OPINION

Democrats' Fake News Sites Face Plant in Wisconsin and Tennessee

Matthew Foldi
Matthew Foldi  |  Feb 23, 2024
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Across America, highly-localized “news” outlets with innocuous sounding names like The Dogwood, The ‘Gander, and Iowa Starting Line have cropped up, ostensibly to keep local populaces informed, but in reality they are actually just Democrat propaganda outfits.

From sprawling systems like Tara McGowan’s Courier to David Brock’s American Independent franchise of “papers,” the left is sprinting to fill the void left in news deserts across the country under the guise of providing legitimate news – and the Midwest is no exception.

Several years ago, a Democratic megadonor who made hundreds of millions of dollars in the news business, Fred Eychaner, helped launch Heartland Signal, a digital platform that merged with a progressive radio station. The outlet is basically just used as a rapid response clipping service for Democrats in the Midwest – which is fitting because the Democratic group that since acquired it, Future Now Action, was founded by a cousin of Illinois’s Democratic governor, megadonor JB Pritzker. 

Shockingly, as soon as it launched, Heartland Signal announced plans to work with vets of Courier. “Heartland Signal is working with Timothy Burke, a consultant who helped to launch the Courier Newsroom and The Recount, a video-focused news outlet,” Politico reported at the time. Anyone who has been on X, formerly Twitter, knows that The Recount is also an insufferably liberal X account that posts wildly misleading clips of Republicans. Burke was most recently charged with 14 federal crimes relating to the publication of clips from Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News.

All of this context brings us to this week when Heartland Signal – the Democrats' propaganda arm in the Midwest, funded and staffed by Democratic Party loyalists – showed how ill-equipped its staff is.

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Over in Wisconsin, businessman Eric Hovde announced his run for Senate – giving Steve Daines and the NRSC another recruitment coup. Rather than focus on how fascinating his mustache is, Heartland Signal pushed out fake news – and admitted subsequently that it doesn’t know anything about Hovde.

“Announcing his bid for a U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin, Republican Eric Hovde says he understands the tragedy of children being trafficked through Central America because he owns three homes there,” the outlet posted on X. 

During his campaign launch, Hovde spoke about his firsthand knowledge of the illegal immigration crisis because he and his brother have “three [homes] in Central America.” To the geniuses at Heartland Signal, this must mean that he owns three vacation homes along the path where illegal immigrants head to America. In reality, he was referring to Hovde Homes, which his family funds around the world that “provid[e] support to grassroots, nonprofit organizations in Latin America and Africa that are led by local communities and dedicated to the well-being of vulnerable children in those regions.” The horror!

In the classic case of a correction receiving a scintilla of the attention that the original false claim receives, Heartland Signal acknowledged reality in a follow up tweet that read: “While not mentioned in his speech, Hovde appears to be referring to his charitable foundation, Hovde Homes.”  

That wasn't the only instance that made this a banner week for fake news outlets. Further south, the Tennessee Holler doesn’t even pretend to be anything other than left-wing propaganda. Hilariously, the group posted a video of a pro-Hamas activist confronting Congressman Andy Ogles over his support for Israel's right to survive and defend itself against Iran-backed Hamas terrorists. The protester called Ogles an “AIPAC zombie,” and whoever uploaded and captioned the video spelled "naïveté" wrong in the subtitles.

Media literacy is important!