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      in US Politics

      Biden says only ‘the Lord almighty’ could make him drop out in pivotal TV interview

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      Joe Biden has insisted that only “the Lord almighty” could persuade him to exit the US presidential race in a potential make-or-break TV interview aimed at quelling a burgeoning rebellion in the Democratic party.In an exchange free from major gaffes but unlikely to appease his critics, Biden was asked by George Stephanopoulos of ABC News how he would feel if he were to remain the nominee and lose to Donald Trump. “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about,” the president replied.In other responses his opponents may see as arrogant or out of touch, the 81-year-old claimed that he is “running the world” and no one is “more qualified” to be president.The interview on Friday came at a critical stretch as the 81-year-old strives to salvage his imperiled re-election campaign after last month’s disastrous debate performance. Four members of Congress have called on Biden to step aside, and it was reported that Mark Warner, who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, is looking to assemble a group of Democratic senators to ask the president to drop his re-election bid.But on Friday, speaking to Stephanopoulos in Madison, Wisconsin, after a fiery campaign rally, the embattled president continued to strike a defiant tone. “Look. I mean, if the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get outta the race,’ I’d get outta the race,” he said, his voice sounding strained after the rally. “The Lord Almighty’s not comin’ down.”Biden insisted that after meeting with Democratic leaders such as Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi and state governors, they continue to back him.Stephanopoulos, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, pressed Biden on what he would do if told that his friends and supporters were concerned that his candidacy would cost Democrats the House of Representatives and Senate.The president replied: “I’m not going to answer that question. It’s not going to happen.”Stephanopoulos had begun the primetime interview by citing Pelosi, who this week questioned whether Biden’s feeble performance represented an episode or a condition.“It was a bad episode,” Biden insisted. “No indication of any serious condition. I was exhausted. I didn’t listen to my instincts in terms of preparing and – I had a bad night.”Stephanopoulos noted that Biden had returned from Europe 12 days before the debate and that he had spent six days at the presidential retreat Camp David. “Why wasn’t that enough rest time, enough recovery time?” he asked.The president replied: “Because I was sick. I was feeling terrible. Matter of fact, the doc’s with me. I asked if they did a Covid test because they’re trying to figure out what was wrong. They did a test to see whether or not I had some infection, you know, a virus. I didn’t. I just had a really bad cold.”Stephanopoulos asked whether Biden had watched the debate afterwards. Instead of giving a firm yes or no, he hedged: “I don’t think I did, no.”The interviewer went on to ask what Biden had been experiencing during the debate and whether he had known how badly it was going. Just as he did on that night, the president zigzagged in his answer from one point to another. He said: “Yeah, look. The whole way I prepared, nobody’s fault, mine. Nobody’s fault but mine.“I – I prepared what I usually would do sittin’ down as I did come back with foreign leaders or National Security Council for explicit detail. And I realised – partway through that, you know, all – I get quoted the New York Times had me down, 10 points before the debate, nine now, or whatever the hell it is.“The fact of the matter is, what I looked at is that he also lied 28 times. I couldn’t – I mean, the way the debate ran, not – my fault, nobody else’s fault, no one else’s fault.”Stephanopoulos challenged Biden that concerns about his fitness for office followed a pattern, citing a recent New York Times article that reported his lapses were becoming more frequent, pronounced and worrisome.Biden said: “Can I run a 110 flat? No. But I’m still in good shape.”Asked whether he would be willing to have an independent cognitive evaluation and release the results to the American people, Biden said: “Look, I have a cognitive test every single day. Every day I’ve had tests. Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning, I’m running the world. And that sounds like hyperbole but we are the essential nation in the world.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe interviewer asked: “Are you sure you’re being honest with yourself when you’re saying you have the mental and physical capacity to serve another four years?”Biden shot back: “Yes, I am because, George, the last thing I want to do is not be able to meet that. I think as some of the senior economist and senior foreign policy specialists say, if I stopped now I’d go down in history as a pretty successful president. No one thought I could get done what we got done.”The 22-minute interview was shown to a national audience on ABC. It was part of a major campaign offensive over the weekend to assuage doubts over Biden’s fitness for office and ability to beat Trump.The Biden campaign’s response to the crisis over the past few days has frustrated many Democrats. Some financial backers are holding off or canceling upcoming fundraisers.And at least four House Democrats have called for him to step down as the nominee: Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, Lloyd Doggett of Texas and Raúl Grijalva of Arizona and Mike Quigley of Illinois are pushing for an alternative. Massachusetts governor Maura Healey said in a carefully worded statement on Friday that Biden now has a decision to make on “the best way forward”.In the interview, Biden dismissed those calls, as well as opinion polls that show he has a low approval rating and claimed that he remains better placed than other candidates to beat Trump. “I don’t think anybody is more qualified to be president or win this race than me,” he said, bristling.Stephanopoulos followed up: “The heart of your case against Donald Trump is that he’s only out for himself, putting his personal interests ahead of the national interest. How do you respond to critics who say that by staying in the race you’re doing the same thing?”Biden responded impatiently: “Oh, come on. I don’t think those critics know what you’re talking about. It’s wrong. Look, Trump is a pathological liar. You ever seen anything Trump did that benefited somebody else and not him?”The president may have just days to make a persuasive case that he is capable of beating Trump. Early reactions to his rallies and interviews have been mixed.John Fetterman, the Democratic senator for Pennsylvania, wrote on the social media platform X: “Democrats need to get a spine or grow a set — one or the other. Joe Biden is our guy.”But David Axelrod, a former strategist for Barack Obama, posted: “The president is rightfully proud of his record. But he is dangerously out-of-touch with the concerns people have about his capacities moving forward and his standing in this race. Four years ago at this time, he was 10 points ahead of Trump. Today, he is six points behind.” More

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      in US Politics

      This Fourth of July, it’s hard to feel optimistic about the US. But I have hope | Margaret Sullivan

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      If you’ve been paying even the slightest bit of attention, you know that the American Experiment took some gut punches over the last week.Joe Biden – long considered the best hope for preventing another disastrous Donald Trump term – had a shockingly bad debate performance, looking and sounding every minute of his 81 years.The tainted supreme court then declared, in essence, that a president is above the law, at least when acting in an official capacity. And that came on top of other high court decisions that have blasted away at the foundations of democracy in the United States.And much of the mainstream news media continued their campaign of false equivalency – treating the president’s age as a worse problem than Trump’s criminality and authoritarian intentions.But on this Fourth of July, I haven’t given up hope that we will right ourselves. And I’m far from alone.There is encouraging news in every one of these troubled spheres – politics, justice and media.I asked one of my favorite thinkers, the author and scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert in how democracies can wither under authoritarian rule, for some help. I talked to others, too, especially those who are protecting the vote, fostering good journalism and working for justice.Here’s what Ben-Ghiat told me: “Part of the reason for so much aggression from the GOP and the courts to take away our rights, including the right to free and fair elections, is because America is becoming more progressive, and Republicans cannot win without lies, threats and election interference, including assistance in that area from foreign powers.”She sees the US participating in “the global renaissance of mass nonviolent protest against authoritarianism” and notes that, in 2017, we saw the biggest protest in the nation’s history – the Women’s March against Trump, which was then surpassed in 2020 by the Black Lives Matter protests, which involved more than 20 million people in multigenerational and multiracial demonstrations.“These mass protest movements had electoral consequences in the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections,” she added, as many women, non-white and LGBTQ+ people were elected to office.Ben-Ghiat is convinced that we are ripe for another round – and the stakes are higher than ever.On the justice front, I’m not suggesting that we somehow set aside the terrible and hugely consequential decision that gives a president – guess who in particular? – immunity for his official acts.But at the same time, the courts, including the jury system, are often functioning admirably, if not flawlessly. Just over a month ago, Trump became the first former US president convicted of felonies. Trump allies who wanted to charge that the courts have been weaponized found it harder to make that argument less than two weeks later when Hunter Biden, too, was convicted in a jury trial.Mainstream journalism, as noted, often disappoints. The moderators of the CNN debate clearly should have been empowered by their network bosses to challenge Trump’s barrage of lies in real time. The stunning New York Times editorial calling for Biden to set aside his campaign for the good of the nation may have been well-reasoned, but it struck me as another example of targeting the president and letting Trump off the hook. To my knowledge, only the scrappy Philadelphia Inquirer has written a similar editorial about Trump.Too much of the politics coverage is out of whack with reality. The media is baying for Biden’s head, but – with some exceptions – seems mostly bemused by Trump or at least habituated to how dangerous he is.But there’s good news in journalism, too. Consider ProPublica’s essential reporting on Justice Clarence Thomas’s rotten ethics. Or the way many news outlets have revealed the threats of Project 2025 – the alarming and detailed plan by Trump allies to dismantle democratic norms should their leader win a second term.I’m also heartened by young journalists who are making their way in a difficult career field.“No matter what problem we’re talking about, good journalism is part of the solution,” said Jelani Cobb, the dean of Columbia Journalism School (where I run a journalism ethics center). “The young journalists whom we have the privilege to work with here are some of the sharpest, most committed and talented that I’ve ever seen.”Their work “will be a ballast for democracy”, Cobb told me, “even amid the giant challenges in front of us right now”.Most of all, I’m moved by the valiant efforts of many ordinary citizens. One friend, active in voter protection efforts, praised “all of the grassroots volunteers working to preserve democracy who I am sure will continue in all the ways possible if Trump wins”. She mentioned the flood of small-dollar donations that followed Biden’s debate debacle, and credited “the courageous judges, court personnel, jurors et al who are working, despite the risks to themselves, to see that justice is served in the cases against Trump”.Will any of this matter when so much is going wrong and when the threats are so great? The screenwriter and former journalist David Simon offered a dour view this week: “Our American experiment is so over.”More aligned with Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s big-picture view and the others quoted here, I remain hopeful, if not optimistic about the future of the United States.On 4 July, at least, let’s remember that we’ve come a long way, and the journey isn’t yet complete.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      in Elections

      How Partisan Media Covered the Trump Immunity Decision

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      Liberal and conservative media outlets alike on Monday gave top billing to the news that the Supreme Court granted former President Donald J. Trump significant immunity from prosecution.But the similarities stopped there.Liberal outlets criticized the ruling as a biased move from a conservative Supreme Court. They said it only heightened the stakes for November’s general election, since the decision complicates the criminal case that accuses Mr. Trump of trying to overturn the last election.Many conservative outlets offered a relatively straightforward assessment of the decision, which left to lower courts to decide which aspects of Mr. Trump’s conduct were protected from prosecution. But several conservative commentators nonetheless celebrated the 6-3 decision and admonished Democrats who opposed it.Here’s how a selection of outlets covered the news:FROM THE LEFTMeidasTouchThe court’s ruling found Mr. Trump was immune from being prosecuted for “official” acts during his presidency, but said he was not immune from being prosecuted for “unofficial” conduct.Such broad immunity was needed to maintain “an energetic, independent executive,” according to the majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. The ruling also said a district court would have to decide what entailed official and unofficial conduct, including Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021. That process would likely delay any trial of Mr. Trump until after November’s election.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on the WikiLeaks plea deal: good for Julian Assange, not journalism | Editorial

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      Julian Assange should never have been charged with espionage by the US. The release of the WikiLeaks founder from custody in the UK is good news, and it is especially welcome to his family and supporters. He is due to plead guilty to a single charge of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defence documents at a hearing early on Wednesday, but is not expected to face further jail time. The court in Saipan, a remote Pacific island which is a US territory, is expected to approve the deal, crediting him for the five years he has already spent on remand in prison.His opportunity to live with his young family comes thanks to Australian diplomacy under the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, who had made clear his desire for a resolution, and the Biden administration’s keenness to get a controversial case off its plate, particularly in an election year. Seventeen of the charges have been dropped. The one that remains, however, is cause for serious alarm. It was the Trump administration that brought this case. But while the Biden administration has dropped 17 of the 18 charges, it insisted on a charge under the 1917 Espionage Act, rather than the one first brought against him of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.This is no triumph for press freedom. Mr Assange’s plea has prevented the setting of a frightening judicial precedent for journalists, avoiding a decision that might bind future courts. Nonetheless, this is the first conviction for basic journalistic efforts under the 1917 act.Using espionage charges was always a bad and cynical move. The case relates to hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as diplomatic cables, which were made public by WikiLeaks working with the Guardian and other media organisations. They revealed appalling abuses by the US and other governments, which would not otherwise have been exposed – and for which no one has been held liable, despite the pursuit of Mr Assange.National security laws are necessary. But it is also necessary to acknowledge that governments keep secrets for bad reasons as well as good. Alarmingly, the Espionage Act allows no public interest defence, preventing defendants from discussing the material leaked, why they shared it, and why they believe the public should know about it. The Obama administration correctly identified the chilling effect that spying charges could have on investigative journalism, and chose not to bring them on that basis. The Biden administration – which proclaims itself a champion of press freedom globally – should not have pursued them. The UK government should never have agreed to Mr Assange’s extradition.The bad news is that the prosecutorial policy is now clear. Federal prosecutors can chalk this one up as a win. It is possible that future administrations could take this case as encouragement to pursue the press under the Espionage Act. It is likely that an emboldened second Trump administration would do so. The Republican candidate has repeatedly cast the media as his “real opponent” and the enemy of the people.The political solution to this lengthy saga is welcome, particularly given the reported impact on Mr Assange’s health after years holed up in London’s Ecuadorian embassy and then in Belmarsh prison. But the threat to press freedom has not ended. Its defence cannot rest either. More

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      in US Politics

      At last, Julian Assange is free. But it may have come at a high price for press freedom | Trevor Timm

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      Julian Assange is on the verge of being set free after the WikiLeaks founder and US authorities have agreed to a surprising plea deal. While it should be a relief to anyone who cares about press freedom that Assange will not be coming to the US to face trial, the Biden administration should be ashamed at how this case has played out.Assange is flying from the UK to a US territory in the Pacific Ocean to make a brief court appearance today, and soon after, he may officially be a free man in his native Australia.The deal is undoubtedly good for Assange, who has been holed up in Belmarsh prison suffering from serious medical problems for the past five years, and stuck in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years prior to that. It’s good for the Biden administration, which avoids the embarrassment of potentially losing its extradition case in the UK high court, but more importantly avoids the Assange case becoming a polarising issue in the election.But is the deal good for press freedom? Not so much. Don’t get me wrong: there’s no doubt the worst fate was avoided and every journalist breathed a sigh of relief that this result did not occur via a court decision. A plea deal does not create an official precedent that a conviction and appeals court ruling would – something that could have potentially binded other courts to rule against journalists in future cases.But it’s hard not to be shaken by the charge the US justice department forced Assange to plea to in order to get his freedom: a conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act, which according to the law, amounts to “receiving and obtaining” secret documents, and “willfully communicating” them “to persons not entitled to receive them”. (In Assange’s case, that means the public). That is a “crime” that journalists at mainstream outlets all over the US commit virtually every day.A court won’t readily be able to cite DoJ v Assange in future rulings, but that doesn’t mean this guilty plea won’t embolden future federal prosecutors with an axe to grind against the press. They will see this case as a success. And it doesn’t mean the legal arms of news outlets won’t now be worried a case can be brought against their own journalists for ordinary journalistic conduct that was once assuredly protected by the first amendment.Just imagine what an attorney general in a second Trump administration will think, knowing they’ve already got one guilty plea from a publisher under the Espionage Act. Trump, after all, has been out on the campaign trail repeatedly opining about how he would like to see journalists – who he sees as “enemies of the people” – in jail. Why the Biden administration would hand him any ammo is beyond belief.So if the Biden administration is looking for plaudits for ending this case, they should get exactly none. They could have dropped this case three years ago when they took control of the DoJ. Every major civil liberties and human rights group in the country repeatedly implored them to. They could have just dropped the case today, with Assange spending the same amount of time in prison, but they felt the need to again emphasise in court documents that they believe obtaining and publishing secret government documents is a crime.Of course, some will say, “oh, Assange got what he deserved,” or “he’s no journalist, why should I care,” as people do whenever you bring up the inconvenient fact that prosecuting Assange will affect countless other journalists. Assange made himself the permanent enemy of millions of Democratic voters after publishing leaked emails from the DNC and Clinton campaign in the run-up to the 2016 election, and many people can’t see past that. But it’s worth repeating that this case had nothing at all to do with 2016. And whether you think Assange is a “journalist” or not, the DoJ wanted him convicted under the Espionage Act for acts of journalism, which would leave many reporters, including at the Guardian, exposed to the same.Now we can only hope this case is an aberration and not a harbinger of things to come.
      Trevor Timm is executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation More

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      in US Politics

      CNN abruptly ends live interview after Trump spokesperson criticizes network

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      CNN abruptly terminated a live interview with Donald Trump’s spokesperson on Monday after she criticised the two journalists whom the network chose to moderate the much anticipated upcoming debate between the former president and Joe Biden.Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign national press secretary, became embroiled in a heated exchange with Kasie Hunt, the presenter of CNN This Morning, after saying Trump would be entering a “hostile environment on this very network” when he debates the incumbent president in Atlanta on Thursday.Asked what strategy Trump would pursue on the debate stage, she said he would be contending “with debate moderators who have made their opinions about him very well known … and their biased coverage of him”.Leavitt’s comments were aimed, without initially naming them, at the moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper. They triggered an immediate reaction from Hunt, who defended her colleagues.“So I’ll just say, my colleagues, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, have acquitted themselves as professionals as they have covered campaigns and interviewed candidates from all sides of the aisle,” Hunt said. Citing analysts of previous debates, she added: “If you’re attacking the moderators, you’re usually losing.”Hunt then tried to steer Leavitt back on to the topic of the debate, asking what the Trump team expected from Biden.Leavitt, however, refused to be deflected. “Well, first of all, it would take someone five minutes to Google ‘Jake Tapper Donald Trump’ to see Jake Tapper has consistently …” she began, before Hunt cut her off.“Ma’am, we’re going to stop this interview if you’re going to keep attacking my colleagues,” Hunt said.The two then talked over each other, with Leavitt appearing to relish the exchange by grinning broadly. As Hunt repeated her threats to end the interview, Leavitt said: “I am stating facts that your colleagues have stated in the past …”At that point, Hunt ended the exchange, waving her hand in an apparent signal that Leavitt should be taken off air. “OK, I’m sorry, guys – we’re going to come back out to the panel,” Hunt said.Addressing Leavitt, she added: “Karoline, thank you very much for your time. You are welcome to come back at any point. She is welcome to come back and speak about Donald Trump.”Leavitt’s complaints may have been part of a deliberate strategy to gently lower expectations ahead of Thursday’s debate, which is taking place under conditions seen by many as more likely to favour Biden than Trump.Microphones will be muted when it is the opposing candidate’s turn to speak – a measure adopted to prevent the chorus of interruptions that Trump aimed at Biden during the first presidential debate between the pair in September 2020.The exchange will also take place in a TV studio minus a live audience providing the kind of partisan atmosphere that many analysts believe energises Trump, who lost the 2020 race to Biden four years after he won the presidency.But the questioning of the impartiality of Tapper and Bash may also date back to their comments about the infamous 2020 debate, moderated by the then Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, who was widely believed to have lost control.Bash described the event, live on air, as “a shitshow” while Tapper called it “a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck”.He added: “We’ll talk about who won the debate, who lost the debate … One thing for sure, the American people lost.”Trump, having for months mocked Biden’s supposed cognitive decline, has suddenly started talking up his debating skills. The former president calling Biden “a worthy debater” in a podcast with a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, adding: “I don’t want to underestimate him.”In a speech in Philadelphia over the weekend, Trump described Biden’s likely debate performance in more colourful – though less complimentary – terms, suggesting that Biden was going to take performance-enhancing drugs after undergoing extensive preparation.“Right now, Crooked Joe has gone to a log cabin to ‘study,’” he said. “He’s sleeping now, because they want to get him good and strong. So a little before debate time, he gets a shot in the ass.” More

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      in US Politics

      Deluge of ‘pink slime’ websites threaten to drown out truth with fake news in US election

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      Political groups on the right and left are using fake news websites designed to look like reliable sources of information to fill the void left by the demise of local newspapers, raising fears of the impact that they might have during the United States’ bitterly fought 2024 election.Some media experts are concerned that the so-called pink slime websites, often funded domestically, could prove at least as harmful to political discourse and voters’ faith in media and democracy as foreign disinformation efforts in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.According to a recent report from NewsGuard, a company that aims to counter misinformation by studying and rating news websites, the websites are so prolific that “the odds are now better than 50-50 that if you see a news website purporting to cover local news, it’s fake.”NewsGuard estimates that there are a staggering 1,265 such fake local news websites in the US – 4% more than the websites of 1,213 daily newspapers left operating in the country.“Actors on both sides of the political spectrum” feel “that what they are doing isn’t bad because all media is really biased against their side or that that they know actors on the other side are using these tactics and so they feel they need to,” said Matt Skibinski, general manager of NewsGuard, which determined that such sites now outnumber legitimate local news organizations. “It’s definitely contributed to partisanship and the erosion of trust in media; it’s also a symptom of those things.”Pink slime websites, named after a meat byproduct, started at least as early as 2004 when Brian Timpone, a former television reporter who described himself as a “biased guy” and a Republican, started funding websites featuring names of cities, towns and regions like the Philly Leader and the South Alabama Times.Timpone’s company, Metric Media, now operates more than 1,000 such websites and his private equity company receives funding from conservative political action committees, according to NewsGuard.The Leader recently ran a story with the headline, “Rep Evans votes to count illegal aliens towards seats in Congress.”In actuality, Representative Dwight Evans, a Democrat, did not vote to start counting undocumented immigrants in the 2030 census but rather against legislation that would have changed the way the country has conducted apportionment since 1790.That sort of story is “standard practice for these outlets”, according to Tim Franklin, who leads Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative, which researches the industry.“They will take something that maybe has just a morsel of truth to it and then twist it with their own partisan or ideological spin,” Franklin said. “They also tend to do it on issues like immigration or hot-button topics that they think will elicit an emotional response.”A story published this month on the NW Arkansas News site had a headline on the front page that reported that the unemployment rate in 2021 in Madison county was 5.1% – even though there is much more recent data available. In April 2024, the local unemployment rate was 2.5%.“Another tactic that we have seen across many of this category of sites is taking a news story that happened at some point and presenting it as if it just happened now, in a way that is misleading,” Skibinski said.The left has also created websites designed to look like legitimate news organizations but actually shaped by Democratic supporters.The liberal Courier Newsroom network operates websites in Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Michigan and Nevada, among other states, that – like the conservative pink slime sites – have innocuous sounding names like the Copper Courier and Up North News. The Courier has runs stories like “Gov Ducey Is Now the Most Unpopular Governor in America,” referring to Doug Ducy, the former Republican Arizona governor.“In contrast, coverage of Democrats, including US President Joe Biden, Democratic Arizona Gov Katie Hobbs, and US Sen Mark Kelly of Arizona, is nearly always laudatory,” NewsGuard stated in a report about Courier coverage.Tara McGowan, a Democratic strategist who founded the Courier Newsroom has received funding from liberal donors like Reid Hoffman and George Soros, as well as groups associated with political action committees, according to NewsGuard.“There are pink slime operations on both the right and the left. To me, the key is disclosure and transparency about ownership,” said Franklin.In a statement, a spokesperson for the Courier said comparisons between its operations and rightwing pink slime groups were unfair and criticized NewsGuard’s methodology in comparing the two.“Courier publishes award-winning, factual local news by talented journalists who live in the communities we cover, and our reporting is often cited by legacy media outlets. This is in stark contrast to the pink slime networks that pretend to have a local presence but crank out low-quality fake news with no bylines and no accountability. Courier is proudly transparent about our pro-democracy values, and we carry on the respected American tradition of advocacy journalism,” the spokesperson said.While both the left and the right have invested in the pink slime websites, there are differences in the owners’ approaches, according to Skibinski.The right-wing networks have created more sites “that are probably getting less attention per site, and on the left, there is a smaller number of sites, but they are more strategic about getting attention to those sites on Facebook and elsewhere”, Skibinski said. “I don’t know that we can quantify whether one is more impactful than the other.”Artificial intelligence could also help site operators quickly generate stories and create fake images.“The technology underlying artificial intelligence is now becoming more accessible to malign actors,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania communications professor and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, which publishes Factcheck.org. “The capacity to create false images is very high, but also there is a capacity to detect the images that is emerging very rapidly. The question is, will it emerge rapidly with enough capacity?”Still, it’s not clear whether these websites are effective. Stanford University reported in a 2023 study that engagement with pink slime websites was “relatively low” and little evidence that living “in a news desert made people more likely to consume pink slime”.The Philly Leader and the NW Arkansas News both only have links to Facebook accounts on their websites and have less than 450 followers on each. Meanwhile, the Copper Courier and Up North News have accounts on all the major platforms and a total of about 150,000 followers on Facebook.Franklin said he thinks that a lot of people don’t actually click links on social media posts to visit the website.“The goal of some of these operators is not to get traffic directly to their site, but it’s to go viral on social media,” he said.Republican lawmakers and leaders of the conservative news sites the Daily Wire and the Federalist have also filed a lawsuit and launched investigations accusing NewsGuard of helping the federal government censor right-leaning media. The defense department hired the company strictly to counter “disinformation efforts by Russian, Chinese and Iranian government-linked operations targeting Americans and our allies”, Gordon Crovitz, the former Wall Street Journal publisher who co-founded NewsGuard, told the Hill in response to a House oversight committee investigation. “We look forward to clarifying the misunderstanding by the committee about our work for the Defense Department.”To counter the flood of misinformation, social media companies must take a more active role in monitoring such content, according to Franklin and Skibinski.“The biggest solution to this kind of site would be for the social media platforms to take more responsibility in terms of showing context to the user about sources that could be their own context. It could be data from third parties, like what we do,” said Skibinski.Franklin would like to see a national media literacy campaign. States around the country have passed laws requiring such education in schools.Franklin also hopes that legitimate local news could rebound. The MacArthur Foundation and other donors last year pledged $500m to help local outlets.“I actually have more optimism now than I had a few years ago,” Franklin said. “We’re in the midst of historic changes in how people consume news and how it’s produced and how it’s distributed and how it’s paid for, but I think there’s still demand for local news, and that’s kind of where it all starts.” More

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      in Elections

      Will Lewis Is Said to Have Used Stolen Records as Editor in U.K.

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      Years before becoming the Post’s publisher, Will Lewis assigned an article based on stolen phone records, a former reporter said.The publisher and incoming editor of The Washington Post used fraudulently obtained phone and company records in newspaper articles as journalists in London, according to a former colleague, the published account of a private investigator and an analysis of newspaper archives.Will Lewis, The Post’s publisher, assigned one of the articles in 2004 as business editor of The Sunday Times. Another was written by Robert Winnett, whom Mr. Lewis recently announced as The Post’s next executive editor.The use of deception, hacking and fraud is at the heart of a long-running British newspaper scandal, one that toppled a major tabloid in 2010 and led to years of lawsuits by celebrities who said that reporters improperly obtained their personal documents and voice mail messages.Mr. Lewis has maintained that his only involvement in the controversy was helping to root out problematic behavior after the fact, while working for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.But a former Sunday Times reporter said on Friday that Mr. Lewis had personally assigned him to write an article in 2004 using phone records that the reporter understood to have been obtained through hacking.After that story broke, a British businessman who was the subject of the article said publicly that his records had been stolen. The reporter, Peter Koenig, described Mr. Lewis as a talented editor — one of the best he had worked with. But as time went on, he said Mr. Lewis changed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More