There are several business, general election, and potential manufactured housing industry related insights that can be drawn from the Mark Hemingway via RealClearInvestigations (RCI) 10.14.2024 article: “Buying the News: How Leftwing Donors Are Taking Over Local Journalism.” Note that Hemingway cites sources across the left-right media divide in order to make his case. Note too that while his title seems to be only about the left, he does address evidence from the right too. One pull quote and one parallel to manufactured housing will be offered as a teaser to Parts I and II of this article with analysis. Citing the left-leaning Associated Press (AP), a call out box below said: “Laurene Powell Jobs, close personal friend of Kamala Harris, supports leftwing causes and journalism.” Jobs, of course, is wife of the late co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs. Warren Buffett led Berkshire Hathaway, even after their large selloff of Apple shares, still has a big stake in Apple. Buffett and his ally William “Bill” Gates III are among the American billionaires who support leftist causes and candidates. Kamala Harris has been parachuted into the role of Democratic nominee, despite the fact that Democratic Party voters in their primaries overwhelmingly voted for Joe Biden and her name didn’t even appear on primary ballots. The party – Democrats – that often sharply points their finger at Donald J. Trump or some other Republicans screeching how they are a ‘threat to democracy’ are themselves apparently comfortable with elitist vs. democratic tactics, like pushing Joe Biden (D) aside when he lost to Donald Trump in the only debate between the two in June 2024. One of the ways that literally millions of Americans can be so misled on key issues, including affordable housing and manufactured housing’s role in that space, is precisely because the media landscape is largely dominated by the left. Even some right-leaning media outlets, such as Fox News, reportedly have a strong Democratic donor bias. When someone is ‘following the money’ trail of who owns or influences a media operation and for what purposes, such facts become quite relevant.

Next, as a teaser for Part II and the role that manufactured housing industry trade media is playing in shaping the discussion and understanding of the industry, one need look no further than MHInsider. MHInsider was purchased by Equity LifeStyle Properties (ELS), as part of their deal to acquire MHVillage and Datacomp. MHVillage, the ‘parent’ of MHInsider, is “endorsed” by the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI). ELS has a seat on the MHI executive committee and another seat on the main MHI board. A recent report on MHInsider by MHI’s CEO Lesli Gooch, Ph.D., and President Mark Bowersox failed to clearly disclose such apparent conflicts of interest in their posted “contributed content” on the MHInsider website. With those facts in mind, the takeaway is that ELS has literally ‘bought that news’ platform in an analogous mode to help fashion the industry’s media narrative in a manner similar to what Hemingway and RCI said in the report in Part I asserts ‘the left’ is doing with American media.

It may be recalled by longer-term and detail-minded readers of MHProNews that in 2023 we published a report on South African born Hanne Nabintu Herland’s book, “Billionaire’s World: How Marxism Serves the Elite.”  Herland made a parallel case to what Hemingway does in RCI for leftist elites buying and controlling media operations.

Even those who don’t read, listen to, or view news from any source on a regular basis are nevertheless influenced by it. How? Because others read, listen to, and view such content and post it on their social media. Others who consume news talk about or are influenced in various ways by what they have digested. The influence is nearly pervasive.

With that tee up, Part I follows with more analysis and commentary in Part II.

 

Part I

Buying the News: How Leftwing Donors Are Taking Over Local Journalism

By Mark Hemingway, RealClearInvestigations
October 14, 2024

American journalism has experienced a spectacular collapse in the last 25 years – daily newspaper circulation has declined from over 60 million subscribers to just over 20 million. And the trend is accelerating: According to the Pew Research Organization, the average monthly number of unique visitors to the websites of the country’s top 50 newspapers plummeted 20% in one year from 2021 to 2022.

At the same time, the remaining readership expresses a historically low level of faith that the news they are getting is accurate. Just 32% of Americans say they have a “great deal or a fair amount of trust” in the media, according to polling from Gallup.

If there is a bright spot here, polling has long shown that American consumers trust local media more than the national press. “In 2021, Americans were 17 points more likely to say they trust reporting by local news organizations ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ than to trust reporting by national news organizations,” notes a survey done by Gallup and the Knight Foundation. But the rapid consolidation of the news industry has adversely affected the level of trust in the news Americans are consuming.

Local news organizations, however, have been hit especially hard by the decline in readers. Many have folded, cut staff, been purchased by private equity firms, or absorbed by national news organizations, which has diminished their editorial independence.

In recent years, hundreds of millions of dollars in new investment poured into local media in what appears to be a salutary injection of faith in the power of the community or regional press. However, the lion’s share of these investments is coming from sources some worry will further undermine trust in the media – progressive foundations and left-leaning activists who have overtly ideological and partisan agendas. While conservative donors also support news outlets (including RealClearInvestigations), their contributions are far smaller than those coming from the left – contributions large enough to radically remake the local news landscape. Significant examples of that largesse include:

• The MacArthur Foundation’s launch of its “Press Forward” initiative last fall, which committed to spending $500 million over the next five years to “enhance local journalism at an unprecedented level to re-center local news as a force for community cohesion; support new models and solutions that are ready to scale; and close longstanding inequities in journalism coverage and practice.”
• The National Trust for Local News’ 2021 announcement of its goal of amassing $300 million for a “non-profit newspaper company dedicated to protecting and sustaining community news … [to] publish sustainable community newspapers that safeguard the public trust, elevate the facts, empower communities with solutions, and foster a strong sense of place.” Last year, the National Trust for Local News quietly acquired Maine’s largest paper, The Portland Press-Herald, along with 22 other newspapers in the state.
• The creation of States Newsroom, which was founded just six years ago with the goal of “nonpartisan coverage of state policy,” and has already formed partnerships with local outlets in all 50 states. Its stated mission is “hard-hitting reporting and commentary to change the political debate.”
• The creation of The American Journalism Project, which describes its mission as “venture philanthropy,” has committed $55 million to “rebuilding local news.”

RealClearInvestigations reached out to States Newsroom, National Trust For Local News, American Journalism Project, and Courier Newsroom. None of them responded to a request for comment.

Meet the Funders

While not all the funding sources for these projects are expressly partisan, to the extent the funding of these new local journalism initiatives is publicly known, some of the biggest donors and foundations on the progressive left are closely associated with them. These donors had little previous interest in local journalism and have a track record of supporting initiatives that are ideological or partisan – or both.

The MacArthur Foundation, for instance, in addition to its $500 million Press Forward initiative, also provided funding for the National Trust for Local News and The American Journalism Project. Long known for funding left-wing causes, MacArthur endorsed one of the most politically controversial works of advocacy journalism in the last decade. The foundation awarded one of its generous $800,000 “Genius Grants” to Nikole Hannah-Jones, the architect of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which claimed that the year enslaved people were first brought to Virginia was the “true founding [date] of America,” not 1776. The 1619 Project received scathing criticism from some of America’s most eminent historians and one of the 1619 Project’s own fact-checkers, and entire essays in the project were so factually incorrect that there were calls for them to be retracted entirely.

The MacArthur Foundation also supports the National Trust for Local News, which has also received financial support from two of the largest sources of left-wing political funding – the Tides Foundation and the Open Society Foundations.

The Tides Foundation, a “donor-advised” fund, allows contributors to direct where the money goes. By acting as an intermediary, Tides obscures the original source of the funds, making it what transparency advocates call a “dark money” group. Tides is one of the largest dark money operations and spent $854 million in 2022 alone. It donates millions in grants to pro-Democrat get-out-the-vote operations, abolishing pre-trial bail even for defendants charged with violent crimes, and pro-Hamas demonstrations following the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack in Israel.

The Open Society Foundations network was created by leftist billionaire megadonor George Soros. According to NBC News, between 2020 and 2023, “Soros’ contributions to political campaigns and causes since January 2020 [amount] to roughly half a billion dollars – at the least – most of it steered through dark money nonprofit groups and going largely toward political causes aligned with the Democratic Party.” In addition to funding the National Trust for Local News, Soros also has the power to influence local news consumption after his family office recently purchased a large stake in 227 radio stations across the U.S.

Both the National Trust for Local News and States Newsroom have received funding from controversial Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, who has spent nearly half a billion dollars on American left-wing causes. Between 1990 and 2006, Wyss gave almost $120,000 to candidates and political committees despite it being illegal for foreign nationals to spend money on U.S. elections. Wyss was never punished because the statute of limitations had passed by the time the Federal Elections Commission investigated his illegal donations.

In 2021, Wyss partnered with another influential Democratic donor, hotel magnate Stewart W. Bainum Jr., in an unsuccessful attempt to purchase Tribune Publishing, which then owned the Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, and the Baltimore Sun among other newspapers and media properties.

In addition, some of the largest donations to The American Journalism Project are from the foundations of high-profile Democratic megadonors. The Emerson Collective, funded by Laurene Powell Jobs, owner of The Atlantic and one of the largest shareholders in Disney/ABC, has given in excess of $5 million. Also, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s The Democracy Fund and the Craig Newmark Philanthropic Fund of the eponymous Craigslist founder have given The American Journalism project donations somewhere between $1 million and $5 million.

For her part, Powell Jobs has built out a well-funded network designed to explicitly advance the policy goals of the Democratic Party.

In addition to numerous political causes, Omidyar has long funded journalism efforts – he provided the seed money for the left-wing news site The Intercept, and Democracy Fund has given sizable grants to the Defending Democracy Together Institute, which is closely associated with the online anti-Trump outlet The Bulwark.

In 2020, Newmark publicly committed to a $200 million media campaign aimed at swaying the presidential election while alleging that “foreign adversaries” were controlling the Trump White House. Relatedly, Google and Facebook are also major donors to The American Journalism Project, and both companies have received heavy criticism for election meddling and censoring information on COVID and various political topics that later turned out to be accurate.

Ironically, perhaps no single man is more responsible for the death of local media than Newmark, as it was Craigslist that destroyed classified advertising, a major source of revenue for newspapers. “I’m very concerned about jobs for journalists, and the future of local journalism, and had always guessed that Craigslist might have an effect,” Newmark told the Press-Gazette in 2021.

Laundering Political Points of View

Despite the fact that so many partisan and ideological funders are behind these efforts, media critics say that alone is not reason enough to dismiss these initiatives to support local journalism.

Steve Krakauer, a former CNN producer and author of “Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy with Power, Abandoned its Principles and Lost the People,” points to the hypocritical outrage in the national press when a major Republican donor recently bought the Baltimore Sun earlier this year. Although the new owner said he had no plans to politicize the news and wanted “to return the paper to localism,” NPR claimed his purchase of the paper “sparked outrage and bafflement” among “some Baltimore residents.”

Commentary of this sort rarely attends the acquisition or major financial support of a media source by wealthy individuals and outfits on the left. “Just because someone is coming from a political point of view, whether from the right or the left, they shouldn’t be immediately dismissed as someone who can’t have an objective news organization,” says Krakauer.

The infusion of nonprofit money reflects the economic reality that newspapers’ traditional reliance on advertising and subscription revenue has become an increasingly unsustainable business model.

A growing concern is that the content of these new progressive donor-funded local news sites slants liberal in ways that many of the old independently owned regional newspapers that were accountable to their subscribers for revenue did not.

Even the perception that progressive donors with national priorities now control large swaths of local media threatens to erode confidence in the media at a time when there’s too little trust left. And this mistrust has a well-documented and worrisome partisan component documented by Gallup.

Pew also notes that media distrust is “driven by a decline among Republicans” and “the percentage of Republicans with at least some trust in national news organizations has been cut in half – dropping from 70% in 2016 to 35% [in 2021].”

Krakauer notes that when Republican news consumers learn that George Soros was involved in taking control of nearly every major newspaper in Maine – a state with the potential to be decisive in a national election – it is reasonable for them to believe that partisans are taking over a space that “has not been traditionally seen as political and partisan.”

Michael Watson, the author of a report on the left-wing incursion into local news for the right-leaning Capital Research Center, argues that media bias is often exhibited in structural issues that aren’t always obvious from reading day-to-day reporting.

“During the 20th-century heyday of the metropolitan-liberal commercial press, well-resourced regional and local newspapers – through their coverage decisions, investigative journalism projects, and editorial voice – could set the tone for local and state-level policy discussions,” observed Watson. “They had the power to decide what issues were worth considering and what perspectives would be given legitimacy. The fracturing of the media world in the 21^st century has given that power to everyone and no one – and it is a power the institutional left is prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to retake.”

Watson also says it’s hard to deny that progressive funders of these local news initiatives see journalism as a vehicle to achieve their political goals. “The philanthropic sector recognizes the need to strengthen American democracy and is beginning to see that progress on every other issue, from education and healthcare to criminal justice reform and climate change, is dependent on the public’s understanding of the facts,” said the president of the MacArthur Foundation in the press release announcing their $500 million Press Forward initiative.

“When you read that, you think ‘Aha!’” says Watson. “Because if I may be aggressively cynical, if you control the public’s understanding of the facts, you control every other issue.”

Courier Newsroom: A Case Study

Courier Newsroom provides a case study of this phenomenon. For years now, Courier has been running ersatz news websites in swing states with the intent to manipulate voters. At first glance, one of its publications, the “Virgina Dogwood,” could easily be mistaken for just another local news website. With headlines such as “Inside scoop: 10 unique VA ice cream shops to visit for National Ice Cream Month” and “Get nimble with these adult gymnastics classes in Virginia,” it seems like a fairly innocuous source of information for residents of the Old Dominion.

A closer look, however, reveals something else. At least half of the stories on its homepage recently were about national politics and had little or nothing to do with local Virginia issues. With headlines such as “Trump’s policies would cause inflation to surge, economists say” and “Allegations of sexual assault, animal cruelty emerge in new RFK Jr. report,” the majority of the stories are obviously calculated for the electoral benefit of the Democratic ticket. Unlike a traditional publication, the website is very sparse, has no logo or illustrated masthead, its graphic design is an afterthought, and there’s almost no advertising.

On Sept. 23, two X accounts affiliated with Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign – “Kamala HQ” and “Kamala’s Wins” – reposted a headline from another of Courier’s regional outlets, “Keystone Newsroom,” asserting that the Polish community of Pennsylvania had endorsed her campaign – the implication being that Harris had broad support from a prominent ethnic group in a crucial swing state. In reality, the article was just touting an endorsement letter signed by a number of known partisans.

Courier Newsroom describes itself as “a pro-democracy news network that builds a more informed, engaged, and representative America by reaching audiences where they are online with factual, values-driven news and analysis.” In addition to Virginia and Pennsylvania, Courier runs similar misleading websites in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Nevada, and New Hampshire.

Courier’s real plan isn’t necessarily building “a more informed, engaged, and representative America.” According to a 2019 Bloomberg profile, since its inception five years ago, Courier has been instrumental in “the left’s plan to slip vote-swaying news into Facebook feeds.”

Courier Newsroom was created specifically to blur the line between political advertising and journalism. Unlike campaigns and political action committees, media outlets aren’t subject to Federal Election Committee rules and reporting requirements – in 2020, the FEC dismissed a complaint against Courier alleging that it should be forced to register as a PAC. Many social media platforms also have rules restricting political advertising, rules that Courier can get around by presenting itself as a for-profit media outlet.

“Courier publications aren’t actually traditional hometown newspapers but political instruments designed to get them to vote for Democrats,” observes Bloomberg. “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.”

Courier has hired ex-Facebook employees and spent millions of dollars promoting its stories on Facebook and Instagram feeds using targeting tools with the goal of effecting specific election outcomes. According to Wired magazine, one metric Courier relies on to gauge success is how much they spend on Facebook ads per vote gained.

“Hyperlocal Partisan Propaganda”

Courier Newsroom is the brainchild of Tara McGowan, a former journalist who worked at 60 Minutes and CBS News who went on to work on Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. In 2017, McGowan founded Acronym, a digital political strategy firm that’s been a major player in liberal politics and is responsible for incubating Courier.

Acronym was the sole investor and shared an office with another digital firm known as Shadow, which developed the vote-counting app used by the Democratic Party in the 2020 Iowa caucus. The app crashed as they were counting votes in the caucus, and after days of uncertainty, future Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg emerged from the Iowa caucus with more delegates than Bernie Sanders, even though Sanders won the popular vote.

Those doubting the results quickly pointed to some major conflicts of interest. McGowan was married to Buttigieg strategist Michael Halle, and Shadow had recently been paid to do work for both the Biden and Buttigieg campaigns. The fiasco led the chair of the state party to resign and many prominent Democrats to openly question the results of the caucus, and the defeat of Sanders, a candidate disfavored by the Democratic party establishment, helped Biden come from behind to beat his chief rival in the primary and eventually win the presidency.

McGowan no longer works at Acronym, though she has remained the publisher of Courier Newsroom after Acronym divested its stake in Courier in 2021. As for what McGowan is doing with Courier, media critics do not mince words.

“Tara McGowan and Courier are not trying to have an objective news organization, play it straight, and serve the people of whatever local audiences that they’re trying to serve,” says Krakauer. “They are trying to launder political points of view into what is perceived as an objective news organization, which is about the worst thing you can do.”

There have also been other ethical questions raised about Courier’s funding. Despite a lengthy “Ethics & Standards” statement on all of its publications that notes, “Our coverage is not determined by our funders,” NOTUS reports that from 2021 to 2022, Courier received $250,000 from Planned Parenthood at the same time it was “promoting content about what the election means for abortion access.”

Acronym and Courier have also attracted the financial support of the familiar roster of liberal players. Along with George Soros, Acronym has been supported by billionaire Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn and a prominent Democratic donor.

In 2018, Hoffman publicly apologized after it was revealed that he funded a firm, New Knowledge, which spread misinformation that may have helped Democrats narrowly win a senate race in Alabama. According to the New York Times, New Knowledge “created a Facebook page intended to look like the work of conservative Alabamians, and used it to try to split Republicans and promote a conservative write-in candidate to take votes from [Republican candidate Roy] Moore.”

New Knowledge also created fake social media accounts to make it appear that Moore was supported by Russians – a ruse that the Times notes “drew broad news media coverage.” After his funding of New Knowledge came to light, Hoffman declared, “I categorically disavow the use of misinformation to sway an election.” His subsequent funding of Acronym and Courier suggests that his disavowal isn’t so categorical.

It has been widely reported that Laurene Powell Jobs, through her Emerson Collective foundation, has funded both ostensibly legitimate local news initiatives as well as Acronym and Courier. Powell Jobs, who owns The Atlantic, one of America’s most influential magazines, is best friends with Kamala Harris, according to the New York Times. Nonetheless, she has received fawning coverage for her media investments. One CNET article declared, “Laurene Powell Jobs invests in news because she worries about democracy,” and a New York Times profile was headlined, “Can Laurene Powell Jobs Save Storytelling?”

The right-leaning website The Free Beacon was almost alone in running a critical column about her funding of Acronym and Courier. “The state of Powell Jobs’s investments – media properties faltering as a fake news operation takes off – flies in the face of her carefully curated image as a friend to the free press,” observed Charles Fain Lehmann.

But if disguising political ads as news stories seemed like a novel, if troubling, approach when Courier launched five years ago, now it’s become standard operating procedure. Just last month, Axios reported that “the number of partisan-backed outlets designed to look like impartial news outlets has officially surpassed the number of real, local daily newspapers in the U.S.,” and 45% of these publications “are targeted to swing states – a clear sign that they’re designed to influence politics.” The article did not note that Powell Jobs, who is a major Axios investor, has funded such operations.

Axios did note that progressives are not alone in creating deceptively partisan news sites. “The vast majority of the [partisan] sites observed are backed by Metric Media, a conservative network traced back to media entrepreneur Brian Timpone, who has links to conservative donors,” reports Axios. “Most of the Metric Media sites don’t include much information about the sites’ funders or management. The stories typically lack bylines and many are outdated or marked as ‘press release submissions.’” Though Metric Media tries to fly under the radar, it was the subject of a critical New York Times investigation in 2020.

By contrast, McGowan has been the subject of numerous media profiles in glossy magazines that flirt with promoting her work. Fast Company praised her as the “Democratic operative who beat Trump” and declared that boosting deceptively labeled news in front of voters is “an idea that will outlive Courier, despite the criticism.”

That was written four years ago, and it appears Courier’s pioneering work in using deceptively branded news to influence elections has proven stubbornly influential. As recently as July 7, Semafor reported that Democratic super-lawyer Marc Elias – famous for his significant role in paying for the “Steele Dossier,” which launched thousands of erroneous media reports claiming President Trump was compromised by the Russian government – was fighting off attempts by Arizona regulators to require a pro-abortion news site run by a Democratic front group to be subject to campaign finance laws. It appears partisan sites masquerading as journalism are going to be part of American elections for the foreseeable future. ##

 

Part II – Additional Information with More MHProNews Analysis and Commentary 

1) In an email to MHProNews on 10.19.2024, the right-leaning Epoch Times said the following.

Worse Off

More than half of Americans feel worse off financially than they did four years ago, according to a survey released on Friday.

The survey, released on Oct. 18, found that 52 percent of U.S. adults believe their financial situation has deteriorated since 2020, while 39 percent feel they are better off. A similar Gallup poll taken at the tail end of the Trump presidency in September 2020 found this sentiment roughly reversed, with 56 percent saying they were better off and 33 percent saying they were worse off than four years prior.

Partisan divides were stark in the latest poll, with 90 percent of Republicans feeling worse off, compared to just 16 percent of Democrats. Crucially, 55 percent of Independents, a pivotal voting bloc in the close 2024 presidential race, feel worse off, with 35 percent saying their financial situation has improved.

2) The following graphic was used in the recent interview by Bret Baier of Fox News with 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D). It says that per Marquette University’s Law School survey of likely voters only 21 percent of the country think that the nation is going in the right direction while 79 percent of the country think the U.S. is on the “wrong track.”

 

 

3) It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that much of the national polling is “close” between candidates Kamala Harris (D) and her running mate Gov. Tim Walz (MN-D) and Republican nominee Donald J. Trump and Senator J.D. Vance (OH-R). Some of the polling is within the margin of error. That being so, an objective thinker might correctly wonder, how is that possible that Harris is fairly close to Trump, given #2 above? Meaning, when 79 percent of the country purportedly thinks that the nation is on the wrong track, why is this a close contest at all? After all, in this election cycle, the incumbent Harris of the Biden-Harris (D) regime years is running against someone, namely Trump, who delivered a better economy. Who delivered more peace, less war, less crime, lower inflation, more affordable housing, dramatically lower border crossings, and the first years of U.S. energy independence in decades, among other achievements. The contrast is so stark, that it ought to be a blowout, but per pollsters, it is not. How does that happen, if indeed the polls are accurate?

The answer is found in part in the thrust of the argument offered by Hemmingway via RCI.

The left has achieved “information dominance” in the U.S., per former 17-year award-winning CNN correspondent Chris Plante turned award-winning WMAL pundit often remarks. Yes, there appears to be anecdotal evidence that a blossoming number of right-leaning or more independent journalistic platforms are in evidence. But some have run the numbers of viewers and visitors to left-leaning sites vs. right leaning ones. While Fox, for example, may have more viewers as a network, the total number of viewers and readers that consume news are on the left, not the right. Furthermore, from those right leaning sites and news sources, they often offer a reasonably fair view of what someone on the left (like Harris or Walz) has said or done in their own words. Meaning, even from a right-leaning source it is quite possible for someone to hear the leftist messaging. That may be less common with news from the left, which is comfortable with the notion of censorship and information control.  While some may push back on that notion, it is difficult to argue with, given the evidence shown below. As MHProNews recently reported, two former Democratic Presidential Nominees, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, openly called for more censorship, although they didn’t use that word.  You can see and hear how they framed that in their own words in the report linked below.

 

 

4) Our sense of reality is grounded in an array of inputs. Some of that is obviously our own personal and lived experiences. Part of the challenge that Democratic leaning media have is that while they attempt to paint a rosier picture of Kamala Harris or Democrats in general than their performance and history should warrant, there are the lived realities of walking into a grocery  or retail story, of seeing prices online that are higher, or of pulling up to a fuel pump that may be ‘down’ from their Biden-Harris high, but are still roughly 45 percent higher than it was on the day that Trump left the White House in January 20, 2021. Harris and Democrats face the challenge of getting people to disbeliever ‘your lying eyes.’

 

 

That said, again trusting that the polls are largely accurate, it is clear that the onslaught of largely favorable coverage of Harris and Walz from leftist sources works on millions. The Media Research Center (MRC) has been reporting on left-leaning bias in media for literally decades. It is in recent years that the bias has become so brazen that sometimes the pretense of being balanced in their news coverage is all but abandoned. Numbers of journalists make the false argument that Donald Trump is such an ‘existential threat to democracy’ that they can’t be unbiased. They can’t, say some leftist journalists, give him fair coverage otherwise people might vote for him that otherwise won’t if they only offer slanted coverage that routinely roasts Trump.

 

 

5) Their problem, of course, for thinking people is simple. Trump didn’t set up internment camps, but that was done under Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt in World War II of Japanese Americans.  Trump didn’t prosecute his political opponents, but that is what the Biden-Harris regime and local allied DAs like Fani Willis have done. On a range of concerns, it is Democrats who are doing or have done precisely what they accuse Trump and Republicans of wanting to do, even though there is scant evidence to support their allegations. What ‘evidence’ they offer is often some remark made in jest by Trump in response to leftist allegations, such as he will be a ‘dictator for only a day’ – and he explains that he means he will sign numerous executive orders on day one, which presidents of both major parties have been doing for some years. A joke is not evidence. If the past is prologue, it is Democrats who have been the slaveowner party in the pre-Civil War era of U.S. history. It is Democrats who instituted Jim Crow laws. It is Democrats who have weaponized the justice system. And per surveys, perhaps significant numbers of Blacks, Hispanics, and Independents get that and are drifting into the Trump-MAGA-America First-Republican camp.

 

 

 

6) Ironically, it seems that CNN was the most balanced of the various left-leaning media outlets in their handling of presidential or VP debates. But some have observed that CNN may have been trying to help get Joe Biden out of the way for a stronger candidate to replace him against Trump, because there was a growing perception that the lawfare and other tactics were not working sufficiently to assure a Democratic win. Let’s note at this point that the Manufactured Housing Institute, MHI, which is supposed to be nonpartisan, appears to be routinely tilting Democratic. But back to the CNN point. When left-leaning agenda driven media appears to be ‘fair,’ that too may be for subtle reasons. It may be because they have an unstated goal (as in the Harris vs. Biden as head of the Democratic ticket point) or it may be because there has been so much scrutiny that they feel that they have to appear less biased from time to time to maintain their credibility.

 

 

 

To be balanced and fair, right leaning media may similarly fail to show their conflicts of interest, something that Fox News may arguably be guilty of when they posture being ‘conservative,’ yet their leadership seems to be more Democratic leaning, based on their campaign donations. Per the left-leaning Daily Beast:

For years, Democrats have publicly slammed Fox News for acting as a propaganda arm of the Republican Party. But privately, dozens of Democrats have been cashing campaign checks bankrolled by the network’s top executives.

Between 2019 and 2020, the political action committee for Fox News and other Fox entities (FOX PAC) donated $96,500 to Republicans and $91,000 to Democrats, according to OpenSecrets data.

Rewinding the clock to the 2018 midterms, Democrats actually came out on top, outraising GOP counterparts by more than $13,000 in contributions from the previous version of the company’s PAC. The money helped fund a Democratic takeover of the House.

But there is more evidence for that increasingly Democratic tilt at Fox News and their parent company’s leadership. So, while individual Fox show-hosts may be ‘conservative,’ their leadership and donations are increasingly in the Democratic or left-leaning tilt.

 

 

It isn’t just MHProNews or sources like those shown above that have noted that shift to the left at Fox. Political cartoonists have made similar observations.

 

 

 

7) So, Chris Plante’s argument of the left having attained “media dominance” is supported by evidence. Yes, there are independent and right-leaning media outlets. But the sum total of media, including in big tech, appears to be from the left.

 

 

8) Dr. Robert Epstein is a self-proclaimed Democrat who has testified to Congress and has published on he and his research team’s ongoing research that shows a bias by Google towards the left.

 

 

9) Facebook also seems to have years of tilt towards the left, despite co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s recent assurances to deposed President Trump that they would not be supporting Democrats this year.

 

 

10) But behind these and other possible examples are foreign influences from communist or post-communist nations like China and Russia. Hunter Biden recently was convicted on some criminal charges after trial and plead guilty on others that demonstrated that the allegations against him (and by implication, his father Joe) were apparently true.

 

 

11) It should also be noted that several of those big tech and big media companies have demonstrable connections with the so-called spy community in the U.S., part of the military industrial complex. For decades, as Congressional testimony and other evidence has demonstrated, the CIA, FBI and other agencies that are supposed to be protecting the U.S. from foreign interference (for example) in elections have themselves been engaged in domestic election interference. Indeed, it isn’t just ‘news’ or tech that has been influenced by government agencies. There is clear evidence of improper cultural influence on segments of the U.S. population by government agencies too.

 

 

 

12) There has been a more than century-old effort to transform the U.S. into an increasingly left-leaning model of government. Which should beg the question. What has been the outcome of those decades of drift to the left?

 

 

As Herland has detailed and pointed out, the billionaire/donor class has cozied up to the leftists/Marxists/Socialists/Communists.  Much (not all) of the billionaire class is playing ‘both sides,’ so to speak. There are sources from the left and right that have all but said as much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

13) In MHVille, as was noted in the preface, big businesses typically aligned with the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) have been outright buying, or more subtly taking control, over the bulk of manufactured housing trade media, other than MHProNews/MHLivingNews. While the motivations may not always be purely political, the reasons to do so include political, and thus regulatory, investor, and other influences.

 

 

 

MHProNews has been systematically documenting these trends and challenges for years, as these sample articles and illustrations reveal.

 

 

14) So, Hemingway’s point about leftist billionaires and the corporate/nonprofit allies buying up local news is part of the larger issue of media dominance that goes beyond local media, as the above items revealed.  In a key election year, MHProNews began this year by spotlighting groundbreaking look from largely leftist sources of how much the media and leftist influences our society, culture, politics, business, investing, spiritual, etc.

 

 

Danny Glover, himself from the left, has insightfully summed this up like this.

 

 

Leftists Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky raised these concerns decades ago in Manufacturing Consent and its updates and related. By having so much influence over the population through media, big tech, entertainment, and the like, the billionaire class is insulating itself from what might be a far more robust pushback against their increasing monopolization of the country.

 

 

15) Harris, as leftist Matt Stoller and his Big newsletter have pointed out, several of Kamala Harris’ (D) deep pocket donors have said that they want her to pull back on antitrust enforcement, if she wins. Of course. If the billionaire, corporatist, and donor class are backing her campaign and that of Democrats they are not doing that for selfless reasons. Donors want a return on their campaign contribution investment, so to speak. Note that the Google monopoly remedy phase may be delayed until after the 2024 election.

 

 

16) Smaller to midsized businesses have been under assault for decades. While small business sentiment soared under Trump, it has plunged under Biden-Harris, per the NFIB, which tracks such matters. The taxes that are pending if Harris-Walz win would largely be pass-through for big corporate interests, but could land hard on smaller firms, for reasons explored in the next reports.

 

 

17) MHProNews and our MHLivingNews sister site have numerous reports on the topics raised by this article. Additionally, our new pre-election information/education series on the Patch is relevant to this topic. The Patch is local media that may have a broader impact. That series through yesterday is linked below. Those links are not shown in any particular order of importance.

 

> How do Hurricanes Helene and Milton Rank in Inflation Adjusted Cost$?

​> Controversy-Manufactured Housing Institute-Lesli Gooch-Mark Bowersox

> 34,758 Votes May Decide ‘24 Election & Dr. George Barna@ACU Research

—

> Other Countries Homeownership Rates vs. U.S. – Fix Affordable Housing

> Visual Capitalist Shows Top 15 Artificial Intelligence-AI-Online Tools

> Burning Bush Cove, Hurricanes Helene and Milton, and Where Is God?

> WND Exclusive-KAMALA’S AMERICA-World Net Daily 88 Page Special Report

> Afghan Released by Biden-Harris Admin Arrested for Terror Attack Plot

—

> Ashville, NC Video and Photos-Untold Thousands Need Prayers & Support

> Fact Check-There is No Truth in Advertising Law Governing Politicians

> Gulf Between Ruling Elites Average Americans is Wide+Deep, per Survey

> Lila Rose Open Letter and Other Pro-Lifers not Planning to Vote Trump

> Daniel McCarthy Explains How Donald Trump can Win the Popular Vote

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> Why Did Costs-Crime-Conflicts Soar After Trump left the White House?

> Protecting “Government Of By and For the People” in 2024 and Beyond

> Small Businesses tell Congress to Stop Tax Hikes – Wall St vs. Main St

> AI Backed Hit-Analysis on Big Manufactured Housing Industry Operations

—

> The Rigged System-Who Rigged the System and How to Fix a Rigged System

> Gallup Says-‘2024 Election Environment Favorable to GOP’-Election Time

> Confidence Plummets in Sept-Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index

> Fannie Mae-Existing Home Sales Near 30-Year Low Despite Lower Rates

> Knight-‘Govt Exists to Promote and Protect Ordinary Happiness in Life’

—

> Doublespeak Doublethink and Insightful Orwellian Lessons from the Left

> Manufactured Housing Institute & Next Great Affordable Housing Debate?

> American Leviathan-Ned Ryun-CEO of American Majority and Voter Gravity

> Former Famed Tampa Bay Bucs & Colts Coach Tony Dungy to Kamala Harris

> TARK-Drill Down on Tyranny vs. Faith; Freedom and Upcoming Election

—

> Kamala to Oprah-If Somebody Breaks Into My House They’re Getting Shot

> NAR-Existing Home Avg $416700 Aug-2024 Interest Rates Slide-Sales Dip

> Deception & Misdirection-3 Tricks-Paltering, Posturing and Projecting

> Caution! Equity LifeStyle Properties Dweller-Investor-Biz-Legal Alerts

> Herland: ‘Aldous Huxley Interview-Tech, Big Gov, Big Biz=Grave Danger’

—

> U.S. Health-Dr. Marty Makary–‘Broke Medicine’ Blind Spots-Price We Pay

> 12 Examples of Public Calls for Violence Against Trump-More Ryan Routh

> Lessons of Bernie Madoff-Enron-WorldCom-2008 Housing-Financial Crisis

> Gunman Ryan Wesley Routh Insights from CNN-Daily Signal-Patch and X

> What Pastors, Priests, Religious Leaders and People Must Do – or Else

—

> “TANSTAAFL”–What Does It Mean and Why Does It Matter to You and Yours?

> HUD Admits Decades of Delay-Finally OK Multi-Family Manufactured Homes

> ‘Mobile Home Values Rising Faster Than Single-Family’ House-Wow Fact$

> Realtor-What Is a Manufactured Home? The Next Step Beyond Mobile Homes

> The Two Groups that Should See New Movie Reagan (2024) with Trailer

—

> Magyar Szabadság Kör – Cultural-Culinary Experience in Plant City, FL

> Realtor? Journalist? Affordable Manufactured Home Production Jumps

> Orlando RE Agent Smith-Younger Adults Will Need $8500 Monthly for Rent

> Blankley-Goodbye American Dream? Only 10% Polled Can Buy a House; But

> A Brief History of Labor Day and Modern Insights for Employees and Pay

—

> Waiting for Fed Rate Cut Before Buying a Home? Experts Say Think Twice

> Frank Rolfe-Special Interests ‘Don’t Want to Solve Affordable Housing’

> TARK-‘I’m a Teen and Know the Solution to Affordable Housing Crisis’

> Renting? Rent too High? Odds Are DOJ Suit vs RealPage Matters to You

> New-Certified “Half Price Homes” – Affordable Housing Solution Redux

—

> Solution: “Would-Be Homebuyers Need 80% More Income Than 4 Years Ago”

 

Programming notice: several special reports are pending. Watch for them here on MHProNews. ##

 

 

 

 

 

Again, our thanks to free email subscribers and all readers like you, as well as our tipsters/sources, sponsors and God for making and keeping us the runaway number one source for authentic “News through the lens of manufactured homes and factory-built housing” © where “We Provide, You Decide.” © ## (Affordable housing, manufactured homes, reports, fact-checks, analysis, and commentary. Third-party images or content are provided under fair use guidelines for media.) See Related Reports, further below. Text/image boxes often are hot-linked to other reports that can be access by clicking on them.)

By L.A. “Tony” Kovach – for MHProNews.com.

Tony earned a journalism scholarship and earned numerous awards in history and in manufactured housing.

For example, he earned the prestigious Lottinville Award in history from the University of Oklahoma, where he studied history and business management. He’s a managing member and co-founder of LifeStyle Factory Homes, LLC, the parent company to MHProNews, and MHLivingNews.com.

This article reflects the LLC’s and/or the writer’s position and may or may not reflect the views of sponsors or supporters.

http://latonykovach.com

Connect on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/latonykovach

 

 

Related References:

The text/image boxes below are linked to other reports, which can be accessed by clicking on them.’

True Lies. Stated, Unstated and Obscured Agendas. David Finney–Bild Media and ex-21st Mortgage Corp plus RHP Properties-Dylon Olson Follow Ups; with Sunday Weekly MHVille Headlines Review

Kamala Harris Pledges 3 Million New Homes, 25K DP Plan for Renters, End Food Price Gouging Who Gets What and Who Will Pay If It Passes Congress-Courts? Surprises, and Analysis – plus MHMarkets