'Pink slime' journalism and duopoly money-laundering

Excellent piece by Columbia Journalism Review, following up on a report it did about the Tow Center and other folks. The biggest takeaways from CJR:

1. This problem has grown a lot since the original Tow piece.

2. Per a link to Open Secrets, although this started as a conservative to wingnut-conservative project, liberals are doing it, too. One biggie is the group behind the Shadow vote-tabulation app of infamy from the Iowa Democratic caucus. Another is Pantsuit Nation, obvious Hillbot folks. So, we're talking neoliberals. A third group also gets George Soros PAC money. (Cue wingnut conspiracy theories.)

3. What CJR doesn't mention is that, primarily for capital reasons, leftists aren't. (That said, CJR's general failure to distinguish liberal and leftist is itself an issue.)

4. The original "pink slime" wasn't necessarily partisan as much as it was cheap hypercapitalism.

5. Wanna know who's doing this in Texas? Page 11 of this link. Metric Media and Local News Network are conservative as are Record. None of the links are liberal.

Missing from the CJR account is the problem with this much capitalism sloshing in the system. That's especially true with the Open Secrets piece mentioning IRS concerns. Related? The duopoly issues.

Per two tweets:

Good piece by @acookiecrumbles but cld have used more.
1. More bkgrnd on amnt dark money sloshing around natl elections
2. How much of this is "legal" money laundering of some sort?
2A. Related? Here in Tex-ass, per websites link, even tho we're "swing," all sites r rightist 1/x

— Hiroshima 75: Remember the FULL STORY 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) August 5, 2020

and

3. Framing this in terms of duopoly politics. Greens and further left don't have money for this, and I'm unaware of any of the right or quasi-right sites boosting capital-L Libertarians.
4. Re the Open Secrets link, more IRS-related follow-up?

— Hiroshima 75: Remember the FULL STORY 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) August 5, 2020

that's more detail on how I see that either this piece could have gone further or that it could use another follow-up.

Update: Facebook says it will tighten up on what from pink slime websites counts as news. That said, the new policy has multiple loopholes, and, as usual, I have "Facebook says" in one hand and "shit" in the other. Given that Facebook fired an engineer for documenting its preferential treatment to wingnut outfits that had posts flagged as "fake news," you'll pardon me for being skeptical.