Facebook

Recently, as the political battle over congressional redistricting brought California into the national spotlight, Facebook users were shown a curious series of ads.

The ads, from a straightforward-looking news site called the California Courier, often felt a lot like campaign commercials, linking to articles hammering Democrats in the state, including Gov. Gavin Newsom. Few punched in the other direction, toward Republicans. One said, “California Democrats just rewrote their gerrymandering plan so voters will see their partisan map on the ballot this November.” Another called Proposition 50, which passed in November, “a scheme critics say is meant to undermine voter-approved protections and entrench one party rule in California.”

A reader who clicked through to the Courier’s website would find stories that largely align with a conservative view of the news, like a video of a child “riding a scooter through San Fran’s drug-ravaged streets,” or an anonymous piece that cites “confidential sources” cautioning against a “left-wing educator” running for a position with an Orange County school district.

What a reader would not find is any disclosure of the Courier’s ownership or funding, including what appear to be ties to a network of conservative organizations in California that, according to one researcher, scaled up a series of right-leaning news sites in three other states just ahead of the 2024 election.

The Courier has money to spend. According to a review of the ad library maintained by Facebook’s owner, Meta, the outlet has spent more than $80,000 since 2021 promoting its stories on social issues and politics, potentially reaching tens of thousands of users on the platform each week.

Critics say the California outlet is part of a growing, nationwide ecosystem of innocuous-looking, cheaply produced news publications that publish and advertise biased articles in an attempt to surreptitiously influence elections. They worry the practice could mislead voters and corrode trust in nonpartisan news providers.

“I think we are in an era where people are consuming so much content online without knowing the source of it,” said Max Read, who has studied the network apparently behind the Courier at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit that works to counter political polarization. “And for well-funded organizations to contribute to that by disguising what they’re doing online just helps exacerbate that problem of people not trusting what they come across.”

At a glance, the Courier does not necessarily look right-leaning. A handful of stories seem like straight news echoing press releases, such as one announcing new affordable housing units. But even those that seem relatively neutral may have a right-leaning spin, like one describing speeding fines tied to income as a potential “woke penalty loophole.”

The outlet also shares a name with a 67-year-old California-based publication serving the Armenian diaspora. One of that Courier’s founders won acclaim from his peers for his tenure as dean of the University of Maryland’s journalism school.

When the Markup and CalMatters contacted the publisher of the Armenian Courier, he said he was unaware of the other site. He told a reporter he was opening it for the first time.

“I’m definitely not conservative,” said Harut Sassounian, who owns the Courier, where his regular editorials appear online and formerly in print. “The two publications have nothing in common. Neither politically nor ethnically nor anything like that.”

Although it lacks the pedigree of the Armenian publication, the right-leaning Courier has shown it is well-immersed in today’s social media. A video it made suggesting Newsom flip-flopped in his view of President Biden’s mental acuity generated thousands of reactions.

The publication also shares some of the murky citation practices of contemporary social media. Almost all of the stories on the site are unattributed, or simply attributed to “the California Courier.”

A few, however, include author names. One of the named writers describes himself on social media as a “content creator” for the Lincoln Media Foundation, a conservative group, and links to Courier articles. Another shares a name with a Republican strategist based in Orange County, and a third lists a resume with conservative organizations in a short bio.

The Lincoln Media Foundation is tied to the Lincoln Club, a group based in Orange County that bills itself as “the oldest and largest conservative major donor organization in the state of California.” The club funnels anonymously donated money to conservative candidates and causes.

The Lincoln Media Foundation’s Facebook page recently said it was “proud to present” a new documentary purporting to reveal “the untold truth about the Pacific Palisades fire,” the natural disaster that tore through the state last year and increased political pressure on Newsom.

One hour later, the Courier’s Facebook page promoted it as well, not mentioning the Lincoln Media Foundation but describing the documentary as “much anticipated.”

Neither the Lincoln Club, Lincoln Media, the California Courier or the Courier writers responded to multiple requests for comment about the origins of the site, either through email phone, or social media messages.

That silence, and the lack of information about ownership on the Courier’s website, come despite the outlet’s chief goal, as outlined on its Facebook page.

“California Courier offers statewide and local news,” the page’s description reads. “Our mission is transparency.”

The Lincoln Club has previously been linked to “local” websites around the country, spreading stories with a distinctly conservative tint.

In 2024, Read’s Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which tracks disinformation and extremism online, found a handful of such sites that noted deep in their privacy policies that they were projects from Lincoln Media. Those outlets had names like the Angeleno and the Keystone Courier, and stretched from California to Pennsylvania, although a resulting report didn’t name the Courier.

Many of the sites used Facebook and other social media tools to press a conservative agenda, the report found. Meta has rules against “coordinated inauthentic behavior” but it’s not clear whether Lincoln Media’s websites would cross that line.

‘Pink slime’ news

Researchers have taken to calling sites like those operated by Lincoln Media “pink slime” news, a name coined after a meat-industry additive. These sites don’t produce outright false news, like others, but they do not meet basic journalistic standards. That often means low-quality content and failing to disclose associations with outside organizations.

The sites generally aren’t designed to generate revenue, but to sway public opinion. The majority, according to researchers, lean toward a conservative agenda, and if the site’s stories gain traction on social media, they can travel widely. “If they place an ad well or if they just get the right pickup from the right influencer, these things don’t really have a limit on how far they can go,” Read said.

While it’s not clear how many sites the Lincoln Club might fund, it isn’t the only group that has used the strategy.

In 2020, the New York Times reported on Metric Media, a group that created nearly 1,300 sites around the country with names like Maine Business Daily and the Ann Arbor Times. At a glance, these could pass for simple local news operations. But the Times report found they took money from public relations firms and Republican operatives to produce stories beneficial to those groups, a massive journalistic red flag.

Ethical or not, the strategy can be effective for lending credibility to a particular viewpoint. Kevin DeLuca, an assistant professor of political science at Yale University who has researched pink slime websites, conducted an experiment that showed subjects both real unbiased news sites and others produced by Metric Media.

Some subjects in the study were given a tip sheet that asked them to examine the sites closely, looking at whether they included information like credible mission pages and other details. But even with the tip sheet, the study subjects said in interviews that they didn’t strongly prefer the truly local over the manufactured sites.

DeLuca says these sites are now in place around the United States, and news consumers have little idea when they’re running into them. The problem may only get worse with the spread of generative AI, since that technology further reduces the cost of creating such sites.

Researchers who study these sites say it’s never been easier to produce them. Local news, for one, has faced a years-long financial crisis that’s wiped many once-robust operations off the map.

While it can’t be said whether any one publication uses AI-generated content, the wide availability of tools like ChatGPT, capable of producing at least a semblance of a passable news story, have also made it easier to build up such sites.

“It’s going to make these pink slime sites even harder for people to know that what they’re reading is not from a human source and not really local investigative journalism.” DeLuca said.

Sassounian, for his part, doesn’t think there’s any risk the two California Couriers would ever be confused with each other. He took over the paper in the 1980s, and his columns, which he describes as “hard-hitting editorials that defend the rights of the Armenian people worldwide,” have been translated into languages around the world.

“It’s not pleasant to have our name used by someone else,” Sassounian said. “I prefer that they don’t, but I don’t know what I can do about it.”

Colin Lecher writes for CalMatters.

LEGENDARY British singer-songwriter Chris Rea has tragically passed away aged 74.

The singer, from Middlesbrough, penned the smash hit Driving Home For Christmas in 1978.

Christopher Rea was born on 4 March 1951 in Middlesbrough in the North Riding of Yorkshire to an Italian father, Camillo Rea, and an Irish mother, Winifred K. Slee.

In 1973 he joined the local Middlesbrough band, Magdalene and began writing songs.

He went on to enjoy a long and sucesfull career on the British music scene.

His most famous song Driving Home for Christmas, song has made a reappearance on the UK Singles Chart every year since 2007.

STAR’S AGONY

Heartbreak for Call the Midwife star as beloved husband of 35 years dies

ALL CHANGE

Huge popstar forced to cancel ANOTHER concert moments before show

It’s now a chart regular at this time of year, reaching its highest position in 2021 when it made it to number 10.

Rea was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at the age of just 33 and faced nine serious operations – spending a total of 32 weeks in hospital.

While appearing on the TV show Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing Christmas special in 1994 Rea told the hosts he had “never really gotten over” his diagnosis.

He has previously opened up on his health battle, revealing that some of his internal organs, his pancreas, gallbladder, and left quadrant of the liver were “all gone” after an operation.

It was after he had received the lifesaving surgery that the star discovered he had type 1 diabetes.

Speaking candidly about the moment he told his wife Joan Lesley about the diagnosis Rea said: “She pulled the car over and burst into tears.”

Chris has previously said he has to take “34 pills every day” after his health struggles.

His wife Joan was there when the hitmaker wrote the Christmas favourite Driving Home for Christmas.

The pair have been together since they met as 16 year olds in Middlesbrough and it is said Rea has the longest surviving relationship in the music industry.

The couple have two daughters together Josephine, born 16 September 1983, and Julia Christina, born 18 March 1989.

Speaking to Bob Mortimer about its origins, Chris previously said: “I was on the dole when I wrote that.

“My manager had just left me. I’d just been banned from driving.

“My now wife, Joan, had to drive down to London to pick me up in the Mini and take me home, and that’s when I wrote it.”

That Christmas drive up north was a magical one indeed, not only did he write a famous song, he also received a cheque for £15,000 upon stepping through his front door.

His song Fool (if you think it’s over) had become a hit in America and earned him a pretty sum. The timing couldn’t have been better given he was down to his last £200.

It was a while before Driving Home would make any money.

Gil Gerard, the actor who became a childhood hero to many for his lead performances in the 1979 movie “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” and its subsequent TV incarnation, died early Tuesday, his wife announced on social media. He was 82.

“Early this morning Gil — my soulmate — lost his fight with a rare and viciously aggressive form of cancer,” Janet Gerard wrote Tuesday evening on Facebook. “From the moment when we knew something was wrong to his death this morning was only days.”

She was by Gerard’s side when he died in hospice care, she added as she placed another post — a pre-written message from the actor to his family, friends and fans — on her husband’s Facebook page.

“If you are reading this, then Janet has posted it as I asked her to,” the actor wrote. “My life has been an amazing journey. The opportunities I’ve had, the people I’ve met and the love I have given and received have made my 82 years on the planet deeply satisfying.”

The post was followed by myriad comments in which fans spontaneously recalled Gerard’s work as Buck Rogers and shared the influence he had on their lives.

“Your time as Buck Rogers was way too short but it has stayed with me in my childhood memories for 45+ years,” one man wrote. “Your hero was brave, macho, but also kind, compassionate, and fair. I feel as if that was representative of the man you truly were. Thank you for being the kind of ‘make believe’ hero that we should all want to be in real life.”

Another fan replied, “[H]aving met him, I can say he was all that. On and off the screen.”

Wrote another, “Like many here, I grew up watching Gil as Buck Rogers. He was cool… and he was funny… and he was nice. I was happy to find him here after all these years… still cool… still funny… still nice. It was a highlight when he ‘liked’ one of my comments. We’ll keep an eye out for you… 500 years into the future!”

Gerard discussed the allure of “Buck Rogers” with The Times in 2010.

“With our show, the reason people liked it was the humor and the fact that it was colorful and upbeat and it had heroes in it,” he said, chatting at a comic convention in Anaheim. “It was family entertainment. I think it’s great to deal with more serious issues, but you can do it with humor — look at what ‘All in the Family’ dealt with. You can be serious without being relentlessly dark and heavy.”

He also had wishes for the future direction of sci-fi projects, which at the time he observed were “very dark, almost hopeless.” And, he said, “wet.”

“Have you noticed how much rain they get in the future now? Everything is rainy and muddy. I don’t understand, either, how come everybody is so dirty when there’s so much water around everywhere,” Gerard observed with what seemed to be a healthy sense of humor. “Look at ‘Waterworld’ — they live in a place with no land and everyone’s covered in dirt. I don’t get it. You think they’d fall overboard and get clean once in a while.”

Gilbert Cyril Gerard was born Jan. 23, 1943, in Little Rock, Ark., and trekked to New York City in 1969 to give acting a shot, studying at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy.

He drove a taxi to pay the bills and, according to his website, one day a fare told him to show up on the set of the movie “Love Story.” Ten weeks of work on the film followed and his career took off. At first Gerard appeared primarily in commercials, representing companies including Ford, Coca-Cola and Proctor & Gamble until he landed the role of former POW Dr. Alan Stewart on NBC’s “The Doctors.” He put on the white coat and stethoscope for more than 300 episodes of that daytime drama from 1973 to 1976.

Then an agent lured him to the West Coast, where auditions got him noticed by NBC. NBC’s interest led to his casting in the title role in Universal Pictures’ “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century,” starring alongside Erin Gray as Col. Wilma Deering and Pamela Hensley as Princess Ardala.

As William “Buck” Rogers, Gerard played a 20th century astronaut who had come out of suspended animation 500 years in the future, only to discover a planet in ruins. In 1979 dollars, the film earned more than $21 million worldwide, or about $100 million when adjusted for inflation.

His career outside of “Buck Rogers” included appearances on mainstream shows abundant in that era — “Baretta,” “Hawaii 5-0,” “CHiPs” and “Little House on the Prairie” among them — as well as more obscure TV movies with delightful titles: “Reptisaurus,” “Nuclear Hurricane” and “Bone Eater.” “Sidekicks” in the mid-1980s, a couple of years after the release of the Oscar-nominated 1984 movie “The Karate Kid,” saw him playing a cop who becomes the guardian of a pre-teen martial-arts expert. A stint on the short-lived 1990 series “E.A.R.T.H Force” earned him some light snark from The Times’ then-critic Howard Rosenberg.

But Gerard also appeared in successful mainstream films including “The Nice Guys” starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling and “The Big Easy” with Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin.

Gerard was married and divorced four times before exchanging vows with Janet Gerard in the 2010s. Among his wives was model and actor Connie Sellecca, whom he was married to from 1979 until their divorce was finalized in 1987. They had one child, a son.

In addition to addictions to alcohol and drugs, the actor battled his weight starting in the 1980s, with the once-trim leading man eventually seeing his health suffer as he topped 300 pounds, according to a 1990 interview with People. He later chronicled his 2005 mini gastric-bypass surgery in the 2007 Discovery Health special “Action Hero Makeover.”

“Gil likely saved my life. I was badly in need of weightloss surgery. I was resistant…then i saw a documentary on Gils weight loss journey. It was the impetus I needed as Gil was a hero of mine growing up,” a fan wrote Tuesday on Gerard’s posthumous Facebook post. “I thanked him via email several years ago and he was gracious and kind. I will miss him.”

Gerard appeared to be quite grateful and gracious at the end of his life.

“It’s been a great ride, but inevitably one that comes to a close as mine has,” he wrote in that final prepared post. “Don’t waste your time on anything that doesn’t thrill you or bring you love. See you out somewhere in the cosmos.”

“No matter how many years I got to spend with him it would have never been enough,” Janet Gerard said in closing in her own message on Facebook. “Hold the ones you have tightly and love them fiercely.”

In addition to his wife, Gerard is survived by actor Gilbert Vincent “Gib” Gerard, 44, his son with Sellecca.