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In the United States, the number of partisan media outlets masquerading as valid journalism has now dwindled to actual local newspaper sites, researchers say, as so-called pink slime operatives prepare for November’s presidential election.
Pink slime sites mimic local news providers, but they are highly partisan and tend to bury their deep ties to dark money, lobby groups, and special interests.
NewsGuard, which evaluates the quality and trustworthiness of news sites, learned about 1,197 pink slime sites operating in the U. S. UU. al April 1, about as many as the 1,200 actual news sites operated through newspapers.
Backed by an obscure network of political operatives, action committees, and donors, those sites have filled a void left by classic local news decimated by brands that have shifted their advertising dollars into the virtual spending of Silicon Valley teams like Meta and Google.
The number of such sites has nearly tripled since 2019, but has fluctuated with U. S. election cycles. U. S. Today’s volumes are similar to those known to researchers in mid-2020, with some media disappearing and others surfacing in between.
“Their goal is to cloak political influence as journalism,” said Philip Napoli, a professor of public information at Duke University and director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media.
One such media outlet is Chicago City Wire, which recently published an article about an upcoming local event related to the decriminalization of sex paintings under the salacious name “Hookers and Chicken Parm. “
The article, which is unsigned and does not mention the parm bird outside of its title, is based on the ongoing culture wars in America and calls a local LGBTQ organization a “pro-gay and transvestite ‘rights’ group. “
Over time, those media outlets are increasingly adapting and investing more in advertising to legitimize their brands, experts say. NewsGuard exposed about $4 million in ad spend on Meta’s Facebook and Instagram in the 2022 midterm cycle across four of the biggest players.
The rise of pink slime also comes as social platforms have scaled back their moderation groups amid broader layoffs. Meta, in particular, has scaled back its efforts to curate trustworthy journalism on Facebook. Critics say social media platforms are doing more to combat this surge.
Kathleen Carley, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, said her suggestion is that after the 2022 midterm elections, “a lot more money” is being poured into pink slime sites, adding advertising on Meta.
“A lot of those sites have been renovated and have a more realistic look,” he said. “I think we’re going to see a lot more of that in the future. “
Meta said it is asking publishers with political ties to pass a licensing procedure so they can run political classified ads and publicly disclose them in their marketing.
The word “pink slime” has its origins in fast food, where some U. S. manufacturers clandestinely upload a cheap food to hamburgers and other processed meats.
Since the last U. S. presidential election, advances in synthetic intelligence have opened a front in the data war. Pink media outlets can use artificial intelligence to deliver mundane content based on publicly available data, in addition to articles designed to manipulate opinion, especially on the battlefield. States.
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