"In 2021, Americans were 17 points more likely to say they trust reporting by local news organizations 'a great deal' or 'quite a lot' than to trust reporting by national news organizations," notes a survey done by Gallup and the Knight Foundation.
The rapid consolidation of the news industry has adversely affected the level of trust in the news Americans are consuming.
In recent years, hundreds of millions of dollars in new investment poured into local media in what appears to be a salutary injection of faith in the power of the community or regional press.
While conservative donors also support news outlets, their contributions are far smaller than those coming from the left - contributions large enough to radically remake the local news landscape.
Its stated mission is "Hard-hitting reporting and commentary to change the political debate." The creation of The American Journalism Project, which describes its mission as "Venture philanthropy," has committed $55 million to "Rebuilding local news." RealClearInvestigations reached out to States Newsroom, National Trust For Local News, American Journalism Project, and Courier Newsroom.
Meet the Funders While not all the funding sources for these projects are expressly partisan, to the extent the funding of these new local journalism initiatives is publicly known, some of the biggest donors and foundations on the progressive left are closely associated with them.
The MacArthur Foundation in addition to its $500 million Press Forward initiative, also provided funding for the National Trust for Local News and The American Journalism Project.
The MacArthur Foundation also supports the National Trust for Local News, which has also received financial support from two of the largest sources of left-wing political funding - the Tides Foundation and the Open Society Foundations.
According to NBC News, between 2020 and 2023, "Soros' contributions to political campaigns and causes since January 2020 [amount] to roughly half a billion dollars - at the least - most of it steered through dark money nonprofit groups and going largely toward political causes aligned with the Democratic Party." In addition to funding the National Trust for Local News, Soros also has the power to influence local news consumption after his family office recently purchased a large stake in 227 radio stations across the U.S. Both the National Trust for Local News and States Newsroom have received funding from controversial Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, who has spent nearly half a billion dollars on American left-wing causes.
Although the new owner said he had no plans to politicize the news and wanted "To return the paper to localism," NPR claimed his purchase of the paper "Sparked outrage and bafflement" among "Some Baltimore residents." Commentary of this sort rarely attends the acquisition or major financial support of a media source by wealthy individuals and outfits on the left.
A growing concern is that the content of these new progressive donor-funded local news sites slants liberal in ways that many of the old independently owned regional newspapers that were accountable to their subscribers for revenue did not.
For years now, Courier has been running ersatz news websites in swing states with the intent to manipulate voters.
Courier Newsroom describes itself as "a pro-democracy news network that builds a more informed, engaged, and representative America by reaching audiences where they are online with factual, values-driven news and analysis." In addition to Virginia and Pennsylvania, Courier runs similar misleading websites in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Nevada, and New Hampshire.
Courier's real plan isn't necessarily building "a more informed, engaged, and representative America." According to a 2019 Bloomberg profile, since its inception five years ago, Courier has been instrumental in "The left's plan to slip vote-swaying news into Facebook feeds." Courier Newsroom was created specifically to blur the line between political advertising and journalism.
'Hyperlocal Partisan Propaganda' Courier Newsroom is the brainchild of Tara McGowan, a former journalist who worked at "60 Minutes" and CBS News who went on to work on Barack Obama's reelection campaign.
According to The New York Times, New Knowledge "Created a Facebook page intended to look like the work of conservative Alabamians, and used it to try to split Republicans and promote a conservative write-in candidate to take votes from Moore." New Knowledge also created fake social media accounts to make it appear that Moore was supported by Russians - a ruse that the Times notes "Drew broad news media coverage." After his funding of New Knowledge came to light, Hoffman declared, "I categorically disavow the use of misinformation to sway an election." His subsequent funding of Acronym and Courier suggests that his disavowal isn't so categorical.
One CNET article declared, "Laurene Powell Jobs invests in news because she worries about democracy," and a New York Times profile was headlined, "Can Laurene Powell Jobs Save Storytelling?" The right-leaning website The Free Beacon was almost alone in running a critical column about her funding of Acronym and Courier.
If disguising political ads as news stories seemed like a novel, if troubling, approach when Courier launched five years ago, now it's become standard operating procedure.
Just last month, Axios reported that "The number of partisan-backed outlets designed to look like impartial news outlets has officially surpassed the number of real, local daily newspapers in the U.S.," and 45 percent of these publications "Are targeted to swing states - a clear sign that they're designed to influence politics." The article did not note that Powell Jobs, who is a major Axios investor, has funded such operations.
"Most of the Metric Media sites don't include much information about the sites' funders or management. The stories typically lack bylines and many are outdated or marked as 'press release submissions.'" Though Metric Media tries to fly under the radar, it was the subject of a critical New York Times investigation in 2020.
Fast Company praised her as the "Democratic operative who beat Trump" and declared that boosting deceptively labeled news in front of voters is "An idea that will outlive Courier, despite the criticism." That was written four years ago, and it appears Courier's pioneering work in using deceptively branded news to influence elections has proven stubbornly influential.
As recently as July 7, Semafor reported that Democratic super-lawyer Marc Elias - famous for his significant role in paying for the "Steele Dossier," which launched thousands of erroneous media reports claiming President Trump was compromised by the Russian government - was fighting off attempts by Arizona regulators to require a pro-abortion news site run by a Democratic front group to be subject to campaign finance laws.
https://thefederalist.com/2024/10/17/how-democrat-activists-buy-elections-by-taking-over-local-news/
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