Recently, as the political battle over congressional redistricting has brought California into the national spotlight, Facebook users have been shown a series of curious ads.
The ads, from a seemingly straight news site called the California Courier, often sound like campaign ads, linked to articles about Democrats in the state, including Gov. Gavin Newsom. A few struck the other side, toward the Republicans. Another said, “California Democrats just rewrote their gerrymandering plan so voters will see their party map on the ballot this November.” Another called Proposition 50, which was passed in November, “critics say is intended to undermine voter-authorized protections and entrench one-party rule in California.”
A reader who clicked on the Courier’s website will find stories that are more consistent with a structured news view, such as a video of a child “riding a scooter on the drug-ravaged streets of San Fran,” or an anonymous piece citing “confidential sources” warning of a “left-wing teacher” running for Orange County school office.
The reader will not find any disclosure of ownership or sponsorship of the Courier, including what appears to be a relationship with a network of conservative organizations in California that, according to one researcher, has promoted a series of right-leaning news sites in three other states just before the 2024 election.
Courier has money to spend. According to a review of the ad library maintained by the owner of Facebook, Meta, the site has spent more than $ 80,000 since 2021 promoting its news on social and political issues, which may reach tens of thousands of users on the platform each week.
Critics say the California outlet is part of a growing, seemingly innocent, cheaply produced national ecosystem that publishes and advertises biased articles in an effort to covertly influence elections. They worry that the practice could mislead voters and erode trust in nonpartisan news providers.
“I think we’re in an era where people are consuming a lot of content on the Internet without knowing its source,” said Max Read, who has studied the network behind the Courier at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit that works to combat political bigotry. “And for funded organizations to contribute to that by hiding what they’re doing online helps to increase that problem of people who don’t trust you.”
At first glance, the Courier doesn’t look right-leaning. A number of stories appear to be direct news echoes of press releases, such as announcing new affordable housing. But even those that seem neutral can have a right-leaning spin, such as one that describes speeding fines tied to earnings as a potential source of “resurrection punishment.”
The place also shares a name with a 67-year-old California book that serves the Armenian diaspora. One of the founders of the Courier gained acclaim from his peers for his work as dean of the University of Maryland’s journalism school.
When Markup and CalMatters contacted the publisher of the Armenian Courier, he said he didn’t know of another place. He told the reporter that he was opening it for the first time.
“I have no morals,” said Harut Sassounian, owner of the Courier, whose regular editorials appear online and in print. “These two books have nothing in common. It’s not about politics or race or anything like that.”
Although it does not have Armenian publication origins, the right-leaning Courier has proven to be well-versed in today’s social media. The video that made it suggest that Newsom was flippant in his view of President Biden’s intelligence generated thousands of reactions.
This publication also shares some of the more subtle citation practices of modern social media. Almost all of the stories on the site are uncredited, or simply named “California Courier.”
A few, however, include the authors’ names. One of the named writers describes himself on social media as a “content creator” for the Lincoln Media Foundation, a conservative group, and links to Courier articles. One shares a name with a Republican strategist based in Orange County, and a third lists resumes and conservative organizations in a short history.
The Lincoln Media Foundation is tied to the Lincoln Club, an Orange County-based group that bills itself as “the oldest and largest major donor organization in the state of California.” Club funnels anonymously donate money to conservative candidates and causes.
The Lincoln Media Foundation’s Facebook page recently said it is “proud to present” a new documentary that aims to reveal “the untold truth about the Pacific Palisades fire,” a natural disaster that tore through the country last year and increased political pressure on Newsom.
An hour later, the Courier’s Facebook page also promoted it, not mentioning the Lincoln Media Foundation but describing the documentary as “highly anticipated.”
The Lincoln Club, Lincoln Media, California Courier or Courier writers do not respond to multiple requests for comment about the origin of the site, either via email, or social media messages.
That silence, along with the lack of information about ownership on the Courier’s website, comes despite the store’s larger mission, as stated on its Facebook page.
“The California Courier provides national and local news,” the page description reads. “Our job is to be transparent.”
The Lincoln Club was previously linked to “local” websites around the country, broadcasting colorful news.
Last year, Read’s Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which tracks misinformation and extremism on the Internet, found a number of such sites that intimated in their privacy policies that they were projects from Lincoln Media. Those outlets had names like Angeleno and Keystone Courier, and ran from California to Pennsylvania, although the resulting report did not name the Courier.
Many sites are using Facebook and other social media tools to push a conservative agenda, the report said. Meta has rules against “organized untruthful conduct” but it’s unclear whether Lincoln Media’s websites will cross that line.
Stories of ‘Pink slime’
Researchers have called sites like those used by Lincoln Media “pink slime” news, a term named after a meat industry supplement. These sites do not produce fake news, like others, but they do not meet the basic standards of journalism. That often means low-quality content and a failure to disclose affiliations with third parties.
Sites are generally not designed to generate income, but to disrupt public opinion. Most, according to researchers, depend on the conservation agenda, and if the site’s news gets popular on social media, it can go widely. “If they place the ad right or get the right image on the right influencer, there’s no limit to how far these things can go,” says Read.
While it is unclear how many sites the Lincoln Club may sponsor, it is not the only group that has used the strategy.
In 2020, the New York Times reported on Metric Media, a group that has built nearly 1,300 sites across the country for names like the Maine Business Daily and the Ann Arbor Times. At first glance, these can pass for simple local issues. But the Times report found that they took money from public relations firms and Republican operatives to produce stories that benefited those groups, which is a big red flag for journalists.
Ethical or not, strategy can be effective in lending credibility to a particular idea. Kevin DeLuca, an assistant professor of political science at Yale University who has researched pink slime websites, conducted a study that showed studies of both real unbiased news sites and others produced by Metric Media.
Other subjects in the study were given a tip sheet that asked them to check the sites closely, to see if they included information such as reliable machine pages and other information. But even with the tip sheet, the study subjects said in interviews that they did not prefer truly local over manufactured places.
DeLuca says these sites already exist in the United States, and news consumers don’t know much when they come across them. The problem may be exacerbated by the spread of productive AI, as such technology reduces the cost of creating such sites.
Researchers who study these sites say that it has never been easier to produce them. Local news, for one, has faced a year-long financial crisis that has wiped many once-powerful businesses off the map.
Although it cannot be said that any single publication uses content generated by AI, the wide availability of tools such as ChatGPT, which can generate at least a representation of the content being transmitted, has also made it easier to create such sites.
“It will make these pink sites even more difficult for people to know that what they are reading is not from a human source and is not really local investigative journalism.” DeLuca said.
Sassounian, for his part, does not think there is any danger that the two California Couriers will ever be confused with each other. He took over the paper in the 1980s, and his columns, which he described as “hard-hitting editorials defending the rights of Armenians around the world,” have been translated into languages around the world.
“It is not pleasant that our name was used by someone else,” said Sassounian. “I’d rather they didn’t, but I don’t know what to do about it.”
Colin Lecher writes CalMatters.
