Democratic operatives adopt 'pink slime' journalism in five states; study finds many readers have positive impressions

The network includes print editions.

"Pink slime" journalism isn't just for conservatives, Lorenzo Arvanitis and McKenzie Sadeghi report for NewsGuard, which rates more than 7,500 websites and was created by a team of journalists who assess the credibility and transparency of news and information websites based on nine criteria.

Five sites that launched in April "look like benign, politically independent state news outlets, Arvanitis and Sadeghi write. "But a NewsGuard review has uncovered that the network of five websites — which publishes articles online and in print and then invests in ads on Facebook to give them a far broader audience — is part of a coordinated effort ahead of the 2022 U.S. midterms to push voters to vote Democratic in battleground states."

The sites are The Arizona Independent, The Michigan Independent, The Ohio Independent, The Pennsylvania Independent, and The Wisconsin Independent.  The network is "publishing a steady stream of partisan content aimed at influencing potential voters without revealing its agenda and the source of its funding. As a result, last week NewsGuard rated all five websites Red, with each having a score of 44.5 points out of 100. Readers are alerted to 'Proceed with caution: This website fails to adhere to several basic journalistic standards'," NewsGuard reports. The network "appears to be connected to The American Independent, a national progressive organization founded by Democratic operative David Brock."

The network has spent heavily on Facebook ads, and has mass-mailed print editions. "The print campaign appears to build off of a similar October 2021 operation in the run-up to the Virginia gubernatorial election, when registered voters in Virginia were mailed nearly identical newspapers, this time identified as the 'Virginia edition' of The American Independent, according to conservative news site FreeBeacon.com," NewsGuard reports. "Unlike the papers sent to Virginia voters, however, the newspapers mailed in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in the summer of 2022 made no mention of The American Independent, and it appears that no news outlet has covered the new, multistate newspaper campaign."

UPDATE, Oct. 15: The Washington Post looks at the publications and others like them.

The Tow Center at the Columbia School of Journalism recently reported on its study of audience perspectives on partisan news sites: "A sizable minority of participants—more than a third—formed positive initial impressions of their assigned sites, highlighting the operators’ success at mimicking the appearance of traditional news websites. . . . Despite numerous misgivings, a majority of participants reported at the end of the study period that political information had been valuably covered by their assigned sites."