Move Over Greenwashing: Here Comes Pink Slime
As local newspapers decline and die, dubious replacements pop up.
Have you ever had the experience of seeing a news article online that just looks kind of… off? Or maybe it looks credible but it’s from some news outlet you never heard of? And when you click around to try to find out what they’re about, there’s just not a lot of information on the site? You may have encountered “pink slime” news. Named for the meat byproduct that made headlines some years back, pink slime news also comes from obscure sources and is not what it appears to be.
The California Globe is one such outlet that I encountered several years ago when Facebook friends shared some of their stories. I looked them up on one of my favorite reference sites, Media Bias/Fact Check and found that they got a “Mixed” rating for accuracy in reporting, having failed several fact checks and relying on questionable sources. They also don’t disclose their ownership. And when it comes to climate change, they are clearly cranky contrarians.
AI-Yi-Yi
But at least (as of this writing anyway) they seem to use actual humans to write their news stories. Some pink slime enterprises have turned to AI to produce content.
For example, there is Hoodline. Originally one of the scrappy local news sites in San Francisco billing itself as an alternative to legacy news outfits like the Chronicle, the Examiner and local TV news stations, it pivoted to focusing on mining large sets of data, and has now morphed into a national enterprise making use of AI to generate stories. That last change is something they kept on the down-low at first, until other local media outlets called them out for it. Their motives appear to be relatively benign — they have no particular ideological bent or desire to contradict climate science.
Pink Slime Casts a Shadow on Solar
That’s not the case with Metric Media, which also capitalizes on the decline in local news sources, but with a political agenda. ProPublica has documented how Metric Media took over a local newspaper in Ohio and proceeded to run negative coverage against solar energy.
Closer to home, there is the Richmond Standard, serving the city of Richmond in Contra Costa County. Richmond used to have its own newspaper. But with the closing of newsrooms, a gap opened up, and Chevron was more than happy to step in with its own offering. Indeed, at the bottom of the page, it says “The Richmond Standard is funded by the Chevron Products Company. We aim to provide Richmond residents with important information about what's going on at the Richmond Refinery and in the community, and to provide a voice for Chevron Products Company on civic issues.” What it doesn’t provide is any coverage of residents’ issues with pollution, flaring, and other impacts of the fossil fuel industry.
(Happily for Richmond residents, the Cityside Journalism Initiative has launched RIchmondside, so there is now a place to get those stories.)
How effective are these pink slime sites at attracting readers and appearing credible? Unfortunately, they may be succeeding at their goals. “Respondents rated the fake local newspaper as less credible than a real television station or a fake local website, but they rated fake local websites as credibly as real local television.” This may be a damning indictment of local television news reporting, but it’s also evidence of these local stations’ reach and influence.
How to De-Slime
What can you do? If someone shares an article from one of these weird news sites, or you see them pop up on the web, do some investigating.
Look for other stories on the same topic and see if you can find the original source. Poke around the weird news site and see what else they have published.
For example, a friend shared a story from one such site that claimed people’s critical thinking abilities — and even their IQs — were declining because of screens and AI. When I went and looked, not only did I find that the article was citing sources that didn’t actually support these claims, but the site itself also had an article about space aliens.
Pink slime is insidious, but armed with tools and knowledge, you can learn to recognize and combat it. To help you sort through all the noise, Climate Action California’ website lists a number of sources of reliable climate news—check them out!.
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