'They're Targeting Voters Under the Guise of a News Org': Inside a Soros-Funded 'Fake News' Network's $9 Million Digital Ad Blitz

Over the past three months, an avowed left-wing organization has spent more than $9 million on Facebook ads boosting Vice President Kamala Harris and attacking former president Donald Trump. The spots have reached scores of swing state voters using a Facebook feature that allows advertisers to submit their own data—for political groups, that is, data they've compiled on voters—to reach a precise audience.

The practice is considered standard operating procedure for campaigns and PACs. But the group behind the $9 million digital ad blitz is neither a campaign nor a PAC—at least not on paper. Instead, it's Courier Newsroom, liberal operative Tara McGowan's organization that pushes Democratic talking points under the guise of local "news" outlets.

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Soros-backed Democratic propaganda network is helping the Harris campaign deceive Americans



The Harris campaign posted an image of what appeared to be a real news headline on Monday, which read, "Polish Pennsylvanians endorse Kamala Harris over Putin, Ukraine concerns."

Harris boosters online suggested this was a "huge endorsement," with some insinuating it was confirmation that the bulk of American Poles in the commonwealth were backing the vice president.

Keen observers, however, suspected there was something fishy about the supposed endorsement — especially since Trump reportedly won a majority of votes in eight of the 10 Pennsylvania neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of American Poles in 2020 — as well as about the source of the campaign's claim.

It turns out that the endorsement was not reflective of the broader Polish-American community's political opinion but rather noise from a small group of avowed Democrats, including Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D) and Democratic state Reps. Jessica Benham, Eddie Day Pashinksi, and Melissa Cerrato.

'Although the articles are made to resemble ordinary news, their purpose isn’t primarily to build a readership for the website.'

The publication cited in the Harris campaign tweet, the Keystone Newsroom, is actually part of the Courier Newsroom leftist propaganda network founded in 2017 by Democratic strategist Tara McGowan — the head of the Acronym network of Democratic-aligned activist groups who previously served as a staffer on President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, as an associate producer for CBS News, and as an operative for a super PAC that supported Hillary Clinton's failed 2016 campaign.

Acronym's political arm, Pacronym, is a Democratic super PAC that dumped tens of millions of dollars into recent elections.

In 2019, Bloomberg revealed McGowan's intention behind Courier Newsroom's local propaganda outfits: "Capture and persuade a small portion of strategically situated swing-state voters" in states such as Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Bloomberg noted:

While the articles she publishes are based on facts, nothing alerts readers that Courier publications aren’t actually traditional hometown newspapers but political instruments designed to get them to vote for Democrats. And although the articles are made to resemble ordinary news, their purpose isn’t primarily to build a readership for the website: It’s for the pieces to travel individually through social media, amplifying their influence with persuadable voters.

The propaganda network closely resembles a Democratic voter outreach operation.

"Everybody who clicks on, likes, or shares an article," said McGowan, "we get that data back to create a lookalike audience to find other people with similar attributes in the same area. So we continually grow our ability to find people."

'What I say to them is, balance does not exist any more.'

McGowan revealed that because her propaganda network is for profit, she was initially able to get around Google's tight restrictions on micro-targeting political ads — and appears to have so far avoided registering with the Federal Election Commission as a political group.

Some social media platforms are wise to what Courier really is. Facebook, for instance, removed the publications from its news feed ahead of the 2020 presidential election, recognizing it as propaganda.

While the Harris campaign appears keen to pretend the headline is real, it's clear that McGowan — who retweeted the Harris campaign's image of the headline — is under no illusion that the Keystone Newsroom and related outfits are anything more than propaganda.

"A lot of people I respect will see this media company as an affront to journalistic integrity because it won't, in their eyes, be balanced," she told Bloomberg. "What I say to them is, balance does not exist any more."

The propaganda network has reportedly been funded in the past by billionaire leftist George Soros, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and various wealthy Democratic donors. Soros' Fund for Policy Reform poured at least $5 million into Courier between 2021 and 2022.

Blaze News previously noted that ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, the leftist propaganda network received $1.2 million from the New Venture Fund, Hopewell Fund, and the Sixteen Thirty Fund — all three managed by Arabella Advisors, a leftist, for-profit dark money group based in Washington, D.C.

It appears the propaganda network is now trying to help Harris win over Polish-American voters by characterizing President Donald Trump as sympathetic to Russia, citing his desire to bring an end to the war in Ukraine, which has so far left at least 1 million dead or injured.

The Associated Press noted that there are an estimated 784,000 Polish-Americans in Michigan, 758,000 in Pennsylvania, and 481,000 in Wisconsin.

The apparent purpose of the Keystone Newsroom propaganda piece — which does not provide the names of any supposed signatories besides the Democratic lawmakers — and the Harris campaign's use of the headline is to mislead members of this demographic into believing she has the support of their fellow Polish-Americans, despite her apparent contempt for their dominant religion.

The partisans' letter claims that if Ukraine falls, Poland is next and that "Trump bowed to dictators like Putin before and he will do it again if he is reelected."

The letter, which omits any mention of the fact Ukraine was invaded during this and the previous Democratic administrations, but not under Trump, suggests further that "Vice President Harris has a long, strong track record of protecting our democracy here at home and standing up for our brothers, sisters, parents and grandparents in Poland."

While leftists have suggested that Trump might endanger Poland, the Biden-Harris administration is apparently now considering a move that would embroil Poland and all NATO nations in a direct shooting war with Russia: the authorization of Ukraine's use of American and British long-range weapons in Russia.

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Leftist Groups Are Reportedly Paying Influencers To Peddle Misinformation For 2022 Midterms

The Good Information Foundation is run by Democratic operatives with a history of peddling Democrat propaganda and presenting it as news.