Democrats spread fake news through shady local media outlets: Axios

A Washington D.C.-based operation run by prominent Democratic operatives have set up a network of seemingly local news outlets in battleground states to pump out favorable coverage, according to a new report.

Axios reported Thursday that a network of at least 51 locally branded news sites have been founded over the past year, mostly in key swing states with elections in 2021 and 2022: Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The sites, with benign names like the Milwaukee Metro Times, the Mecklenburg Herald and the Tri-City Record, are designed to put “a sheen of original reporting on partisan messaging,” according to the article.

“Each follows a similar template: aggregated local news content and short write-ups about local sports teams and attractions – interspersed with heavily slanted political news aimed at boosting Democratic midterm candidates and attacking Republican opponents,” write Axios reporters Lachlan Markay and Thomas Wheatley.

The masthead of each ostensibly local news site indicates the involvement of the American Independent, a Washington-based progressive news outfit founded by David Brock, a prominent Democratic operative and fundraiser.

After reviewing bylines on the network’s sites, Axios found that six American Independent writers have each contributed to most or all of the sites in the network.

The “About Us” page of each news site also says they are run by a company called Local Report Inc., which was formed in Florida last year.

Jessica McCreight, executive director of TAI, told Axios that it had a “co-publishing agreement” with Local Report but would not say whether her organization had editorial control over the network’s content.

Local Report and its sites have been criticized for misrepresentation by media watchdogs and other local outlets even as prominent Democrats use its stories in their messaging.

A Local News piece suggesting Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp could order investigations into violations of its abortion law was shared by his midterm opponent Stacey Abrams and the Democratic Party of Georgia, even though a local reporter said the article lifted material from his reporting, was not a local news outlet and was “twisting” the story.

Meta took down ads from another network of TAI-branded news sites focused on the same states after NewsGuard, a site that rates news outlet trustworthiness, said they "fail to adhere to several basic journalistic standards.”

“Local Report's stories receive minimal promotion from the sites themselves — they're not boosted through digital ads, and Local Report itself has no online presence beyond its network of TAI-staffed news sites,” said the Axios article.

“What they do offer is a steady stream of friendly news coverage that can be touted by political allies.”