Fears that ‘pink slime’ sites could be as harmful to political discourse as foreign disinformation in 2016 and 2020
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, raising fears of the impact that they might have during America’s bitterly fought 2024 election.
Some media experts are concerned that the so-called pink slime websites, often funded domestically, could prove at least as harmful to political discourse and voters’ faith in media and democracy as foreign disinformation efforts in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.
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: “The odds are now better than 50-50 that if you see a news website purporting to cover local news, it’s fake.”
As with so many things, you can blame Ronald Reagan.
Prior to Reagan, there was a thing called "the Fairness Doctrine.’ A company could only own two local radio stations [AM and FM] and one VHF television station. If a station ran an editorial, they had to allow the opposition equal time for rebuttal. And half hour commercials like “The Transformers” and “GI Joe” were not allowed.
At this point, even the safeguards Reagan took down wouldn’t be enough because of the endless pseudo-news websites set up in other countries for the sole means of fooling people.
And if Fox had to abide by fair standards and practices on broadcast TV or even on an American website? They will have no qualms about setting up Fox News Russia or whatever and sending their people to watch it online. With Elon’s help.
It’s too late for that.
The problem with that is some topics don’t deserve equal time. For example, should we allow Dow Chemical to dump their toxic waste into the environment? No, absolutely not, no question. We shouldn’t give them a platform to misinform people.
And yet we give Dow all the platforms to misinform people now because they have more money.