Liberal Fake News Site Spends Millions to Target Facebook Users in Battleground Districts
A for-profit media company funded by major Democratic donors Reid Hoffman and Laurene Powell Jobs has created hundreds of millions of impressions on voters in key House races through Facebook ads disguised as local news articles, according to a review of financial records.
According to
Facebook’s ad library,
Courier Newsroom — the subject of an FEC complaint filed in September — has spent over $2.1 million on ads since its founding last August. The amount is more than double what the National Republican Congressional Committee has spent on
Facebook ads over the last two years, and even outweighs what the official Super PAC of House Republicans, the Congressional Leadership Fund, has spent on Facebook ads since May 2018.
Courier is owned by the digital political nonprofit ACRONYM, which was founded by activist Tara McGowan and operates as an umbrella organization, with seven uniquely branded websites dedicated to battleground states Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
A National Review analysis of
Courier’s outlays shows that at least 74 percent of the group’s spending has been allocated to boosting vulnerable Democrats competing in 14 competitive House races. As of early September,
Courier has paid for 485 ads masquerading as “articles” in these specific races, resulting in a range of at least 149.6 million to 170.5 million impressions on Facebook.
Some of those Democrats, including
Lauren Underwood of Illinois’s 14th Congressional district,
Anthony Brindisi of New York’s 22nd, and
Abigail Spanberger of Virginia’s 7th, have shared
Courier’s laudatory coverage, presenting the partisan content as the product of straight reporting.
Courier has also insured that the
“articles” are disseminated widely by paying Facebook to
promote them to
unsuspecting users.
Fake News Site Courier Spends Millions to Boost Vulnerable House Democrats | National Review