How Sticky Is Pink Slime? Assessing the Credibility of Deceptive Local Media

• Published date: 01 May 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00027162231214696
• Author: Joshua P. Darr
• Date: 01 May 2023
• Subject Matter: Part II: Supply

ANNALS, AAPSS, 707, May 2023 109

DOI: 10.1177/00027162231214696

How Sticky Is

Pink Slime?

Assessing the

Credibility of

Deceptive

Local Media

By

JOSHUA P. DARR

1214696ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYHOW STICKY IS PINK SLIME?

research-article2023

The ongoing decline of local news not only deprives

communities of important information, but also pro-

vides an opening for misinformation through so-called

pink slime journalism: local media that poses as a news

outlet and exploits the low cost of automating content

to deceive readers. Is there an advantage to posing as a

newspaper online? In this study, I use a survey experi-

ment to assess how readers respond to the same head-

line delivered to them as a fake newspaper, a fake

website, or a real television station. Respondents rated

the fake local newspaper as less credible than a real

television station or a fake local website, but they rated

fake local websites as credibly as real local television.

Readers’ preference for following local or national

news and the timing of assessment moderate these

effects.

Keywords: misinformation; local news; newspapers;

online news; experiments

The “Lansing Sun” sounds like a local news-

paper serving Michigan’s capital, and

LansingSun.com approximates the experience:

a pop-up asks visitors to subscribe to a newslet-

ter, and tabs at the top advertise “Local

Government,” “Business,” “Schools,” “Politics,”

and other familiar topics (Thompson 2019).

The site deserves a double take, however: many

authors are listed as “Press release submission,”

and the “About Us” page says nothing about

Lansing or Michigan except for a “news@lan-

singsun.com” email address.

Correspondence: jpdarr@syr.edu

Joshua P. Darr is an associate professor in the Newhouse

School of Public Communications and the Maxwell

School of Citizenship and Public Affairs (by courtesy)

and a senior researcher in the Institute for Democracy,

Journalism & Citizenship at Syracuse University. He is

coauthor, with Matthew Hitt and Johanna Dunaway, of

Home Style Opinion: How Local Newspapers Can

Slow Polarization (Cambridge University Press 2021).

NOTE: I received support for this project from the

D. Jensen Holliday Professorship at Louisiana State

University. Many thanks to several reviewers who

provided valuable feedback. Any remaining errors are

my own.

110 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

The site is, in fact, not a local newspaper as traditionally conceived. This fact

was fittingly revealed by the reporting of Lansing’s actual legacy newspaper, the

Lansing State Journal (Thompson 2019). The Lansing Sun is instead an example

of “pink slime journalism,” a term from the meat industry describing a byproduct

of the industrial meat process that masquerades as beef in certain products. Sites

like the Lansing Sun approximate local-seeming coverage with names that sound

like legacy sources (Bengani 2019, 2020; Mahone and Napoli 2020) and are

meant to fool unfamiliar readers into thinking they are legacy media sources with

established reputations for reporting. These sites are often supported by partisan

donors, hoping to take advantage of the high levels of trust in partisan news to

slip in an ideological message to unaware readers (Bengani 2020). Currently,

both Republicans and Democrats are adopting this tactic: the right-wing Metric

Media behemoth controls more than 1,200 local-seeming sites, while smaller

networks like Local Report Inc. put out left-wing news under outlets with names

like “Milwaukee Metro Times” and “Mecklenburg Herald” (Bengani 2020;

Markay and Wheatley 2022).

How do people assess unfamiliar news sources (Peterson and Allamong 2022),

and does the believability of these outlets vary by purported medium? In this

study, I use a survey experiment to determine the relative credibility of a real,

known legacy television station; a nonexistent site impersonating a city newspa-

per; and a nonexistent city politics website, when each is listed as the source of

the same headline. I find that the fake newspaper is rated as significantly less

credible than the real television station or the fake website. This finding is

encouraging for those worried that impersonating a local newspaper will allow

deceptive news to benefit from that built-in credibility.

Several factors moderate these results. Those who say they follow local news

“very closely” are much more likely to rate fake newspapers as less credible, while

those who follow national news closely report no difference between the credibil-

ity of fake and real local sources. Those with greater interest in their communities

interpret unfamiliar sources differently than do those more interested in national

politics. Also, people rate the credibility of fake websites differently when their

responses are delayed—an effect that approximates those of the fleeting expo-

sure to real-world news consumption. Fake local-seeming websites are consist-

ently rated more credible if the assessment questions are asked after assessments

of another article, compared to when those questions are asked immediately after

exposure to the treatment.

Finally, I find that low-credibility evaluations increase when assessment is

delayed, meaning that initial resistance to unfamiliar news sites may not be psy-

chologically “sticky.” The void left by the decline of trusted local news sources

(Bengani 2019, 2020; Munger 2020; Pennycook and Rand 2019; Peterson and

Allamong 2022; Van Aelst et al. 2017) has made room for the exploitation of low

cost of market entry in pink slime journalism that pushes political agendas. This

study contributes to our understanding of the limits of that strategy and the emo-

tional connection that our imperiled local newspapers may still hold with the

communities they serve (Kaniss 1991).