General GOP Governors Have Been Running A Propaganda Website Disguised As News Right Under Your Nose

[Freeloading Rusty]

GOP Governors Have Been Running A Propaganda Website Disguised As News Right Under Your Nose

The website which has been in operation since the summer is running propaganda about Republican governors, while not disclosing or making no mention of the fact that it is a political communication that is being paid for by the Republican Governors Association.

The AP reported, “The Republican Governors Association has quietly launched an online publication that looks like a media outlet and is branded as such on social media. The Free Telegraph blares headlines about the virtues of GOP governors, while framing Democrats negatively. It asks readers to sign up for breaking news alerts. It launched in the summer bearing no acknowledgement that it was a product of an official party committee whose sole purpose is to get more Republicans elected. Only after The Associated Press inquired about the site last week was a disclosure added to The Free Telegraph’s pages identifying the publication’s partisan source.”

The idea for the website didn’t materialize out of thin air. What the RGA did was take the Fox News model and put it on the Internet. The concept of taking clearly partisan information and disguising it as news has gained popularity within the Republican Party since the rise of Trump. Republicans have taken lessons from Putin and decided to muddy the waters of America’s information stream by injecting undisclosed opposition research into stories.

Republicans are engaging in a practice that is intended to undermine the free press. If news consumers can’t separate information from political communications, real stories lose value, and fake stories gain traction. There is a difference between having a viewpoint and a political organization disguising itself as news in a bid to fool the public.

GOP governors launch ‘news’ site critics call propaganda

The Republican Governors Association has quietly launched an online publication that looks like a media outlet and is branded as such on social media. The Free Telegraph blares headlines about the virtues of GOP governors, while framing Democrats negatively. It asks readers to sign up for breaking news alerts. It launched in the summer bearing no acknowledgement that it was a product of an official party committee whose sole purpose is to get more Republicans elected.

Only after The Associated Press inquired about the site last week was a disclosure added to The Free Telegraph’s pages identifying the publication’s partisan source.


The governors association describes the website as routine political communication. Critics, including some Republicans, say it pushes the limits of honest campaign tactics in an era of increasingly partisan media and a proliferation of “fake news” sites, including those whose material became part of an apparent Russian propaganda effort during the 2016 presidential campaign.


“It’s propaganda for sure, even if they have objective standards and all the reporting is 100 percent accurate,” said Republican communications veteran Rick Tyler, whose resume includes Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign.


The website was registered July 7 through Domains By Proxy, a company that allows the originators of a website to shield their identities. An AP search did not find any corporate, Federal Election Commission or IRS filings establishing The Free Telegraph as an independent entity.


As of early Monday afternoon, The Free Telegraph’s Twitter account and Facebook page still had no obvious identifiers tying the site to RGA. The site described itself on Twitter as “bringing you the political news that matters outside of Washington.” The Facebook account labeled The Free Telegraph a “Media/News Company.” That’s a contrast to the RGA’s Facebook page, which is clearly disclosed as belonging to a “Political Organization,” as is the account of its counterpart, the Democratic Governors Association.


RGA Chairman Scott Walker, governor of Wisconsin, deferred questions through a spokesman to the group’s national staff. At RGA, spokesman Jon Thompson said the site is “just another outlet to share those positive results” of the GOP’s 34 Republican governors.

It’s not unprecedented for politicians to try their hand at news distribution. President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, hosted “real news” video segments in the summer, posted to the president’s Facebook page. In one typical segment she told viewers she wanted to highlight “all the accomplishments the president had this week because there’s so much fake news out there.”


Vice President Mike Pence, when he was Indiana governor, pitched the idea of a news agency run by state government, but he ditched the idea in 2015 after criticism. In both cases, however, Lara Trump and Pence were not aiming to hide the source of the content.


But the RGA site has Democrats, media analysts and even some Republicans crying foul.


Democrats say Republicans are laying the groundwork with headlines that will appear in future digital and television ads, while also providing individual voters with fodder to distribute across social media.


“They’re just seeding the ground,” said Angelo Carusone, who runs Media Matters, a liberal watchdog group. “They are repackaging their opposition research so it’s there as ‘news,’ and at any moment that publication could become the defining moment of the narrative” in some state’s campaign for governor.


Political communications expert Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania professor who has studied political advertising for four decades, said The Free Telegraph commits a form of “identity theft” by “appropriating the integrity of news” because “the form of news carries credibility” that blatantly partisan sites do not.


Jamieson was particularly critical of RGA’s initial failure to disclosure its involvement. “What we know about audiences is they factor in the source of information when judging that information,” she said. “If you are denying the reader, the listener or the viewer information you know the reader uses, the question is why do you feel the need to do this?”


A recent RGA fundraising email said the site was “fact-checking the liberal media” and is a counter to “decades of demonizing Republicans.” Playing off President Donald Trump’s dismissal of “fake news,” the email said media “can say whatever they like about us — whether it’s true or not.”


Some of The Free Telegraph’s content plays off of material from traditional media organizations and from right-leaning outlets such as The Daily Caller. RGA press releases are linked. Some headlines and photos are exact duplicates of RGA press releases.


In the days after Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas and Louisiana, the site included headlines praising Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, for his response. There were no such headlines for Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat.


The content is far tamer than from some sites from that popped up during the 2016 presidential campaign to propagate sensational but baseless stories. But it does create a cache of headlines that could turn up in campaigns.


The first test is in this fall’s Virginia governor’s race pitting Democratic nominee Ralph Northam against Republican Ed Gillespie. Virginians already have seen another site, The Republican Standard, that is run by Virginia Republican operatives with ties to Gillespie, a former state and national party chairman, and to a firm that has been paid by the RGA. The Free Telegraph and its social media accounts frequently link The Republican Standard.


Northam campaign spokesman David Turner accused Gillespie and Republicans of “creating their own Pravda,” a nod to the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

 

[sparkuri]

Ha!
Take THAT CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, REUTERS, BBC, NY Times, Huffington Post......


.......

 

[member 3289]

Didn't vote for Rick Scott either time he ran (and won), won't be voting for whichever Republitard runs for governor next year.

 

[Deleted member 1]

The website which has been in operation since the summer is running propaganda about Republican governors, while not disclosing or making no mention of the fact that it is a political communication

Hrrmmmm that's terrible.


Luckily politicsusa.com is here to give us not-propaganda

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GOP Governors Have Been Running A Propaganda Website Disguised As News Right Under Your Nose
The website which has been in operation since the summer is running propaganda about Republican governors, while not disclosing or making…

By Jason Easley on Tue, Sep 19th, 2017 at 9:37 am

 

[Belobog]

Hrrmmmm that's terrible.


Luckily politicsusa.com is here to give us not-propaganda

Nice whataboutism.

 

[Deleted member 1]

Nice whataboutism.

What can I say. Im universally against propaganda.

The context of the story source should matter now as it does anywhere. Just some fun irony.

The apnews original article is much more interesting and factual anyways:
GOP governors launch 'news' site critics call propaganda

 

[Belobog]

What can I say. Im universally against propaganda.

The context of the story source should matter now as it does anywhere. Just some fun irony.

The apnews original article is much more interesting and factual anyways:
GOP governors launch 'news' site critics call propaganda

His post should not be immediately dismissed. As you admit, it has merit.

 

[Truck Party]

I've never heard of it

 

[Deleted member 1]

His post should not be immediately dismissed. As you admit, it has merit.

Fair point. It shouldn't be for sure. But it's still a hilarious juxtaposition to me.

Did anyone actually go to the website?

The Free Telegraph

I'm not sure if I'm as triggered by this blogspam style site as much as I'm supposed to be.
The references to fakenews don't seem accurate and it's got a campaign logo notice at the bottom...Al beit flat coloring and added last week

Doesn't seem more Seems just as cliche and loaded as any campaign print material that arrives to my house looking like registrations or surveys.

 

[Belobog]

The RGA association notice was not on the website until they got called out on it according to the OP's linked articles.

Campaign material doesn't masquerade as a news outlet. Currently the content is fairly tame, but it's establishing a platform to manipulate voter feelings.

 

[Deleted member 1]

The RGA association notice was not on the website until they got called out on it

That's obviously an issue.

Campaign material doesn't masquerade as a news outlet.

Oh I'm sure it does...at least in the sense of what's there right now. I receive fake newspapers every election cycle with this same sort of pushing of a group of candidates with references to news stories in a sort of "extra extra read all about it" format. Election campaigns run what look like news segments for 30 minute blocks on television.

I think that's bad too, but short of the missing notice I'm honestly kind of thinking this is just the natural extension of yesteryear.

Regulate it all or don't. Maybe the former is needed given the ease of the internet.

 

[Hauler]

If nobody reads it, is it still propaganda?