WASHINGTON - Headlines never tell the entire story, but they do set a tone. That’s certainly the case with some recent coverage of the U.S. presidential race. Consider these examples:
“Lewis says ‘crazy’ are driving Minnesotans to Trump.”
“ Are Channeling Their Collective Frustration to Vote for Joe Biden.”
“Biden Goes to Michigan, Reminds Voters of .”
“. Period.”
The headlines weren’t written by Joe Biden or Donald Trump’s campaigns, or their political parties, although they might well have been. Instead, they’re products of a new generation of websites that present themselves as local news operations, even as they are run by party operatives.
“These are partisan sites – some on the right, some on the left – that are masquerading as news sites, but what they are putting out is basically propaganda for a candidate or a political point of view,” says William Freivogel, a journalism professor at Southern Illinois University.
In this polarized presidential election year, the number of , to about 1,200, according to the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. They are run by activists or political and public relations consultants, and they publish and repurpose content with a narrow partisan point of view.
VOA attempted to reach several of the sites for interview but only one—the editor-in-chief of a site founded by a Democratic strategist, responded.
At a time when politicians from President Donald Trump on down disparage mainstream media outlets as peddling “fake news,” media scholars worry that these sites will further pollute the information environment, making it more difficult for voters to tell fact from fiction and spin.
“We have seen in some instances sites pop up and adopt the name of a newspaper that went under in the past,” says Philip Napoli, . “We had a blatant disinformation site here in North Carolina that took stories that happened years ago in completely different states and rewrote them as if they happened here.”
An enormous hole has opened in the U.S. media market when it comes to coverage of local governments and news. More than 1,800 U.S. newspapers have closed since 2004, according to figures from the , while many others are shadows of their former selves, with fewer reporters and less coverage. The new sites hope to fill that void – but without the traditional commitment to balance or fairness.
Although there have long been media outlets with an ideological orientation – Mother Jones on the left, for example, and The Wall Street Journal on the right – they make their leanings clear while maintaining independence for news and some distance from political parties.
The new breed of sites do not always advertise their leanings, or sometimes, their true ownership. “If they’re not selling fact-based news, what are they selling?” asks Anne Nelson, the author of . “Do they attempt to represent the other side? Is it fact-based reporting? Do they care about factual errors?”
Researchers at the Tow Center found the majority of these sites are run by networks with conservative ties or leanings, but the left is getting into the game, too. , founded last year by Democratic strategist Tara McGowan, runs eight sites, mostly in states considered presidential election battlegrounds.
Lindsay Schrupp, Courier’s editor-in-chief, is upfront about the goal.
“I don’t think a lot of people fully understand that there is now a very robust right-wing media infrastructure filling that [local news] gap and using right-wing propaganda,” she says. “No one else is doing the job of intentionally trying to fight back against the right-wing misinformation.”
Courier's sites are staffed by reporters present in each state that they cover and run only original content. But some of the other sites do little original reporting. These are so-called , meaning part of their content is generated automatically. They reprint press releases directly, without bringing editorial judgment to information from governments or other interested sources.
Although the sites bear the names of the cities or states they are nominally covering, many are . Others do generate content that is original and quite partisan in nature, featuring stories that are one-sided, cheerleading for one party while routinely bashing the other.