers to as a “co-branding” relationship with Metric Media. Meckler is a founder of the Tea Party Patriots and became interim chief executive of Parler, the right-wing Twitter alternative, after the original chief executive was removed following the Jan. 6 insurrection. The Convention of States has called for a constitutional convention “to dramatically restrict the power of the federal government.”

I could go on, but you get the idea. What we are talking about, essentially, is a vast pay-to-play scheme, with right-wing organizations funneling money to Timpone in return for being allowed to publish on his multifarious networks. I don’t know how effective it is; the examples I’ve looked at are pretty thin gruel compared to the weaponized propaganda you find at Fox News or Newsmax.

Unlike Fox or Newsmax, though, Metric Media flies under the radar, publishing its partners’ messages on sites that purport to be a solution to the local news crisis. In that respect it’s like Sinclair Broadcasting, whose 185 television stations in 86 U.S. markets sprinkle right-wing political content into local newscasts.

The alternative to pink slime is more nutritious fare — real local news that informs us and grounds us in our communities. The problem is that there is a lot less of that than there used to be.

And if that doesn’t change, we may all find ourselves living in North Boston.

A federal bill to help local news organizations may fall victim to D.C. dysfunction

The U.S. Capitol. Photo (cc) 2013 by Mark Fischer.

Update: And it’s back.

Original item: You can never take anything for granted. Until recently, though, it seemed like a reasonably good bet that Congress would pass the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, which would provide tax credits for subscribers, publishers and advertisers for five years. The idea was to bolster the bottom line of community newspapers, radio stations and television outlets while giving them some time to figure out a path to financial sustainability.

Last week, though, the House dropped the $1 billion measure from its version of the reconciliation bill. So now it’s up to the Senate to restore it to the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better legislation, meaning that the fate of local journalism rests in the unsteady hands of Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

Rick Edmonds of Poynter, who has all the details, wrote that the bill now “faces a giant hurdle” — and that was on Tuesday, before the election returns from Virginia panicked the already-jumpy Democrats. You’d like to think that the Republican resurgence would focus the Democrats’ minds on the need to get something done, but it will probably have the opposite effect. And with Manchin and Sinema, who knows?

I’m what you might call a skeptical supporter of the legislation. Although the assistance would be indirect enough not to threaten journalistic integrity, I’m troubled by the prospect of corporate chain owners lining up at the trough. Ideally, federal help should foster independent local news organizations while letting the very owners who helped create this mess figure things out for themselves.

Still, it’s worth giving it a try on a temporary basis. As Steven Waldman, chair of the Rebuild Local News Coalition, puts it, “The cost is miniscule compared to the rest of the Build Back Better package — less than 0.1% of its total. But this provision is the only thing in the bill that would help save democracy.”

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Linking reconsidered

Photo (cc) 2013 by liebeslakritze

Although I started blogging in 2002, the first regular column that I ever wrote for a digital publication was for The Guardian. From 2007 until 2011, I produced a weekly commentary about media, politics and culture that was not much different from what I write now for GBH News. What was new was that, for the first time, I could embed links in my column, just as if I was blogging. I did — liberally. (Only later did my editor tell me that the software he used stripped out all the links I had put in, which meant that he had to restore them all by hand. And this was at one of the most digitally focused newspapers on the planet.)

Links have become a standard part of digital journalism. So I was surprised recently when Ed Lyons, a local political commentator who’s an old-fashioned moderate Republican, posted a Twitter thread denouncing links. It began: “I hereby declare I am *done* with hyperlinks in political writing. Pull up a chair and let me rant about how we got to this ridiculous place. What started off as citation has unintentionally turned into some sort of pundit performance art.”

https://twitter.com/mysteriousrook/status/1446663128352280579

The whole thread is worth reading. And it got me thinking about the value of linking. Back when everything was in print, you couldn’t link, of course, so opinion columns — constrained by space limitations — tended to include a lot of unattributed facts. The idea was that you didn’t need to credit commonly known background material, such as “North Dakota is north of South Dakota.” Sometimes, though, it was hard to know what was background and what wasn’t, and you didn’t want to do anything that might be perceived as unethical. When linking came along, you could attribute everything just by linking to it. And many of us did.

In his thread, Lyons also wrote that “it is my opinion that nobody visits any of these links. I think readers see the link and say oh well that must be true.” I agree. In fact, I tell my students that no one clicks on links, which means that they should always write clearly and include all the information they want the reader to know. The link should be used as a supplement, not as a substitute. To the extent possible, they should also give full credit to the publication and the writer when they’re quoting something as well as providing a link.

I agree with Lyons that links ought to add value and not just be put in gratuitously. And they certainly shouldn’t be snuck in as a way of whispering something that you wouldn’t want to say out loud. The classic example of that would be a notorious column a couple of years ago by Bret Stephens of The New York Times, who wrote that the intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews might be genetically superior — and backed it up with a link to a study co-authored by a so-called scientist who had been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white nationalist and a eugenicist. Stephens’ assertion was bad enough; his citation was worse, even if few people read it.

One of the most successful self-published writers currently is the historian Heather Cox Richardson. I’ve noticed that she leaves links out of her Substack essays entirely, posting them at the bottom instead. Here’s an example. I’m not going to do that, but it seems to be a decent compromise — showing her work while not letting a bunch of links clutter up her text.

In any event, I don’t expect you to follow the links I include in my writing. They’re there if you want to know more, or if you want to see if I’m fairly characterizing what I’m describing. At the very least, Lyons has reminded me of the value of including links only when they really matter.

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Details emerge on Globe contract

Don Seiffert of the Boston Business Journal has some details on the proposed contract settlement between the Boston Newspaper Guild and Boston Globe management, news that I broke here on Friday afternoon. This is a huge step forward for the Globe, as three years of talks had become increasingly contentious.

As Seiffert notes, the two big takeaways are that management won on seniority and the union won on a clause that keeps the contract in effect in case the owners, John and Linda Henry, sell — although I think he’s on target in observing that management “may have used the threat of taking away that provision mostly in order to obtain other concessions from the union.”

Julie Reynolds on Alden and the botched vote that gave it control of Tribune

On our latest “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I interview the investigative reporter Julie Reynolds, the scourge of Alden Global Capital. Reynolds gives us the lowdown on Tribune Publishing’s legally dubious vote to sell its nine major-market newspapers to the hedge fund as well as Alden’s relationship with Cerberus Capital Management, the “shadow bank” that helped finance that acquisition.

Other topics include Rocky, Bullwinkle and pink slime. You’ll find more details — and information on how to subscribe to the podcast — right here.

DeSantis allies block professors from testifying against voter-suppression law

Sledd Hall, University of Florida. Photo (cc) 1993 by Steven Martin.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had a problem. Three University of Florida professors wanted to serve as expert witnesses for the plaintiffs in a lawsuit aimed at overturning the state’s new law restricting the right to vote.

But then the public university’s administration told the three that they would not be allowed to take part in the case. Problem solved.

This mind-blowing breach of academic freedom was reported by Michael Wines in today’s New York Times. Now, the ban may not hold. Wines interviews experts who say that it certainly violates guarantees of academic freedom and may violate the First Amendment as well.

But DeSantis and his minions have never let such niceties stand in their way. In June, he signed a bill that will require the state’s public colleges and universities to conduct an intrusive survey into the beliefs of students, faculty and staff. A month before that, he turned his signing of the voter-suppression bill into an exclusive event for Fox News. Both of those actions were clear violations of the First Amendment.

Then again, what does DeSantis care? He’s running for president, and there’s nothing more effective for a Republican politician than to attack academics and the media.

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A three-year union contract impasse at The Boston Globe may finally be ending

The Boston Newspaper Guild’s seemingly endless negotiations with Boston Globe management may finally be coming to a conclusion. According to an email I received from a trusted source, the two sides have reached a “full, comprehensive tentative agreement” that will most likely be put to a vote in mid-November. Union members have worked without a contract since the end of 2018; the proposed agreement would be for three years.

“This has been a long and difficult struggle,” according to an email sent to the membership. “Thanks in part to the vocal and active support we received from many of you, we have succeeded in holding onto some of the most important rights and protections the company sought to remove.”

I am not going to quote any further from the email. It’s a confidential document, and it’s newsworthy only to Guild members. Besides, it presents only one side’s assessment of the pros and cons of the agreement.

Nevertheless, this represents a huge step forward for Globe staff members and for the news organization itself.

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Recriminations begin in school’s decision to uninvite Nikole Hannah-Jones

Nikole Hannah-Jones. Photo (cc) 2018 by Associação Brasileira de Jornalismo Investigativo.

That didn’t take long. The head of the elite Middlesex School in Concord has taken what is being described as a “leave of absence” just a little more than a week after reports that the school had rescinded a speaking invitation to Nikole Hannah-Jones, the New York Times journalist and Howard University professor who created The 1619 Project.

The Boston Globe’s Amanda Kaufman writes that the high-priced prep school is launching an “independent review,” according to a letter to parents from the board of trustees. Noah Kirsch has a good overview of the past week’s contretemps at The Daily Beast.

The Middlesex meltdown came after Hannah-Jones made public that her invitation to speak during Black History Month had been withdrawn. David Beare, the head of school, told the Globe that he and other school officials “were concerned that individuals from outside our community might inadvertently distract from the insights and perspective that she intended to share.”

From the moment Beare made his ill-advised announcement, it was obvious that this would end badly for him. The faculty signed a letter of protest and the trustees objected, including Hannah-Jones’ Times colleague Bret Stephens, a critic of The 1619 Project.

We still don’t know how the decision to uninvite Hannah-Jones came about, and I hope the Globe and others will keep digging.

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The New Yorker examines the controversial career of the L.A. Times’ celebrity owner

Patrick Soon-Shiong. Photo (cc) 2018 by Steve Devol.

The New Yorker has published a long profile of Patrick Soon-Shiong, the celebrity surgeon who moonlights as the problematic owner of the Los Angeles Times. Most of Stephen DeWitt’s article focuses on how Soon-Shiong became a billionaire — which appears to be based on a combination of brilliance and shady business practices. DeWitt writes:

Few figures in modern medicine have inspired as much controversy as Soon-Shiong. “He gets very enthusiastic, and sometimes he might exaggerate,” Hentz said. “He can embellish a little.” [Kate Hentz is the daughter of Lee Iacocca, whose first wife died of Type 1 diabetes and who was an important backer of Soon-Shiong’s work.] Outcomes for his diabetes treatment were disappointing, and one case ended tragically. While pursuing this therapy, he also began researching chemotherapy. At the center of his fortune is a cancer treatment that costs more than a hundred times as much as another drug, available as a generic, that is prescribed for some of the same conditions. Soon-Shiong has been repeatedly accused of financial misrepresentation, self-dealing, price gouging, and fraud. He has been sued by former investors and business partners; he has been sued by other doctors; he has been sued by his own brother, twice; he has been sued by Cher.

There’s a little bit on Soon-Shiong’s ownership of the Times and The San Diego Union-Tribune. I love this quote from Norman Pearlstine, the editor Soon-Shiong brought on board to right the ship after years of bad ownership: “He made the acquisition with very little due diligence, because he thought that it had to be easier than curing cancer. I’m not sure whether he still believes that.”

To Soon-Shiong’s credit, he has made some investments in his papers, although his interest seems to have wavered from time to time. His choice of Kevin Merida, late of ESPN and The Washington Post, as Pearlstine’s successor was a good one. Soon-Shiong also enabled Alden Global Capital to acquire Tribune Publishing earlier this year, which is unforgivable. But he saved the L.A. Times — at least for now — and that’s an important legacy.

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