First appearance on Fox: Democratic political operatives who have long been behind a network of left-leaning media organizations masquerading as “independent” local news outlets have maintained access to the upper echelons of President Biden’s White House.
Tara McGowan, founder and publisher of the Courier Newsroom, has visited the Biden White House nearly 20 times, a Fox News Digital investigation has found.
Mr. McGowan, founder and CEO of Courier Newsroom parent company Good Information, has participated in several one-on-one meetings with White House aides. For example, McGowan met with Jordan Finkelstein, who served as chief of staff to one of President Biden’s senior advisers, at least six times between October 2022 and October 2023.
Another aide listed on McGowan’s White House visit log was Patrick Stevenson. Stevenson’s LinkedIn page identifies him as “Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor for Digital Strategy.”
Mr. Stevenson’s role in helping lead the White House’s digital strategy will be a significant challenge to Mr. McGowan’s network of news organizations and the White House, as the Courier Newsroom’s business model revolves around online engagement and social media messaging. There is a possibility that there may be doubts about the cooperation with the House.
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George Soros, Tara McGowan, President Biden (Getty Images)
The other two White House aides McGowan met with were Madeleine Strasser, who previously served as Ron Klain’s chief of staff, and Nina Srivastava, who also served as an adviser to Klain. Two of Crane’s advisers met with Mr. McGowan several times, according to visitor records from April 2022 to August 2022.
McGowan’s Instagram account show the photo Fox News Digital was unable to confirm the date or year of the photo, which shows her standing next to President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden in front of a Christmas tree.
McGowan worked on former President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign and later worked with Priorities USA Action, a major super PAC that backed Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2016 presidential bid, but in 2021 she announced Good Information Co., Ltd. was launched to combat “news” and disinformation.
As part of its operations, Good Information acquired Courier Newsroom, which McGowan also founded.
McGowan’s access to Biden’s White House appeared to be a successful strategy for her when the Courier Newsroom had an exclusive interview with the president late last year.
“The White House invited The Courier for an exclusive behind-the-scenes interview after the President’s rally at the Belvidere Stellantis Automobile Plant in Illinois this fall,” the Courier wrote in its year-end report. “One of our national social correspondents had the privilege of speaking with the President about jobs and workers while sharing exclusive video footage with viewers across TikTok, Instagram, X, and other channels. ”
The Courier News interview with Biden appears to have taken place on November 9th and was posted to TikTok on November 13th. The second of McGowan’s two visits to the White House with Stevenson, the White House’s chief digital adviser, took place one day, according to White House visitor records. After the interview was posted on TikTok.
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A nonprofit funded by billionaire George Soros has donated millions of dollars to the Courier newsroom. (Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“The Biden administration is receiving a lot of credit for how deeply and strategically it has begun to embrace new models of media, journalism, and social influencers to get messages to audiences that traditional press corps can no longer reach. “I haven’t.” Report status.
The Courier Newsroom also said it ran seven-figure ad campaigns to boost Democratic politicians during the 2020 election, and that some of its news stories mirrored politicians’ own press releases. The Washington Free Beacon previously reported.
At the time, the Courier newsroom had digital stations and reporters in battleground states such as Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. Last summer, the Courier launched additional newsrooms in Nevada, Texas and New Hampshire to shore up its infrastructure in preparation for the 2024 election, Axios reports.
The move brings the total number of newsrooms to 11 nationwide, with each newsroom having its own website for each state in which it is located.
said Gabby Deutch, described by the Washington Post in 2021 as “Washington correspondent for NewsGuard, a New York-based nonpartisan organization that reviews news sites to combat misinformation.” wrote an editorial It criticized the Courier Newsroom as a “political maneuver” and said it was “taking advantage of the widespread loss of local journalism to create and spread what we really don’t need: hyper-local partisan propaganda.” insisted.
Meanwhile, the organization receives millions of dollars in funding from liberal mega-donors. The Open Society Foundations, funded by George Soros, is one such institution that has provided large sums of money to its operations.
Reid Hoffman also supports the Courier Newsroom. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
A search of its grant database shows that the Fund for Policy Reform, a nonprofit arm of the Soros network, has given the Courier Newsroom a total of $5 million in 2021 and 2022 to support nonpartisan journalism. We have awarded three grants that advance the common good and general welfare of American communities by providing access to information.”
The Open Society Foundations has backed past financial support for the Courier newsroom, calling it “values-based journalism”.
“The Open Society is committed to providing journalism based on quality local values and meeting readers where they are, at a time when many trusted local news organizations are disappearing across the country. “We are proud to be one of several funders supporting newsrooms online.” An Open Society Foundations spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
One of the grants went to support “journalism on democracy and voting rights issues,” according to the database.
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LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, another big left-wing donor, also reportedly gave the Courier Newsroom a large sum of money.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates told Fox News Digital, ignoring investigations into the nature of the meeting, “We are proud to have brought back White House press conferences and engaged with a wide range of media outlets.” Told.
Mr. McGowan’s Good Information company did not respond to requests for comment about Fox News Digital’s access to the Biden administration or the content of his White House visit.
