As of October, Local Report Inc., an organization formed just last year, created more than 50 websites masquerading as online news media outlets to influence “local” coverage of key races and issues.
A closer look by Axios found that these sites are also associated with and sometimes even manned by writers from The American Independent, a progressive media group founded by the same Democrat operative, David Brock, who created the leftist propaganda machine Media Matters for America.
For those who remember, Media Matters for America trained a large group of individuals to troll and disrupt conservative websites during the runup to the 2016 presidential elections, and David Brock was behind it — TPR
The websites target voters in swing states such as Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin with stories that look like news but are actually designed to boost Democrats’ midterm priorities.
That includes amplifying pro-abortion candidates and their unpopular baby-killing agenda, celebrating Democrats’ embrace of the crisis-plagued Biden Administration, and penning hit pieces that target Republican candidates in tight races.
In some cases, Local Report’s websites went so far as to copy the work of other legitimate news organizations and were still rewarded with the attention of Democrats such as Stacey Abrams.
In fact, Axios reports that “Local Report stories have popped up in communications from the Democrat Parties of Georgia and Michigan, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state and independent political groups such as Color of Change and the Democratic Coalition.”
By manufacturing “news” websites to influence voters, Local Report joins the efforts of other Democrat propaganda groups including the George Soros-linked Courier Newsroom, which prides itself on disguising leftist narratives as local news. The supervisor tasked with overseeing the launch of Courier admitted in a 2020 interview with Vice that “it’s more effective to create ‘news content’ than to simply run ads for Democratic causes.”
Seeing as Democrats’ top issues such as abortion and climate change aren’t faring well with voters, who are more concerned about inflation, economic recession, and rising crime, it’s no surprise that they feel the need to hide their shady campaigning behind inconspicuous sites.
Axios calls these actions a “ploy.” Contrast that characterization with a report from Politico, which called GOP efforts to restore the balance in news in the 2018 election cycle “fake” news. Sham fact-checking website Snopes and Harvard’s media arm Nieman Lab used similar framing in the 2020 election cycle when it smeared Republicans for entering the world of media and said their presence was just going to “exacerbate polarization.”
The press is certainly not unfamiliar with harnessing its control of information to influence elections. During the 2020 elections, the corrupt corporate media tried to memory-hole the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell by claiming it was Russian disinformation. Other outlets such as NPR went so far as to pledge not to cover the issue at all. ✪
