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Shaking faith in elections - hyperlocal news service Patch.com joins the attack [1]
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Date: 2022-09-05
In my e-mail inbox just now, 10am, 9/5/22, I encountered a news article with headline "New Jersey Election Integrity Heavily Criticized" provided by a hyperlocal news service called Patch. Patch.com is an American local news and information platform, primarily owned by Hale Global. As of January 2022, Patch's more than 100 journalists operated some 1,259 hyperlocal news websites in 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. Hale Global specializes in making companies more profitable through technological innovation and firing workers.
For about the past year or two I have been receiving Patch newsletters in my inbox purporting to provide "local news". Sadly nearly all the "news" is -- lowest of the low but great clickbait -- simple police beat stuff, costs nearly nothing to obtain, but irresistible to many eyeballs.
The offending article in Patch that landed in my inbox today is headed "New Jersey Election Integrity Heavily Criticized" followed by a subhead "New Jersey is ranked by a leading conservative public policy think tank as among the worst states in the country for it" followed by text attacking New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy stating " Less than a month after its Democratic governor touted election integrity legislation he signed, New Jersey is ranked by a leading conservative public policy think tank as among the worst states in the country for it..... Only five states were worse than the Garden State, which checked in at No. 45 alongside the state of Washington in rankings by the Heritage Foundation. Vermont was No. 47, followed to the back by Oregon, California, Nevada and Hawaii. Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama were a solid 1-2-3 at the front end."
Given the fact that New Jersey has no significant voter fraud, it is deeply irresponsible to publish such an article.
The article in Patch, claiming low election integrity in New Jersey, was written by a fellow called Alan Wooten, an employee of The Center Square, whose mission statement says it was launched in May 2019 “to fulfill the need for high-quality statehouse and statewide news across the United States." The Center Square is a project of the 501(c)(3) Franklin News Foundation, headquartered in Chicago, formerly called the Franklin Center founded in 2009 by conservatives.
In June 2012 the Franklin Center teamed up with the Heritage Foundation to host the first annual Breitbart Awards dinner. The awards honored the life and work of the late Andrew Breitbart who "pioneered a new media revolution that transformed journalism and the political landscape." Syndicated columnist and Fox News Channel contributor Michelle Malkin took home the honors in 2013.
According to Wikipedia, “The Heritage Foundation has promoted false claims of voter fraud. Hans von Spakovsky who heads the Election Law Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation has played an influential role in making alarmism about voter fraud mainstream in the Republican Party, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud. His work, which claims voting fraud is rampant, has been discredited.”
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