Pseudo news outlets push false claims around election
On
Nov. 4, the day after the election, the Milwaukee
City Wire inaccurately reported that more votes were cast in seven
wards in the city than there were registered voters. Right-wing pundits and
conspiracy theorists rushed to tweet the story, and retweet those tweets. Fox’s
Sean Hannity weighed in. Some down-the-middle journalists also followed suit.
But USA Today found the claim was wrong.
The
Milwaukee City Wire is one of more than 1,300 new sites run by noted Illinois
conservatives Brian Timpone and Dan Proft. The news outlets, extending across
the country, disguise right-wing political propaganda as local news.
Illinois
Rep. Jeff Keicher, a Republican from Sycamore, has long since decided not to
talk to a local news site that is part of the Timpone-Proft group.
Even
though he hasn’t talked to The DeKalb Times’ website in years, Keicher’s
name appeared Nov. 13 in the headline of three of the five lead byline stories.
Since
Keicher began declining to speak with the pseudo-local news outlet, he’s winced
as he’s seen website quotes and social media posts appearing in Times’ stories,
most of them out of context.
“I’d
continually see that my words were used in an incomplete way to fill a
narrative that wasn’t my own,” said Keicher, who cruised to a 17-point victory
in the recent election to secure a second term in the statehouse. “They are a
thorn in my side. It does nothing but undermine quality access to good
information.”
This
kind of misinformation is damaging, Keicher said. “When it spreads with speed
and gets retweeted and quoted by others, wrong information in the wrong hands
that confirms an ideology is very difficult to dislodge. It does us, as a
culture, a disservice.”
The
DeKalb Times is one of at least 1,300 nationwide outlets run by Proft, a
controversial, conservative talk-show host on 560-AM in Chicago and a former
Republican gubernatorial candidate, and Brian Timpone, a former TV
reporter-turned-entrepreneur. Timpone went to the University of Missouri School
of Journalism and later was a spokesperson for a Republican House Minority
leader Lee Daniels.
The
sites go by innocuous names as The DeKalb Times, the St. Louis Reporter and
Milwaukee City Wire. They create and disseminate misinformation; regurgitate
unedited news releases from right-wing lawmakers, candidates, interest groups
and public relation firms; and pluck quotes from legislators’ sites to fit a
conservative narrative.
The
Times in Ottawa, Illinois, caught Timpone’s operation red-handed in 2016, after
his Illinois Valley Times twice plagiarized the local paper’s election reporting by
running direct quotes and claiming they were made to the Times.
Things
seemingly haven’t changed. The DeKalb Times on Nov. 8 published a story on
COVID-19 informing school districts’ return to in-person learning includes
quotes from three local superintendents – all lifted directly from the Daily
Chronicle, a legitimate Shaw Media newspaper that covers DeKalb County.
One
of the superintendents, Griff Powell from DeKalb School District 428, confirmed
he’d only spoken with the Chronicle, not the DeKalb Times.
‘I hang up’
Keicher
first heard from The DeKalb Times in fall of 2016, when he began his first
campaign to work in the statehouse.
He
didn’t recognize the area code. Reporters for “pink slime” pubs work from
hundreds of miles away from the cities they “cover.” Some even live overseas.
They make about $25 a story.
Whenever
Keicher is asked for an interview, he vets the reporter and asks for
credentials. When it’s someone from The DeKalb Times, he declines and tells
them not to call him anymore. He’s not sure what their response would be.
“I
don’t know, because I hang up,” he said.
Literal
fake news has made interacting with the media an arduous task. Keicher
subscribes to several publications, from the New York Times to the Daily
Chronicle in DeKalb. He nearly reflexively turned down a recent interview with
a reporter from the LaSalle Times, another legitimate Shaw publication, because
the call came from an outside area code.
At
least one of Keicher’s GOP colleagues in the statehouse, State Rep. Sue Rezin
(R-Morris), has regularly given interviews to another outlet in the network,
the Illinois Valley Times, which in turn has painted her in a favorable light.
The
New York Times pounced on that revelation and linked the operation to Proft.
Also linked were two sitting Republican officeholders, including former
gubernatorial candidate Jeanne Ives, who “paid Mr. Timpone’s companies $55,000
over the past three years, according to state and federal records.”
Rezin
did not respond to Gateway’s email and phone requests for comment.
Keicher
said there’s nothing wrong with publications that lean left or right – as long
as they report accurately and are up-front about their bias.
“That
level of honesty would go a long way,” he said. “It changes the conversation
from being fake news to news viewed through a lens of different opinion.
“We’re
decimating our ranks of quality journalists – nationally and in Illinois,”
Keicher said. “We barely have any press reporters in the Springfield press
pool.”
He
lamented that publications more interested in slinging mud and advancing an
agenda under the guise of objectivity are as old as time. He recently read Ron
Chernow’s “Washington: A Life” and marveled at the history of slanted,
disingenuous journalism.
“Unfortunately,
I think it’s a hallmark of the human condition, to tear down people you don’t
agree with,” he said.
But
today, those attacks are instantaneous.
“While
it’s an issue that spreads quickly today without a check, back in the day, it
would be a published broadsheet and circulate from person to person in taverns
and roadside inns,” Keicher said.
Election year surge
Metric
Media’s website
lists 966 of the sites linked to Timpone and Proft in 49 states, while LGIS
runs the 34 websites in Illinois, according to its website.
Metric
Media states on its home page that it boasts more than 1,300 sites, nearly
three times the about 450 sites that Columbia Journalism Review identified one year ago.
In
2017, Gateway Journalism Review published an expose of LGIS, for Proft was a principal,
published 11 newspapers and 20 websites around the state. LGIS was a sister
organization of the Illinois News Network, which boasted 60 print, digital and
broadcast news outlets statewide.
At that time, Profit’s Liberty Principles political PAC had received more than $10 million from Rauner and two wealthy friends, and used it to fund pro-Rauner candidates. Proft shut down the Liberty Principles PAC in January, along with another PAC.
Metric
Media’s map stretched across the country. There are 57 sites in Texas, 51 in
Ohio, 49 in Florida, and 48 in North Carolina, but just 23 in New York.
California is home to 74 of them.
The
closure of one in five newsrooms nationwide has created an ideal environment
for these pseudo newsrooms to multiply.
“It’s
the confluence of a huge election season and news season, the decline of local
news that’s left an incredible vacuum, and of course, the rise of social media
platforms,” said Kjerstin Thorson, an associate professor and director of
graduate students at Michigan State University, who specializes in online
misinformation consumption. “The other piece of that is that while people might
see network news as biased, they are more likely to trust local news.”
That
lends to the effectiveness of creating websites that, at a glance, look like
perfectly reputable news sources.
Timpone’s
companies have changed names and rebranded multiple times over the years. He
founded Journatic in 2006 and, after admitting in June 2012 to NPR’s “This
American Life” that Journatic used 300 freelancers writing under fake bylines,
and after traditional media shops reported on plagiarism in Timpone’s products,
he rebranded Journatic as Locality Labs in 2013. It’s now known as LocalLabs.
Neither
Timpone nor Proft responded to Gateway’s multiple email, phone, and social
media requests for comment.
Timpone
told GJR three years ago, “You
don’t understand what a free press is. You have no concept of the history of
media in this country. How much of a departure the last thirty years has been.”
Asked why his reporters often don’t
live in Illinois, he responded, “Do you think it is any different than the
Chicago Tribune using reporters in Chicago to call local people downstate? All
they do is use the telephone.”
Timpone said, “We are not beholden
to anybody…. With other papers, the reporters listen to government agents. They
are biased toward government. We give voice to people who have never been
heard.”
WISN,
an ABC affiliate in Milwaukee, was able to reach Timpone for the TV network’s investigation of Milwaukee
City Wire’s false reporting. The City Wire had said the mistake had been caused
because the city had not updated its voting records, but USA Today found that
was not true. Timpone told WISN “The change in the records doesn’t change the
story’s point materially at all.”
However,
records show more registered voters in each of the seven wards than votes – the
opposite of what the Wire had reported.
Fighting misinformation
The
lead story of the Nov. 11 edition of the New York Times was on election
officials in all 50 states finding no evidence of voter fraud.
“Their
lead story on A1 was about something that didn’t happen,” said Matt Hall,
editorial and opinion director at the San Diego Union Tribune, as well as
president of the Society of Professional Journalists. “News by definition is on
something that did happen. That speaks to the climate we’re living in.”
He
said decisions on whether to report on misinformation are complex, and that
newsrooms should weigh the information, where it’s from, and how widely it’s
been spread.
“There’s
a certain calculus that needs to take place,” Hall said. “Context and counting
paragraphs matters.”
Misinformation,
when not put into context, thrives in the light.
“There’s
a real risk that in just reporting on misinformation, there are some who are
going to read it not for the reporting, but for the bad information,” Hall
said. “One of the struggles for journalists at any time, and especially now, is
when to amplify false information and in what context, and how to debunk it.”
“In
general, you don’t want to repeat it,” Thorson said. “If you have to repeat it,
put it inside a truth sandwich.”
Hall
said some large newsrooms have actually hired and assigned reporters to the
misinformation beat. In absence of that luxury, he said newsrooms should
approach fact-checking holistically, and instill the importance of reporters
watching for misinformation in their respective beats.
“Less
important than any one particular episode of fact-checking is the entirety of
your newsroom’s effort and your information effort,” he said.
Thorson
said it’s on journalists to “debundle” content from a source, then address it
within the context of the facts.
“We
have to give people credit. It’s really hard to find out what’s credible
information,” Thorson said. “I would not blame an 18-year-old for being
confused about what’s good and bad information.”
So
it’s the journalist’s burden to report the truth and debunk lies. She admits
that’s a challenge, with newsrooms being cut to the bone by financial
hardships. “The time to do that debundling is no longer available to us,” she
said
Laurel
White, a reporter for Wisconsin Public Radio, has been plenty busy on the
Wisconsin election misinformation beat. On Nov. 12, she wrote a piece that
added six more false claims to her running list, from felt tip markers
disqualifying ballots to the Associated Press’ accidental report of inaccurate
results proving the presence of election fraud.
Wisconsin
Elections Commission head Meagan Wolfe, who did not respond to Gateway’s
request for an interview, conceded that the AP made an honest mistake, which
was quickly corrected. Wolfe has had to refute countless false claims since
Election Night.
What
was conspicuously missing from White’s report was Milwaukee City Wire’s
fraudulent report.
“I
hadn’t even seen [the Milwaukee City Wire] story,” said her fellow WPR reporter
Corri Hess, who in September began her term as president of the Milwaukee Press
Club.
She
said just Nov. 12, the club was discussing the fake news epidemic, the way
mainstream media is discredited, and the way journalists are vilified whenever
they write something the reader doesn’t agree with.
“The
way these past 4 years have gone, with the president saying ‘fake news,’ it’s
gotten to the point I don’t even think people know what they’re saying when
they say ‘fake news,’” she said. “When they don’t like something in the news,
they call it fake news.”
Hess
said the press club is discussing hosting forums on that very topic in 2021.
“It
is really hard, because I’ve seen things on Twitter that are wrong,” she said.
“It’s hard as a reporter. I want to respond and say, ‘Actually the fact is
this.’ But you don’t want to appear partisan. It’s really hard these days
because you don’t want to be labeled.”
Downplaying concern
For
the past 10 years, Thorson and her team at MSU have been studying young adults’
social media timelines.
“The
biggest thing we see is no news,” she said of the 18- to 35-year-olds’ feeds.
“There’s this misconception that everybody sees a lot of politics in their
feed, but we’ve found people’s news feeds are not awash with this content.”
She
conceded that most people see more than you can glean from a 90-minute review
of their timeline, that many follow any number of groups. But she added that if
they’re local groups, they usually ban political posts.
While
it obviously has great reason to make such a claim, Facebook recently said in a
statement that political posts make up just 6 percent of its users’ feeds.
She
said she takes comfort, ironically, in the limited impact of counterfeit media.
“Most
of the existing studies show it’s not having a huge effect on people,” she
said. “In some ways, I wish it were the case that the media had huge effects.”
Christopher Heimerman is a former editor of the
Daily Chronicle in DeKalb, Illinois, and freelance journalist covering media
practices in the Midwest. He wrote the memoir “40,000 Steps” which details his
war with alcoholism and the marathon he ran after rehab. He lives in DeKalb.
Follow him on Twitter @RunTopherRun.