Hundreds of hyperpartisan sites are masquerading as local news
niemanlab.org
niemanlab.org
Our mission is to build a first-of-its kind media ecosystem in Texas to help get the progressive message out – to give Democrats a media signal.
For another nearby one, I'm struggling to figure out why it is "hyperpartisan":
https://coloradovalleyguide.com/stories
I'm sure that many of the sites fit the "hyperpartisan masquerading as local news" description, but whatever method they are using to classify seems fairly inaccurate.
> we’ve mapped the locations of more than 400 partisan media outlets — often funded and operated by government officials, political candidates, PACs, and political party operatives
The Colorado Valley Guide links to LocalLabs in its footer. Not that we should trust the Wikipedia on anything political, but the article on LocalLabs redirects to Brian Timpone:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Timpone
Further searches on Brian Timpone are strongly suggestive of his political affiliation and that it is managed at a national level.
The Texas Signal is a different situation altogether. If my poking around is reliable, it may actually be a local news site that just happens to be open about its partisanship. I'm not going to go into the details since this poking around involved looking up registrar records (the records are public, but that doesn't imply the domain's owner is a public figure), yet at least one of the people involved appears to be politically active at the local and state level. It is easy to see how a Democrat would use this as a local news source if they are surrounded by partisan Republican news sources.
My read: it's in their interest to seem balanced until the moment that it matters--when covering candidates or policy.
Someone else brought up Facebook -- that's the other thing -- these sites are typically linked or used as sources during election season.
I think the amount of sway these sites has is small, but moderately effective. In a day and age where 70k votes can swing an election in a country of millions, it is just one of many tools in the bucket of lobbyists and political parties.
I'm just so frustrated and exhausted. It's hard not to lose all hope for humanity in times like these.
I totally agree. The only option is to oppose democracy, it's immoral. The unaccountable masses of idiots have done nothing but help enrich and consolidate power for the political class.
It's rather advanced propaganda, almost completely done with insinuation and emotional cues based on lies previously anchored.
Skipping the pre-chewed information sources by going directly to the sources that their trusted sources often mention but do not link to causes an emotional reaction.
> while left-leaning sites prioritize statewide reporting, right-leaning sites are more focused on local reporting,
So they actually are local news, not "masquerading" as such. Way to sensationalize simple "people with political opinions do local news reporting".
I have looked at four sites in their map that are in my neighborhood, one was dead, others contained pretty standard boring local news. No sign of nefarious hyperpartisans masquerading as anything. I didn't analyze all the articles, so maybe they are biased, but not exactly uncommon in news business nowdays. They also make no claim about the location of their writers (and why would I care?) and disclose their affiliations. I could not see any "lying" involved.
> often funded and operated by government officials, political candidates, PACs, and political party operatives
They call it masquerading due to
> We suspect many of the local sites are not based in or actually operating within the communities they serve. Timpone had previously operated “local” news sites using content produced by writers based in the Philippines and using fake bylines
Draw your own conclusions, but please read past the summary.
As for scary "hyperpartisan", what I see is that some right-leaning organizations (and some left-leaning ones) own some news sites. There's not even evidence that it influences the editorial policy in any way (that very well may happen, but the authors don't even bother to provide any evidence), let alone so much that it warrants the "hyper" designation. Also, conflating "funded by" and "operated" adds another level of confusion. If I pay for NYT subscription, it's "funded by" me now. Does it mean I determine NYT editorial policy? Obviously, it is important to see the structure of the funding, and small one-time donation is not the same as whole ownership and operation, and the ownership of right-leaning think tank (e.g. Cato Institute) is not the same as ownership by a political candidate. It comes out as if any news ite owned by someone who has publicized political views is now "hyperpartisan".
So my conclusion is sensationalism based on thinnest of evidence and a lot of murky innuendo.
Why not just say "Hundreds of hyper-conservative sites masquerading as local news?"
By a large margin, most "news" that I've seen that gets any popular attention (through channels with any significant number of consumers) has been of the variety that paints conservatives as being the problem, having unfair advantages, &c.
So what does that tell you about the actual balance of power?
It's entirely predictable.
Withholding that wouldn't be accurate.
95% of these sites are conservative-leaning. That's the story here, and as GP says, implying that this is a problem across a wide ideological spectrum is wrong.
But to your point, we don't know unless we know, and my assumption could be totally wrong.
1) Pareto: where there's a power law based distribution. So it is possible that 5% of sites have more than 50% of impact.
This just means it isn't out of the bounds of possibilities. But we'd have to dig deeper into which sites garner the majority of eyes (though we'd expect a power law in this).
2) Left learning areas tend to be more population dense.
Of course with these two considerations we haven't really made any conclusions. I just want to point out that a small number of sites can reasonably hold the majority of viewership. Which sites those are and which bias they entail, that requires a real analysis. We've just stated that the conjecture isn't impossible.
No. The story there is that hyperpartisan sites are masquerading as local news. That they're mostly from a few conservative companies should be prominently said, but to claim that they're only conservative is obviously incorrect and misleading.
I believe the GP just hadn't read the complete article but merely skimmed, saw five conservative companies and understood "it's all conservative sites".
I don't see anyone in this thread (or the article) claiming that they're "only conservative", do you?
FTA:
>As the map indicates, there are considerably more conservative-leaning sites than liberal-leaning sites. Only 24 of the 445 sites we’ve identified so far are liberal-leaning.
It's 95% conservative sites. Do you dispute that? I think GP was dead-on in their assessment, skimming or not.
In the comment I replied to:
> Why not just say "Hundreds of hyper-conservative sites masquerading as local news?"
As a suggested headline, that would certainly imply they're only conservative. A headline should accurately describe the content. Mentioning that the super majority are conservative would be an improvement, implying that they all are would not be.
> It's 95% conservative sites. Do you dispute that?
I literally quoted the relevant part there, what kind of question is this? Must this site really turn into Twitter? Did you really need a "Ha! Gotcha! Screencapped and Retweeted!!!!!" moment?
Not really sure what the last part of your comment even means.
I said "A" you said "But it's A. Do you dispute that?" as if I hadn't just literally said A. That's very low, and really not something I'd like to see more of on this site.
I would like to see less of whatever this is on this site.
Judging by the strange bedfellows of the conservative movement, maybe Richard Spencer.
Yes, news outlets have a partisan bias, that's pretty much unavoidable, but there's an expectation that they have some degree of independence and that they do actual journalism and analysis.
On the other hand, hyper-partisan outfits are just mouthpieces for their political masters.
Edit: I am not taking a political stance here. Just saying there are news sources left out of this survey.
From the article:
> We suspect many of the local sites are not based in or actually operating within the communities they serve. Timpone had previously operated “local” news sites using content produced by writers based in the Philippines and using fake bylines
I am not taking a political side, just pointing out that this is not a complete survey of all sites, and the article at times suggests conclusions that can't be fairly made from this data unless it was a complete survey.
Another example: there is not a single site on the map in New York City. It would be very surprising if there wasn't at least one partisan local news site in NYC.
And you're replying without evidence that the stuff they didn't measure (and you didn't) must exist, because New England has democrats in it?
And in our case, I believe the situation is even more "interesting": there are a variety of mainstream parties, not only two like in USA. Even though, it's the far right that operate most of such disguised local news websites.
They are invariably full of ads and, not by coincidence, I become aware of such sites mostly by Google suggested content.
> We found that while left-leaning sites prioritize statewide reporting, right-leaning sites are more focused on local reporting
Obviously there are more small, local outlets than large, expansive ones.
This is probably why there have historically not been more deeply conservative papers compared to centrist or liberals let alone 95%.
Its a transparent strategy by a small number of actors to influence people on many fronts.
These liberal sites may touch on statewide issues but just clicking on a few of them, they seem pretty insubstantial and low-effort. They are severely outnumbered by the conservative sites.
> Only 24 of the 445 sites we’ve identified so far are liberal-leaning.
And add "and we didn't look very hard for hyper-left sites"?
Except that it would also be sticking to the facts, no?
If you pour out a bag of marbles and find that all of the marbles are the same color, reporting that all of the marbles were the same color would be reporting just the facts.
But what you're suggesting to do isn't downplaying conclusions, it's downplaying the findings. Instead of reporting that the bag is filled with marbles all of the same color, you'd just report that the bag is filled with marbles. But the marbles all being the same color is still factual, and not reporting that leaves out something potentially important.
I'm not promoting the products of the work as it sits, I'm just happy to see accessible open source propaganda identification efforts. We can't count on service providers who've accommodated low friction access to globally distributed propaganda as part of their business model to respond adequately or appropriately.
The Conservative sites could be placeholders, abandoned attempts, or the content could be hidden (I didn't dig that deep)
But the people funding these are not most people. They are a tiny minority of human beings.
They precieve left leaning government to be an existential threat. Usually because of individualistic money/power struggles, but because it's such a small amount of people, it could be for very varied and weird psychological reasons.
Because of the limits of the democratic system, these people.need to gather large support from the population.
The best way is making larger parts of the populous to precieve left leaning policies not as dumb or not useful, but as a direct existential threat to their core values or even life.
This why Putin weaponized the social media with extreme fake BLM movement posts, leading to the 2016 elections.
Now, when someone is threatening your existence, you instinctively go in to winning at whatever cost mentality.
Just to be clear. I don't think right leaning ideology is inherently corrupt. Far from it. But for some reason it seems that a bigger percentage of the right leaning representatives are more willing to play ball with with big money interest. Which makes them more useful, this more worth the "investment". Of course there are plenty of corrupt left leaning politicians. But they seem less useful or maybe the left leaning dissidents are making it harder to sell out completely.
As aside, identity politics are just perfect for someone who wants to corrupt the representatives of both sides. It distracts media attention from actual legislation which affects everybody. To more general non concrete arguments where populous on both sides feel existentially threatened.
Further more,even if right leaning politician will prove to be troublesome. Left leaning politician corruption could be masked with being nice and progressive, thus appeasing those with "troubling" social ideological leanings. Without actually making much damage to the money people.
It brings in lots of money, and helps push for their party's voters to mobilize and go vote so they have control to push their agendas.. it also makes it easier to find "party line" politicians that won't deviate from the pack on specific key issues they care about.
The further left are infamous for being fractious over increasingly petty and pedantic differences and purity spirals to try to self differentiate (famously satirized in the Life of Brian with the Judean People's Front and variants), the far right or authoritarians in general staying loyal to some "strong" cause even when it is obviously incredibly bad for them to the point where "slugs for salt" is an old joke, and moderates accept any old bullshit if it fits in their norms and justifies themselves in some way even if it is utterly abhorrent and proven morally wrong and foolish later like the community's shameful mistreatment of Ryan White during AIDS panics along with breathlessly accepting any ole bullshit if it "doesn't rock thr boat". Nowhere and nobody is immune to it because we are all human.
Personally, I wouldn't read it but its no different (and maybe slightly more civil in its content) than the news I see in my Apple news feed from NBC or the Chicago Tribune.
Take a look at the map of 2016 election by count.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcRqzU...
Seems like left leaning news sites would only survive if they were focused on the city / state level.
2) Rewrite hundreds of articles into the hyperpartisan version, with the worst click bait titles.
3) Train a deep learning model how to do it.
4) Stand up the beast.
5) Put ads on your website, to pay for it.
This is how you hijack Democracy by using the First Amendment, Technology, and Capitalism.
They are aware of that, but are also aware that local news is different and could exasperate things in terms of misinformation.
Compare this to the top story in the politics section of the Paper of Record, The NYT:
>The QAnon Candidates Are Here. Trump Has Paved Their Way.
Uh huh. THIS is some major record of events they need to document? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/qanon-politic...
Having local news of any kind is nice! It would be nice if they were extremely non partisan, but then, nothing else is anyway, so I'll take what I can get.
They even say,
> We suspect many of the local sites are not based in or actually operating within the communities they serve. Timpone had previously operated “local” news sites using content produced by writers based in the Philippines and using fake bylines. But identifying these locations gives a sense of who the operatives who fund them are targeting with their content.
But you say "Having local news of any kind is nice!" but is it really? What if that 'local news' is written by people on the other side of the world who are lying about their credentials? Is that still nice to have, good local news?
Either way, this article is clearly not 'fake news'.
This article is fake news because you don't agree with their analysis, not because there's something factually inaccurate?
and
You welcome the creation of "local news" sites which are overwhelmingly partisan, typically obscure their ownership and sourcing of stories, do not actually hire local journalists, and some have been shown to be fronts for purely partisan organizations or even disinformation campaigns by foreign powers designed to divide Americans[1].
and
You believe these outlets are in fact preferable to genuine local news organizations - public radio, local papers, broadcast television (Sinclair and some other national operations aside) - or even nothing at all?
I think given the chance, I'd take nothing at all over a concerted disinformation campaign whose purpose is to overwhelm my availability heuristic and yours as well.
[1] - https://www.npr.org/2018/07/12/628085238/russian-influence-c...
I told you what I did: I went to the local news sites on the map for my locality, and clicked on one of each. They were fine! I've used them both before when they turned up in organic search, and found them helpful for local news and events. It's insanely obvious they're partisan; you'd need a lobotomy to not notice this. I would rather that they weren't so partisan, but meanwhile, it's nice to know about local events and get some local news. I encourage you to do the same rather than uncritically regurgitating the nonsensical "news" -or, worse, parsing it into the insane conspiracy theory that FSB is behind the Maine Beacon's article on youth detention centers[1] or the NH Business daily's article on Don Bettencourt's political positions[2]. Your "interpretation" of my above statement is ... interesting, and rather ungenerous to say the least.
[1] https://mainebeacon.com/advocates-renew-call-to-empty-long-c...
[2] https://nhbusinessdaily.com/stories/539820493-donald-bettenc...
So it is fake news... because... it is what they said it was? They are claiming that there are hyper-partisan news sites and you seem to be agreeing. I'm not sure I follow how that makes it fake news.