A few months ago, I found myself falling down an internet rabbit hole, the kind that begins with one click and ends with your coffee going cold while you scroll through yet another Substack. The account belonged to NewsGuard, a group that spends its days trying to bring some honesty to a media environment where it is increasingly hard to tell what is real and what is manufactured. Their goal is simple but difficult: to call balls and strikes in media coverage and to flag fake news stories when they surface. Until I found them, I had not realized how much of what I was reading might not be exactly what it appeared to be. They have been writing a lot about something they call “pink slime” websites. The phrase comes from the processed meat product that is pink, slimy, and engineered to look like something better than it is. In journalism, pink slime is a website designed to look like an independent local news outlet. It has a clean logo, a respectable-sounding name, and articles that seem to cover the community. But in reality, it is funded by ideological interests on the Left or the Right, and its real purpose is to push a political message rather than to inform readers honestly. What makes these sites so dangerous is that they are being created specifically to fill a gap. Real local news coverage has been shrinking for years as newspapers close and reporters get laid off. Into that vacuum step these polished imitations, claiming they are there to serve the public good. But the public is not being served. The public is being marketed to. And because they have the structure and look of local news, it is easy to trust them, and easy to buy a story that was written to sway us.
The scale of this problem is hard to overstate. NewsGuard noted that two years ago there were already more pink slime sites than actual real news sites in America. Think about that for a moment. More outlets pretending to report the news than outlets actually reporting it. We live in a time when we are drowning in information, but we are not necessarily getting any closer to the truth. In fact, we may be getting further away from it. These fake sites run the gamut from the silly to the seriously deceptive, and they are not staying on the margins. By October 9, NewsGuard had spotted pink slime material making its way into Democratic campaign ads in Iowa and Ohio. The same pattern seemed to be moving into Georgia. The article asked a question one might want to consider: Is Georgia next? Based on what happened at the Atlanta Press Club debate, the answer seems to be yes. In front of an audience and with cameras rolling, the Democratic nominee for Attorney General, Tanya Miller, used a story published by a pink slime site called Courier Georgia to attack her Republican opponent Brian Strickland. She accused him of ramming a data center down the throats of his neighbors. It is the kind of accusation that can damage a politician—the image of a powerful candidate ignoring the wishes of his own community. But Strickland fired back. He said the claim was false and that it came from a fake news site. Miller did not back down. She doubled down on the story, adjusting her attack to fit the criticism, but she still could not get the details right. Even the pink slime article she was relying on admitted that the data center was not actually being built. So Miller managed to do something remarkable: she used a story that was already fabricated, and then she misrepresented even that fabricated story. It is a sign of how desperate politicians have become, or how careless, or perhaps how willingly they will trade truth for a soundbite if it means scoring points against a rival.
Let’s talk about what NewsGuard said about Courier Georgia. It is not an independent operation. It belongs to Courier Newsroom, which has been flagged by NewsGuard as an outlet with an agenda. Courier Georgia presents itself as a local news source, but its coverage and its connections tell a different story. It is one of a network of sites that have popped up in states around the country, all with familiar-looking names and all with ties to groups that care far more about winning elections than about serving readers. The Georgia edition of this network is connected to Democratic candidates in more ways than one. Miller, along with Keisha Lance Bottoms, attended a candidate event that was hosted by Courier Georgia and moderated by Don Lemon. Now, Don Lemon is someone who has spent years in the mainstream media, but he is also someone who has blurred the line between journalist and activist. Earlier this year, for example, he joined demonstrators who disrupted a church service in Minneapolis. You can argue about whether that was right or wrong, but it is certainly not the behavior of an impartial journalist. It is the behavior of someone who has chosen sides. And yet top Georgia Democrats, including a candidate for Attorney General, were happy to appear at a forum he moderated and hosted by an outlet that NewsGuard has identified as a political operation. When candidates sit down with people like that, when they participate in events run by a pink slime newsroom, they are not just being fooled. They are signaling that they are willing to accept the help, willing to go along with the fiction, and willing to use whatever material comes their way if it might help them win. They are hoping the rest of us won’t look too closely.
But it is not just the appearance at events or the use of articles in debate soundbites. There is also the question of money. Courier Georgia uses ActBlue as a way to accept donations for its “reporting.” ActBlue has become one of the most important fundraising platforms for Democratic candidates and progressive causes. It is not a neutral payment processor in the way that, say, a credit card company is. It is a tool specifically designed to move money from donors to the left side of the political spectrum. For a site that claims to be an independent news organization to use ActBlue is a strange choice, unless that site has no real intention to be independent. News organizations rarely ask for donations through an explicitly partisan platform. They typically seek support from readers of all backgrounds or through nonpartisan foundations. But a pink slime website is not really a news organization. It is a political organization in disguise. The donations it receives are not for journalism in the traditional sense. They are contributions to an effort to create content that will help Democrats in key races. That means the “news” that someone reads on Courier Georgia is not produced to inform voters. It is produced to persuade them, and the money behind it flows through the same infrastructure that funds Democratic campaigns. That is not journalism. That is advertising with a byline.
So let the reader beware. This is not a problem that belongs to one party or one candidate. Pink slime exists on both sides. There are conservative versions of these sites too, and no one should think this is only about the left. But in this particular case, the story is about Georgia, and it is about a Democratic candidate for Attorney General using a known partisan site to attack her opponent. The fact that she doubled down on a story that even the pink slime outlet couldn’t fully stand behind should tell us all something important. Politicians will use whatever tools are available to them. If there is a fake news site that will publish an attack, they will use it. If there is an event hosted by a partisan outlet and moderated by a celebrity journalist turned activist, they will show up. If there is a fundraising platform that can hide the money behind the message, they will let it do its work. The reader is the only line of defense. We have to check each story, look at the source, look at who funds it, look at whether the article admits its own contradictions. We have to be willing to question a politician when they cite a source that does not exist as a legitimate reporting organization. And we have to be honest with ourselves about how easy it is to want to believe something because it matches our existing views. A false story about an opponent building a data center against the wishes of neighbors is appealing to supporters because it confirms what they already think about that opponent. For the candidate who uses it, it doesn’t matter if it is true. That is the point. The only thing that matters is whether it sticks, whether it spreads, whether it turns into another piece of ammunition in a war that has nothing to do with the truth. In a world where pink slime is everywhere, the best thing we can do is slow down, read carefully, and ask the questions that these sites are hoping we won’t ask. Who paid for this? Who benefits from us believing it? And why does it feel so easy to believe, even when it isn’t true?