Tag: Mass Daily News

New on ‘Beat the Press’: Katie, we hardly knew you; plus, covering executions, and AI news sites

Click here or on image to watch on Contrarian Boston (scroll down).

On the all-new “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney,” we analyze the microscopically brief tenure of White House press secretary Katie Zacharia, who lasted just 0.45 Scaramuccis before she was unceremoniously tossed overboard.

In other topics, we look at the debate over whether television should be allowed to cover executions following Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s on-again, off-again plan to livestream the death of the Fort Hood shooter by firing squad; and we check in on two very different AI projects — Mass Daily News, a right-wing propaganda site whose anonymous author recently revealed himself (sub. req.) in a Boston Globe story, and South Shore News, which covers local government in nearly 20 communities. Plus our panel’s Rants and Raves.

Emily was joined by Scott Van Voorhis, the publisher of Contrarian Boston as well as our host; Cosmo Macero, a partner at Seven Letter and a former columnist and editor at the Boston Herald; and me. Our producer extraordinaire is Tonia Magras of Hull Bay Productions.

How an ex-Florida man is flooding Mass. political news with anonymous, right-wing pink slime

If you take a look at Mass Daily News right now, you’ll see a lead story about nearly $50,000 in campaign donations from Eversource executives to Gov. Maura Healey.

It’s hardly a match for Jordan Wolman’s CommonWealth Beacon story suggesting that Healey’s public criticism of Eversource is just an election-season ploy (he’s got the receipts), and it’s merely a rewrite of a Republican Party press release. But it’s not nothing, either. Some press releases deserve to be amplified.

Other stories on the Mass Daily News homepage feature crime, critical stories about undocumented immigrants and a commentary claiming that Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Minogue bested Healey, a Democrat, during their debate moderated by WBZ-TV’s Jon Keller earlier this week.

So what is Mass Daily News? Boston Globe media reporter Aidan Ryan has learned that the man behind the anonymous site is named Simon Pacheco — a former Florida man who registered his company in Wyoming in order to flood the Massachusetts political mediascape with rightwing, AI-enhanced pink slime.

It’s quite a story, and kudos to Ryan for figuring out Pacheco’s role.

Update: Simon Pacheco tells his side of the Mass Daily News story. Naturally, it’s accompanied by an AI image. He says it’s not “pink slime,” and no, it doesn’t meet every criteria. But it’s partly AI-written, and until Saturday it was anonymous. So … pinkish slime? And yes, less pink today than it was before Aidan Ryan identified him.