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Wednesday, July 07, 2021

Pro-Trump sites masquerading as local news push election misinformation, which gets picked up by news organizations

Conservative websites that aim to look like local news sites are publishing false and misleading content about the election and other hot-button political issues—content that's often picked up by real news organizations.

The Star News Network is an "expanding network of pro-Trump sites seeking to influence local politics with conservative opinion by mimicking the look and feel of local newspaper sites. The group operates eight state-focused news sites, including in key Electoral College states such as Michigan, Arizona, Ohio and Florida," Stephen Fowler reports for NPR. "The Star News sites are part of a larger pro-Trump media ecosystem that emerged over the course of his four years in office. Since last year's election, some of those sites have spent months churning out false content suggesting Trump won the election and claiming that massive electoral fraud will be uncovered. Many of the Star News sites have been around for a while, but the 2020 election — and an intense focus on swing states like Georgia — has helped the sites' stories reach a much a larger audience."

Such sites, often called "pink slime journalism" after the iffy ground-beef additive, have proliferated in recent years, exploiting growing local news deserts to sow misinformation.

Star News Network sites are published by Star News Digital Media, owned and operated by conservative activist and talk radio host Michael Patrick Leahy, whose HarperCollins author bio touts him as "an innovative leader in both the tactics and strategy of grassroots conservative new-media activism." Both Leahy and Star News co-founder and executive editor Christina Botteri are early organizers of the Tea Party movement.

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