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From the Washington Free Beacon: 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.
Courier’s Facebook ad spending—and its targeting tactics—reflect the extent to which Democrats rely on McGowan’s media project to reach voters online.
While the $9 million Courier has spent on Facebook ads since Aug. 3 is not a substantial amount when compared with spending on television advertisements (Future Forward, the preeminent PAC supporting Harris, had already reserved $332 million worth of airtime by mid-September), it is a sizable sum in the digital ad game, where a few hundred dollars is enough to place a spot that garners thousands of impressions. And while Future Forward does run digital ads, it has spent $4.8 million on such spots in the last 90 days, roughly half as much as Courier.
The report explains that when Harris’ PAC, Future Forward, runs ads on Facebook, it must do so by labeling itself as a political organization. Liberal billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Reid Hoffman are some of the main donors to the PAC.
However, when Courier runs ads on Facebook, they are associated with one of its 11 “local news” outlets which claim to be ‘nonpartisan’, and the pages for those outlets are categorized as “Media/news company” instead of “political organization.”
The “news” from the Courier outlets is nothing more than political advertising pushing positive messages about Democrats, with a little window dressing to try to make it look like a legitimate news outlet, the Free Beacon reveals.
Between August 3 – Oct. 31, Courier spent $9.2 million on Facebook ads mostly in five swing states: Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina, and most of those ads are focused on abortion and birth control.
The report explains that Tara McGowan launched Courier in 2019. At the time, Courier was owned by ACRONYM, McGowan’s dark money group bankrolled by the likes of Hoffman and fellow liberal billionaire George Soros.
A year after it was launched, ACRONYM pulled out of Courier in a structural reorganization, leaving Courier to be owned by another McGowan entity, Good Information Inc., which is also backed by Soros and Hoffman, the Beacon reported.
‘They’re Targeting Voters Under the Guise of a News Org’: Inside a Soros-Funded ‘Fake News’ Network’s $9 Million Digital Ad Blitzhttps://t.co/HLPHARDYIM
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) November 4, 2024
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