I really hate this title, because it subtly implies some semi-balanced distribution of hyper-left and hyper-right sites, when the article says "Bengani identified five organizations operating these networks, all with conservative political ties."
Why not just say "Hundreds of hyper-conservative sites masquerading as local news?"
Yes, exactly. The authors are aware that some people’s receptiveness to new information is a very fragile thing, a door that will slam shut forever at the slightest hint of ego threat. It’s a shame that we need to coddle people in order to get them to ingest factual messaging.
I mean, sure, inserting such objective terms as "hyperpartisan" and "masquerading" surely advertises it as objective, detached, respectful treatment of the matter, not some sensationalist clickbait. You don't have to actually click to see whether the masquerading hyperpartisans are right next to your home. If you don't care about the troubling reality of people that may have views different from you masquerading as reporters by reporting local news - RIGHT THERE NEAR YOU!, of course. If you're that dense, then well, don't click.
Even before reading the article, I correctly guessed the message they wanted to send.
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?
> 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.
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.
This is assuming all reach is equal. Number of outlets seems like an incomplete picture to me where the number of people reached seems more important. Is a more concentrated effort by one group somehow less insidious? I think not.
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.
> 95% of these sites are conservative-leaning. That's the story here
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.
> I don't see anyone in this thread (or the article) claiming that they're "only conservative", do you?
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?
I disagree that "Hundreds of hyper-conservative sites masquerading as local news" as a title would imply that this phenomena is only a conservative one. I think you're adding the "only" part on your own, in your own reading of it.
Not really sure what the last part of your comment even means.
> 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 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?
I would like to see less of whatever this is on this site.
What's that "hyper" thing? What's "hyper-conservative" - does he vote for hyper-GOP, as opposed to regular conservative that supports GOP? Are they going to vote for hyper-Trump? Or it's just a ham-fisted way to present political opinion as something illegitimate and out of the normal - it's OK if you were just a conservative, but since you're hyper-conservative, it's clear that your opening a site with local news is a national crisis.
Trying to lump Richard Spencer in with mainstream Republicans is like trying to lump in leaders of the radical black nationalist BLM organization or racist La Raza with mainstream Democrats.
Oh wait, Republicans routinely condemn Spencer and his white nationalist ilk while mainstream Democrats openly embrace BLM, La Raza and other race-centric organizations.
Looks like Democrats are really the ones openly embracing their "strange bedfellows"...
Steve King's comments were routinely taken out of context. For instance the "straw that broke the camel's back" moment for King was in 2019 when the NYTimes stated he said one thing while King said that his words were taken out of context and gave a reasonable explanation for how they were misinterpreted.
The NYTimes never released actual audio of the conversation so it boosts King's case that his words were taken out of context. If they were truly incriminating, the Times could have released audio of the interview and cleared things up.
That's what I know off the top of my head, as for Paul Nehlen, I'm not sure who he is.
Of course I could name other examples. Democratic congresspeople routinely spew racist and inflammatory rhetoric that is never confronted by the Media precisely because the Media functions largely as a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.
The dude kept a confederate flag on his desk, but keep going off about the Lügenpresse. The dude talked about how diversity would weaken us as a nation and lower quality of life.
I don't know why you're bringing up Democrats, it's irrelevant to me. Sure, you're trying to deflect from the white supremacists in the Republican ranks, but you're going about it in the most smooth brained way. I can critique Republicans while not being a Democrat, but your tribalism is blinding you to that possibility.
I'm bringing up Democrats because it's important to understand how the Media shapes perspectives. Media doesn't give the two parties fair treatment, so what makes you think their denunciations of the Republicans are based in reality? Many of them are not.
Many of the critiques of King and others are propaganda and lies. Many of the supposed "white supremacists" in the Republican ranks have just been branded that in order to discredit them for political purposes. Trump is a great example. It's often repeated he is a "white supremacist" or racist against various groups, but there's not really good evidence of that and actually much evidence to the contrary.
> Media doesn't give the two parties fair treatment, so what makes you think their denunciations of the Republicans are based in realities
How are you just throwing out all the right-wing media? There's more than huffpo and wapo. On the right, you've got your Sinclair media groups, you've got your Fox news, all the media listed in this article were discussing, Breitbart, the daily stormer, the hill, and so on. There's a very large media base in the US for right-wing news, but, again, your aggrieved narrative glosses over the fact.
> Many of the critiques of King and others are propaganda and lies.
Except for those things that I mentioned that you're not going to touch with a ten foot poll.
Those are probably more accurate. Steve King was a recent elected rep, and Paul Nehlen was a strong candidate. While Spencer espouses the same views as them, I think he probably vocalizes those views more than the current mainstream party is comfortable with.
No he isn't. That's total bullshit. He was repeatedly kicked out of every conservative outlet or conference he appeared in, he was denounced by all mainstream conservative politicians and he himself claimed that he invented the term "alternative right" to distance himself from conservative politicians.
Partisanship is a spectrum, hyper just points to the extreme end of the spectrum.
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.
It's pretty clear from looking at the map that they didn't attempt to include as many of the left-leaning sites for whatever reason. All but one of the sites in New England (one of the most liberal areas of the country) are right-leaning. This is not a representative selection of the news sources in the area, they are missing lots of data.
Edit: I am not taking a political stance here. Just saying there are news sources left out of this survey.
I don't see how that necessarily follows. These sites don't even need to be put up by someone who lives in the area.
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 didn't mean representative of the people living there, I mean representative of the news sources there.
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.
It's not supposed to be a complete survey of all news sites. It's sites that are posing as local news sources, when in reality they're just cookie-cutter "news" article farms that are connected to larger orgs that have a historical political bias. How does one not being around NYC invalidate the rest? Isn't it entirely plausible these organizations don't see value in attempting to persuade locals in those areas? Additionally, the vast majority of these appear to be in suburban to rural areas; there's none around Seattle, LA, or Atlanta as well.
Why is that "pretty clear"? Why should a count of web sites be indicative of the local population, when the contention is they're deliberate astroturf? Repeating the upthread point: the article claimed it was just measuring "partisan site counts", but in fact it was measuring "hyperconservative site counts", which is a different thing.
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?
Exactly the same is happening in Brazil. There are websites like these related to both extremes of the political spectrum, but the vast majority is tied to the far right-wing.
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.
An obvious confounding factor is the urban rural divide. There are numerically more conservative parcels of land in the first place. Of course there will be more conservative local papers.
Parcels of land don't operate news orgs people do. Even when you break it down to say towns smaller populations have fewer news orgs like they have fewer gas stations.
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.
As soon as you frame it that way, a certain portion of people stop listening. Even if it's the truth, it can be beneficial to downplay even the obvious conclusions and just stick to the facts.
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.
But that's just it- if you read the article, "all of the marbles" are "not the same color". Oversimplifying things into a broader conclusion is often not an improvement.
Nothing about what I said changes if 95% of the marbles are the same color instead of 100%. "Overwhelming percent of yada yada" is (allegedly anyway) a significant finding that has been buried.
So they stop reading once they get to the message in the article? You're going to feed the message to conservatives like wrapping a pill in cheese and giving it to a dog? This is both infantilizing and doesn't work.
What about all of the popular hyper-partisan news organizations masquerading as unbiased news? Such as Fox, MSNBC, pretty much everything that is popular.
"First, to the extent that these types of sites continue to proliferate and possibly replace traditional local news organizations, the partisanship that has come to characterize our national-level journalism could increasingly characterize our local journalism, potentially amplifying the political polarization that is already affecting the country, and potentially undermining effective self-governance at the local level. In future research, we hope to explore whether these partisan sites produce misinformation more often than their more traditional counterparts. If that is the case, it could have significant implications for well-informed local self-governance."
They are aware of that, but are also aware that local news is different and could exasperate things in terms of misinformation.
The 5 Conservative sites in Maine (a battleground state) are identical local business directories with no apparent news or editorial content. All have footer links to https://locallabs.com
The 1 liberal site was full of content, it looked like a well run site, albeit with an obvious "bend".
The Conservative sites could be placeholders, abandoned attempts, or the content could be hidden (I didn't dig that deep)
I live in Chicago so I wanted to see what the hyper-partisan conservative site was for my area. Turns out its the Cook County Record[1]. I obviously haven't done an in depth analysis but it looks conservative in its selection of topics but not "hyper" conservative in that its making aggressive, conservative arguments within the body of the piece. It seems like honest reporting with a right-leaning topic selection.
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.
The article seems to state that the sites it lists have specific financial ties to politicians and PACs; civility of writing doesn't seem to be a criterion.
This is really interesting. I looked at where I lived and there weren't any but in neighboring Illinois there are a number that are all ran by the same group. I looked at two of them and they seem to basically be churning out the same types of stories: republican candidates good, democratic candidates bad. There was no analysis or insight into the stories. They are basically content farms churning out stories in the hope that they will influence elections.
The one liberal site I saw was one I had heard of and while it may have progressive politics, it covers the state and has actual current event coverage rather than being a cheerleader for the democratic party.
Well, this is a fake news article if I ever saw one. I went and looked at my region. In fact what we actually have are conservative and left leaning local news and content aggregator sites. I don't see what the problem is here; I've used both, and it's not like they're "masquerading" as anything but left and right leaning local news and content aggregation sites. They're no more "hyperpartisan" than society at large is, and the paranoid characterization of them as something sinister is in itself more disturbing than the content on them.
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.
You call it fake news but offer no substance to your claim, while the article discusses in great detail how they reach their conclusions.
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'.
If I am reading your comment correctly, and please correct me if I'm wrong -
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.
The article is, as is usual for "nitwit 'expert' analyzing something happening online" is basically hyperventillating clickbait insinuating hysteria rather than anything remotely resembling analysis.
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.
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.
I'm sure there's a reason - there's apparently a lot of money to be made pandering to that base. Someone, somewhere, is making lots of money selling something to these people.
The article suggests the likelihood that the writers of the content are lying about who they are and in fact are not in the local environment they are 'reporting on'. Is it really local news if the writers are lying about their identity and they are not located anywhere near the news location?
I don't see any facts in the article that support that. The closest they have is that one of the people founding some of the networks also had a business where he employed overseas freelance journalists.
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.
I did read past the summary, and I did draw the conclusion that the only evidence they have is what you quoted - that one of the persons involved also operated an overseas freelance journalist network. Even if it were true - for which there's zero evidence so far - that would only mean the writers of the sites aren't located in the places they are writing about. I don't see any reason to present it as nefarious "masquerading" - you can write about state court cases in Sacramento without living next door to the court. If they still report local news, there's no reason to call them "masquerading".
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.
I encountered one of these sites through Facebook advertising. The "reporting" was heavily biased. I just clicked through to their site now. The first article has the headline, "Cook county resident calls Casten 'opportunistic boob'" and a byline of T. H. Lawrence. The reporting is entirely quotes from this alleged 64-year-old "Cook County resident" alongside partisan critiques of Casten and positive accounts of Casten's Republican challenger.
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.
"Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control 'exactly what people think' ...This is extremely dangerous to our democracy."
I never understand the mindset of these hyperpartisan people . What are they trying to achieve? They seem to forget that politics is about making things better and not just about “winning”. It would be much better if they got into sports and be hyperpartisan there where the result doesn’t really matter.
I think anger drives them. I would definitely like to know. I suspect that many are sociopaths. Like the couple that ran a news site from their home in TX that made many millions from writing untrue and sensational headlines and then purchasing ads on Facebook. FB finally stopped allowing them to purchase ads, but not before a massive number of people consumed their hate-filled shit.
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.
The political parties are trying this into a "war". They want divisiveness. They want people to view this as a win-or-lose situation.
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.
To be frank sadly many people are just plain ego driven as it is part of their identity and want to be "right" over any actual truthfulness or results. It is unfortunately a full spectrum tendency and not limited bipartisan and not limited to extremes although they may manifest differently and there are cases beyond their "stereotype".
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.
Most of these sites are conservative. An interesting question is to ask why?
I believe a large part of the reason is that conservatives feel pressed to engage in such guerilla tactics since the mainstream Media is already hyper-partisan on the Left. Almost all nationally recognized news and opinion publishers are dominated by Democrats and their reporting reflects it.
Understanding this prompts deeper questions and reflection about the nature of the media and popular opinions.
What happens to ideology when one party dominates media to the extent that the Democrats do? Extremism.
I'm not sure I agree with your consensus. I would agree that partisanship might increase but not sure if that's the same as Extremism? Can you explain your connection more?
The problem that arises when newsrooms are hyper partisan, as is the case with most of the Mainstream Media being composed almost entirely of Democrats, is that there are no dissenting voices that exist to check the more extreme tendencies of one side.
In mainstream newsrooms, the Democrats' perspective is unchallenged, which means that there is no force preventing a lurch towards extremism.
It's similar to a nation with One Party Rule. There are no checks and balances so extremism settles in.
And yet, AM talk radio is overwhelmingly dominated by conservative voices. Fox news is overwhelmingly partisan (and don't counter with MSNBC—MSNBC does not have the open collaboration with the Democratic party that Fox has with the Republicans). Sinclair Media controls large numbers of local stations and presents news with a clear conservative bias, plus all the conservative-owned newspapers. And that's not even getting into the weeds of things like OANN, Newsmax, etc. Plus there is a very obvious coordination of conservative voices so that within a day of an issue arising, you'll hear the same arguments from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and nearly every conservative blogger.
The Republicans are eating the Democrats' lunch on media influencing.
This study seems poorly done. For example, I looked in the Orlando area, since it's a purple area: while they are different URLs, they are all the same site. The articles all seem to be bot generated content, with no clearly partisan content. It just seems like a click farm/url camping scheme, but that counts as 13 of the data points. But they are considered right leaning, because I assume because the owner is right leaning, but it doesn't really show a hyper-partisan website (or 13, in this case, in a purple area). I can't say anything about the rest of the data, but those data points alone seem to point to some issues with this article and dataset.
Several of these are dubiously classified. For example, this random one I've never heard of yielded nothing I could find (in 3 minutes) with any political affiliation.
I feel so powerless against this terrifying trend. All I can do is try to insulate myself from misinformation and inflammatory content - which is hard enough - but I have close relatives who positively eat it up without even thinking twice about taking a critical eye. I've tried engaging them on it and encouraging healthy skepticism, and it's been entirely fruitless. The average person seems to have zero capacity to reflect on and be aware of their own biases and emotions and how those affect their judgement and are affected by their environment.
I'm just so frustrated and exhausted. It's hard not to lose all hope for humanity in times like these.
> The average person seems to have zero capacity to reflect on and be aware of their own biases and emotions and how those affect their judgement and are affected by their environment.
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.
How do you insulate yourself while engaging them? I have a similar problem, close people who are imho thoroughly insulated, and that's the real issue; the insulation. It's not an accident or organic, it's induced. The information sources they trust relentlessly remind them to be insulated.
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.
I spot checked a few of these and question the legitimacy of whatever method they are using to select these sites. For example, the one nearest me (Austin) states clearly on its landing page:
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.
This is not a partisan site "masquarading as local news". It's a partisan site openly stating that it is partisan. It doesn't pretend to be local news.
For another nearby one, I'm struggling to figure out why it is "hyperpartisan":
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.
It looks like they are using affiliation as one measure. From the article:
> 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:
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.
This is the answer in addition to the stories being more subtle in many cases than implied by the term "Hyper-partisan". While "subtle" seems to imply less damaging to the political system, much like many people complain the media lies as being a large issue, this is pretty much the same thing except with a super PAC behind it.
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 just looked at all of the sites around my city of Phoenix. I'm not sure what sort of double speak definition of "hyperpartisan" they are using here is. If anything this seems refreshingly matter-of-fact, and it's probably all just being generated by a script of some kind. It looks like stories about some local races, some matter-of-fact old story about Trump traveling to a honeywell plant in Arizona. None of this is particularly interesting, and it seems pretty obvious that this is all being generated by the same news org/upstart (all the Phoenix-sites seem roughly the same, and are probably all just getting served out of a central CMS)
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.
103 comments
[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 184 ms ] threadWhy 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.
Oh wait, Republicans routinely condemn Spencer and his white nationalist ilk while mainstream Democrats openly embrace BLM, La Raza and other race-centric organizations.
Looks like Democrats are really the ones openly embracing their "strange bedfellows"...
So you're suggesting someone more on the lines of a Paul Nehlen or a Steve King?
The NYTimes never released actual audio of the conversation so it boosts King's case that his words were taken out of context. If they were truly incriminating, the Times could have released audio of the interview and cleared things up.
That's what I know off the top of my head, as for Paul Nehlen, I'm not sure who he is.
Of course I could name other examples. Democratic congresspeople routinely spew racist and inflammatory rhetoric that is never confronted by the Media precisely because the Media functions largely as a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.
I don't know why you're bringing up Democrats, it's irrelevant to me. Sure, you're trying to deflect from the white supremacists in the Republican ranks, but you're going about it in the most smooth brained way. I can critique Republicans while not being a Democrat, but your tribalism is blinding you to that possibility.
Many of the critiques of King and others are propaganda and lies. Many of the supposed "white supremacists" in the Republican ranks have just been branded that in order to discredit them for political purposes. Trump is a great example. It's often repeated he is a "white supremacist" or racist against various groups, but there's not really good evidence of that and actually much evidence to the contrary.
How are you just throwing out all the right-wing media? There's more than huffpo and wapo. On the right, you've got your Sinclair media groups, you've got your Fox news, all the media listed in this article were discussing, Breitbart, the daily stormer, the hill, and so on. There's a very large media base in the US for right-wing news, but, again, your aggrieved narrative glosses over the fact.
> Many of the critiques of King and others are propaganda and lies.
Except for those things that I mentioned that you're not going to touch with a ten foot poll.
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.
They are aware of that, but are also aware that local news is different and could exasperate things in terms of misinformation.
The Conservative sites could be placeholders, abandoned attempts, or the content could be hidden (I didn't dig that deep)
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.
1. https://cookcountyrecord.com/
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
I believe a large part of the reason is that conservatives feel pressed to engage in such guerilla tactics since the mainstream Media is already hyper-partisan on the Left. Almost all nationally recognized news and opinion publishers are dominated by Democrats and their reporting reflects it.
Understanding this prompts deeper questions and reflection about the nature of the media and popular opinions.
What happens to ideology when one party dominates media to the extent that the Democrats do? Extremism.
In mainstream newsrooms, the Democrats' perspective is unchallenged, which means that there is no force preventing a lurch towards extremism.
It's similar to a nation with One Party Rule. There are no checks and balances so extremism settles in.
The Republicans are eating the Democrats' lunch on media influencing.
https://industrytxguide.com/stories
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...