The George Soros-funded Democratic propaganda network Courier Newsroom is ramping up in Nevada, spending big on misleading digital ads disguised as news stories claiming, among other things, that former president Donald Trump would bring back a military draft.
Courier in 2023 added The Nevadan to its roster of local "news" websites that push Democratic talking points. Courier’s founder, the Democratic operative Tara McGowan, says the network’s goal is to combat disinformation, but The Nevadan has inundated voters in the swing state since June with deceptive Facebook advertisements attacking Republicans and propping up Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Jacky Rosen (D., Nev.).
In late June, for example, The Nevadan ran Facebook ads falsely stating that "mandatory military service could soon be the norm for US teenagers." The ads, which were seen by Nevadans tens of thousands of times, linked to a story on the outlet’s website insinuating that teenagers could be forcibly conscripted if former president Donald Trump wins back control of the White House in November. Six days before the story’s publication, Trump had unequivocally rejected the proposal.
The Nevadan has also run Facebook ads propping up Rosen, who faces a tight reelection race against her Republican challenger, Army veteran Sam Brown, praising her decision to sign onto legislation to exempt tips from taxes. The outlet did not mention in its coverage that Rosen’s campaign had initially denounced the proposal when Trump unveiled it at a June 9 rally in Las Vegas.
Such coverage is par for the course for Courier and its network of 11 local newsrooms, all of which are conveniently located in swing states. A correspondent for the media watchdog NewsGuard in 2020 called Courier a "clandestine political operation" that has "deceived" voters through its skewed coverage.
McGowan, Courier’s founder, said as much in a leaked internal 2019 memo saying the network’s goal was to "reach, persuade, and mobilize" Democratic voters through targeted digital ads promoting its content.
The onslaught of partisan content from The Nevadan in recent months propping up Democrats may come as a surprise to some of its readers who signed up for the outlet’s newsletter under the false impression the outlet focused on innocuous local news coverage. In January, for example, the outlet promoted a story on 12 festivals coming to Nevada in 2024 to get readers to sign up for its newsletter.
Courier’s bait and switch from local news coverage to Democratic propaganda during election years is by design, according to the networks’ former employees.
"The goal was to get persuadable voters engaged with unassuming content, then feed them political persuasion content, using underwriters who would pay Courier to come up with the content," a former Courier employee told NOTUS in March.
Since 2020, Courier has spent millions of dollars on Facebook ads promoting its "coverage" of vulnerable Democrats, all the while avoiding financial disclosure typically required of political committees. The Federal Election Committee ruled in 2022 that Courier was exempt from disclosure because it qualified as a news organization.
Courier was originally owned by the Democratic dark money group ACRONYM, which is backed by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs. ACRONYM divested from Courier in 2021 following criticism that the network was a fake news operation.
Courier’s new parent company, Good Information Inc., was launched in 2021 with seed funding from Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman, a former associate of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Soros, the liberal billionaire financier, has also contributed $20 million to Courier through his Open Society Foundations since 2021.
The network also received $100,000 in 2022 from the Hopewell Fund, one of the nonprofit funds run by the Democratic dark money behemoth Arabella Advisors.
Courier did not return a request for comment.