Chuck Darwin<p>Deluge of fake news websites threatens to drown out truth during US election </p><p>Political groups on the right and left are using fake news websites designed to look like reliable sources of information to fill the void left by the demise of local newspapers, <br>raising fears of the impact that they might have during America’s bitterly fought 2024 election.</p><p>Some media experts are concerned that the so-called <a href="https://c.im/tags/pink" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>pink</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/slime" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>slime</span></a> websites, <br>often funded domestically, could prove at least as harmful to political discourse and voters’ faith in media and democracy as foreign <br><a href="https://c.im/tags/disinformation" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>disinformation</span></a> efforts in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.</p><p>According to a recent report from NewsGuard, a company that aims to counter misinformation by studying and rating news websites, the websites are so prolific that: <br>“The odds are now better than 50-50 that if you see a news website purporting to cover local news, it’s fake.”</p><p>NewsGuard estimates that there are a staggering 1,265 such fake local news websites in the US <br>– 4% more than the websites of 1,213 daily newspapers left operating in the country.</p><p>“Actors on both sides of the political spectrum” feel “that what they are doing isn’t bad because all media is really biased against their side or that that they know actors on the other side are using these tactics and so they feel they need to,” <br>said Matt Skibinski, general manager of NewsGuard, which determined that such sites now outnumber legitimate local news organizations. </p><p>“It’s definitely contributed to partisanship and the erosion of trust in media; it’s also a symptom of those things.”</p><p>Pink slime websites, named after a meat byproduct, started at least as early as 2004 when <a href="https://c.im/tags/Brian" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Brian</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Timpone" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Timpone</span></a>, a former television reporter who described himself as a “biased guy” and a Republican, <br>started funding websites featuring names of cities, towns and regions like the Philly Leader and the South Alabama Times.</p><p>Timpone’s company, <a href="https://c.im/tags/Metric" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Metric</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Media" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Media</span></a>, now operates more than 1,000 such websites and his private equity company receives funding from conservative political action committees, according to NewsGuard.</p><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/20/fake-news-websites-us-election?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">theguardian.com/us-news/articl</span><span class="invisible">e/2024/jun/20/fake-news-websites-us-election?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other</span></a></p>