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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

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      in Elections

      Hunter Biden’s Laptop, Revealed by New York Post, Comes Back to Haunt Him

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      Many claims about the laptop’s contents have not been proved, but it played a role in the prosecution of Mr. Biden over a firearm purchase.When The New York Post first reported in 2020 about a laptop once used by Hunter Biden — which the paper said contained incriminating evidence against him and his father, Joseph R. Biden Jr., who was running for president — it set off a firestorm.Many national news outlets raised questions about the existence of the laptop and the claims about its contents, while major social media platforms limited posts about The Post’s coverage. Conservatives said those reactions were evidence of liberal censorship.Many of the claims made by The Post in its coverage of the laptop, in which the publication sought to link President Biden to corrupt business dealings, have not been proved. But the laptop had enough incriminating evidence to continue to haunt Hunter Biden.The laptop and some of its contents played a visible role in federal prosecutors’ case against the president’s son, who was charged with lying on a firearm application in 2018 by not disclosing his drug use. A prosecutor briefly held up the laptop before the jury in Delaware, and an F.B.I. agent later testified that messages and photos on it and in personal data that Mr. Biden had saved in cloud computing servers had made his drug use clear.On Tuesday, the jury found Mr. Biden, 54, guilty of three felony charges. He will be sentenced at later date.Mr. Biden and his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, arriving at federal court in Wilmington, Del., for a verdict in his trial on Tuesday.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesWe 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 Elections

      Washington Post Leaders Look to Quell Anxiety

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      Will Lewis, the chief executive, pledged to employees to “improve how well I listen,” while Matt Murray, the new editor, tried to reassure staff members.After a tumultuous week at The Washington Post, including the unexpected announcement of a new editor and reports that its chief executive objected to coverage of a news story involving him, leaders at the news organization spent Friday trying to reassure the staff.In a conciliatory memo to employees Friday evening, Will Lewis, the chief executive, acknowledged that “trust has been lost” because of “scars from the past and the back-and-forth from this week.” He urged Post employees to “leave those behind and start presuming the best of intent.”“So, time for some humility from me,” Mr. Lewis wrote. “I need to improve how well I listen and how well I communicate so that we all agree more clearly where urgent improvements are needed and why.”Matt Murray, the new editor, acknowledged the turmoil in the morning news meeting. He praised the newsroom for its work, including an unflinching article about the questions surrounding Mr. Lewis that it published on Thursday night.Mr. Murray, a former editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal, said he knew staff members were talking about the challenges facing The Post but encouraged them to “have your heads held high, feel proud of the journalism,” according to a recording obtained by The New York Times.He said he had recused himself from working on the article about Mr. Lewis.In addition, Patty Stonesifer, the widely respected former interim chief executive of The Post and a close confidante of The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, visited the newsroom on Friday. Ms. Stonesifer helped choose Mr. Lewis as chief executive last year.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 Elections

      Washington Post Shake-Up Renews Attention on U.K. Phone Hacking

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      The newspaper’s new publisher argued against coverage of British phone hacking. Instead, he has invited renewed scrutiny.In 2011, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, News Corporation, faced a grave threat in Britain. Reporters at one of his tabloid newspapers were exposed for hacking the phones of celebrities, private citizens and, in one case, a murdered child for information.Other misdeeds soon emerged, including the revelation that for years, tabloid reporters had paid for information from police officers and government officials.Desperate to stop the scandal and appease prosecutors in Britain and abroad, News Corp tapped Will Lewis, a former editor of The Daily Telegraph, to clean up the mess.He did just that. In his telling, he cooperated with the authorities, revealed wrongdoing and helped set the operation on a new course. Some former colleagues and hacking victims, though, long believed that he helped News Corp cover up the extent of the wrongdoing.Those accusations — nearly 15 years old and unproven — suddenly have fresh currency and have complicated Mr. Lewis’s new job as publisher of The Washington Post.Last month, while Mr. Lewis prepared to restructure the Post newsroom, a judge in London ruled that victims of phone hacking could press ahead with more allegations in their wide-ranging lawsuit. Though Mr. Lewis is not a defendant, the lawsuit asserts that his cleanup was in part a cover-up to protect News Corp leaders.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 Elections

      Sally Buzbee, Washington Post Editor, to Leave Role

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      Matt Murray, the former editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal, will take her place temporarily.The executive editor of The Washington Post, Sally Buzbee, will leave her role, a major and sudden change at one of the nation’s pre-eminent news organizations.Matt Murray, the former editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal, will take her place through the presidential election, the company said on Sunday night. He will start in the role immediately. Robert Winnett, a deputy editor of the Telegraph Media Group in Britain, will take over after the election.Mr. Murray will then transition to a new role, the company said in a news release, building a new division of The Washington Post focused on service and social media journalism.At that point, Mr. Winnett, Mr. Murray and David Shipley, who oversees the opinion section at The Post, will each report independently to Will Lewis, the chief executive and publisher.Ms. Buzbee, 58, steered the newspaper for the last three years, a turbulent period that resulted in award-winning journalism as well as a drop in audience and an exodus of some top talent.The Post has greatly expanded its editing ranks under Ms. Buzbee, announcing the addition of roughly 41 positions in 2021, and revamping its vaunted Style section. It has received six Pulitzer Prize awards since she joined, three of them this year. The paper also shut down its Sunday magazine, a move that upset many of the newspaper’s feature writers.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 Elections

      Line Outside Court in Trump Trial Is Packed, With Seats a Hot Commodity

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      The hottest ticket in New York City is not for a Broadway show, or even to see basketball star Caitlin Clark play against the New York Liberty. Rather it is to get a seat inside Courtroom 1530 to see the criminal trial of former president Donald J. Trump.Increasing numbers of people have traveled to downtown Manhattan in recent weeks to queue for one of roughly half a dozen seats on a wooden bench inside the courtroom. There are another two dozen reserved for the public in an overflow room otherwise packed with reporters.Admittance is free, but securing a good spot in line often comes with a hefty price tag.It did not start this way. Weeks ago, during jury selection, only a handful of people turned up and everyone got a seat. But with each consecutive day the lines have gotten increasingly longer. And people, it seems, are willing to brave any sort of weather. Thursday featured spitting rain.Michael D. Cohen, the central witness in this first criminal trial against an American president, has drawn the longest lines, even though showing up in hopes of seeing a certain witness is a bit of a crapshoot because prosecutors are not giving much notice of who their witnesses might be.People at the front of line say to ensure a seat in the courtroom they have to start lining up the day before.On Thursday morning, a woman who was 12th in line was asking $450 for her spot. Behind her was a lawyer who had paid for hundreds of dollars for line sitters so she and her friend could get into the overflow room. She ultimately paid another $500 for someone else’s spot and got a seat in the overflow room.(Yes, professional line sitters are a thing, and The New York Times has availed itself of their services in the lines reserved for reporters. There are companies that line sit for people. More often it is for concert tickets, not a spot in line at a criminal trial.)Things can get heated. People are, not surprisingly, territorial about their spots and do not take kindly to line jumpers. There have been a few. The crowd typically shames them but police have been hesitant to step in, so a few line jumpers have gotten into the overflow room.For those who do not make it there is a silver lining. There are seats for the public available at the nearby trial of Sen. Robert Menendez, who is charged in a vast international web of corruption. Opening arguments in that trial were on Wednesday. More