U.S. Elections 2024: What To Do About Pink Slime Overtaking Local News?

So-called “pink slime” news sites are filling an information void left by a U.S. local news industry in rapid decline. What can be done to control the integrity of online news in this environment? And how much of a threat to democracy is pink slime journalism in an election year?

While pink slime is a colloquial term for a meat by-product, in the media and communications arena it refers to content produced by political organizations on websites that bear the visual hallmarks of a local news outlet, while containing misleading stories to further their interests.

As both campaigns in the 2024 U.S. Presidential race zero in on swing states, Intel 471 analysts sought to answer these questions by surveying the pink slime landscape on both sides of the political fence. Our assessment? Pink slime journalism is a difficult challenge to address. While the U.S. government combats foreign influence campaigns, it is less clear what can be done to control disinformation produced by U.S.-funded entities.

Join Intel 471 Senior Intelligence Analyst Ashley Jess on 23 October for her webinar U.S. Elections 2024: What To Do About Pink Slime Overtaking Local News? to explore a corner of the media landscape that has used hybrid tactics to serve select interests, including:

- Concealing domain registration ownership details

- Paid Facebook, Instagram, and online advertising

- Unsolicited print newspaper mail outs

- Producing biased, misleading or inaccurate news about candidates

- Omitting coverage of foreign influence campaigns

- Producing “filler” content to emulate legitimate local news publications