NEW YORK (NewsNation) — In the past few months, research indicates that hundreds of phony news sites have emerged. Most aim to either surpass or overpower content from legitimate news sources or to fuel an explosion of polarizing or false narratives as election season heats up.
NewsGuard, a research group, reports there are 1,265 outlets referred to as “pink slime” — politically motivated and often partisan-backed websites pretending to be local news outlets.
This compares to roughly 1,213 websites of actual and legitimate local newspapers, according to Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative project. Nearly 45% of these phony sites target regions and voters in swing states such as Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida.
Phony sites try to influence people in key states
The research highlights the significant concern and potential impact these phony news sites can have on one of the nation’s most sacred democratic processes.
“They typically appear in places that have swing congressional districts, states where the Senate is hotly contested,” Steven Brill, CEO of NewsGuard, told NewsNation. “What they’ll do is they’ll show their favorite candidate at a ribbon cutting for a new center for the elderly or the homeless, and they’ll depict the opposition candidate as being in the center of a cheating scandal when he was in high school.”
These sites mimic local news but often hide connections to dark money, political operatives and special interests.
How do these sites surpass legitimate local news sites?
Most of these sites are powered by artificial intelligence rather than legitimate journalists, making them cheaper and quicker to produce.
This is not how factual information is traditionally tracked down and vetted. These sites capitalize on the decline of local news, with much of the country in a “news desert.”
In 200 counties, there are no local newspapers or sites, and just over 1,500 counties have only one local newspaper, often updated weekly.
This geographic coverage gap makes it easy for these phony sites to fill the gap with misinformation or false narratives, potentially influencing the outcome of elections.