{"id":2362609,"date":"2024-11-01T08:17:58","date_gmt":"2024-11-01T12:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/usa-today-works-to-whitewash-democrat-hacks-as-nonpartisan\/"},"modified":"2024-11-01T08:19:01","modified_gmt":"2024-11-01T12:19:01","slug":"usa-today-works-to-whitewash-democrat-hacks-as-nonpartisan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/usa-today-works-to-whitewash-democrat-hacks-as-nonpartisan\/","title":{"rendered":"USA Today Works To Whitewash Democrat Hacks As &#8216;Nonpartisan&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fusa-today-works-to-whitewash-democrat-hacks-as-nonpartisan%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2362609&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>A conservative think tank leader, Scott Walter, is advocating for a ban on charities participating in\u2062 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/report-eric-deemed-168000-dead-or-relocated-virginians-eligible-but-unregistered-to-vote\/\" title=\"Report: ERIC Lists Over 160,000 Deceased or Moved Virginians as Potential Voters\">voter\u2062 registration initiatives<\/a>, \u2063a position originating from a USA Today \u2064article \u2062that discusses his stance. However, the article fails to present Walter&#8217;s reasoning and\u200d instead focuses on criticisms from the Voter Participation Center (VPC),\u2064 a nonprofit accused of bias. The VPC reportedly \u2063ran targeted ads on Facebook and Instagram, \u2064<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\">deliberately excluding users interested<\/a> in\u200d topics typically associated with Republican voters, such as NASCAR and modified\u200c Jeeps. Republican lawmakers subsequently requested an investigation into the VPC&#8217;s practices, but this aspect was overlooked in\u200b the USA Today article, which largely quoted VPC officials\u200b claiming nonpartisanship \u200cwithout addressing the evidence of partisan behavior. The article&#8217;s\u2063 framing reflects a common media trend that highlights conservative reactions to scandals while neglecting the scandal itself, particularly when it potentially damages a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/more-electioneering-dirty-facebook-suspends-gop-ad-campaign-days-before-january-georgia-runoff-election\/\" title=\"More Electioneering: Dirty Facebook Suspends GOP Ad Campaign Days Before January Georgia Runoff Election\">left-leaning group<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>A &ldquo;Conservative think tank leader&rdquo; is now calling for &ldquo;banning charities from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/megadonors-pour-record-amount-of-money-into-get-out-the-vote-effort-for-dems\/\" title=\"Megadonors Pour Record Amount of Money Into \u2018Get Out the Vote\u2019 Effort for Dems\">voter registration efforts<\/a>,&rdquo; or so a recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/politics\/elections\/2024\/10\/21\/voter-registration-nonprofit-criticism\/75717829007\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">USA Today headline<\/a> reads. The &ldquo;Conservative think tank leader,&rdquo; my boss, Scott Walter, has very good reasons for calling for this, though if you read the article in full, you might be uncertain what those reasons are. That&rsquo;s because the reasons were not discussed at all. Instead, the article is full of platitudes from the worst partisan offender in the &ldquo;charitable&rdquo; get-out-the-vote industry, <a href=\"https:\/\/capitalresearch.org\/article\/the-voter-participation-center-deserves-to-be-grilled\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the Voter Participation Center (VPC)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;s the now-classic &ldquo;conservatives seize&rdquo; or &ldquo;Republicans pounce&rdquo; framing, a narrative trick that the American media is famous for, wherein the reaction <em>to<\/em> a scandal &mdash; rather than the scandal itself &mdash; is portrayed as the center of a story (but only if that scandal makes a figure or group on the left look bad).<\/p>\n<p>In this case, the &ldquo;pouncing&rdquo; occurred in response to a story by Andrew Kerr of <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/elections\/do-you-like-nascar-this-non-partisan-voter-registration-group-doesnt-want-to-help-you\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Washington Free Beacon<\/a>. The story broke the news the VPC had purchased &ldquo;register to vote&rdquo; ads on Facebook and Instagram that were specifically filtered so that they would not be shown to users interested in topics and hobbies commonly associated with Republican voters. &ldquo;Excluded&rdquo; topics included NASCAR, Duck Dynasty, Ted Nugent, modified Jeeps, and the PGA Tour. Letters from multiple Republican legislators inquiring about an investigation into the VPC soon followed.<\/p>\n<p>Did USA Today mention these obviously partisan ad filters? Of course not &mdash; even though IRS rules clearly state that charities must not benefit one party when they help voters register.<\/p>\n<p>The USA Today report does mention that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cotton.senate.gov\/news\/press-releases\/cotton-to-werfel-partisan-voter-registration-drives-violate-federal-law\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.,<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/tenney.house.gov\/media\/press-releases\/congresswoman-tenney-demands-irs-investigate-voter-participation-center\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y.,<\/a> sent letters to the IRS, and even provides links to the letters, but does not quote a single word from either. Instead, the article merely says the letters &ldquo;focused on the ad strategy that the nonprofit used on Meta to target voters, claiming it targeted progressives.&rdquo; The actual &ldquo;ad strategy&rdquo; &mdash; the one that excluded likely GOP voters &mdash; was not discussed in any detail. Not one of the filters the VPC used was mentioned, and the VPC was apparently never asked to explain them at all.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, USA Today accepted at face value VPC&rsquo;s assertions about its nonpartisanship. Quotes from Tom Lopach, VPC&rsquo;s president and CEO, are strewn so densely throughout the article that his quoted words (136 in total) outnumber Walter&rsquo;s (105), despite the latter&rsquo;s opinions ostensibly being the subject of the article. Instead of the clear evidence that Walter, Rep. Tenney, and Sen. Cotton supplied about VPC&rsquo;s partisanship, readers are told simply that &ldquo;Lopach said nothing the Voter Participation Center does is partisan, and the organization should not be viewed through a partisan lens.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Well, if Lopach, &ldquo;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.influencewatch.org\/person\/tom-lopach\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a longtime Democratic political operative<\/a>,&rdquo; says so &hellip;<\/p>\n<p>Also not mentioned in the article are the mounds of <em>other<\/em> evidence that VPC has long acted as the Democratic Party&rsquo;s electioneering super-weapon. As far back as 2012, left-wing journalist Sasha Issenberg <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Victory-Lab-Science-Winning-Campaigns\/dp\/0307954803\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">wrote of the VPC<\/a>, &ldquo;Even though the group was officially nonpartisan, for tax purposes, there was no secret that the goal of all of its efforts was to generate new votes for Democrats.&rdquo; This detail was also not mentioned in the article.<\/p>\n<p>In 2020, reports surfaced in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/recode\/2020\/1\/7\/21055340\/mind-the-gap-silicon-valley-donors-democrats-2020-plan-140-million\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Vox<\/a> that the Democrat Super PAC Mind the Gap, which was led by Sam Bankman-Fried&rsquo;s mom, <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2023\/08\/17\/sam-bankman-frieds-mom-helped-craft-democrats-illegal-2020-election-tactics-report\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">was advising its donors to give to VPC<\/a> because it was &ldquo;4 to 10 times more cost effective&rdquo; when it came to &ldquo;netting additional Democratic votes than the tactics that campaigns will invest in.&rdquo; This detail was also not mentioned in the article, though the information was supplied to the reporter.<\/p>\n<p>In 2022, VPC <a href=\"https:\/\/www.voterparticipation.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/VPC-2022-Form-990-PD.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">paid<\/a> nearly $13 million to a consulting firm called Pivot Group and has paid the group roughly $55 million since 2016. On its website, Pivot Group <a href=\"https:\/\/www.idealist.org\/en\/consultant\/88ca704bb5364c319f6509f1591c455e-the-pivot-group-washington\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">says<\/a> it&rsquo;s &ldquo;committed to electing Democrats up and down the ballot.&rdquo; This, and other enormous payments to equally partisan consulting firms, were &mdash; you guessed it &mdash; not mentioned in the article.<\/p>\n<p>USA Today&rsquo;s readers would have been much better informed had at least <em>some<\/em> of this evidence been mentioned. But, then again, if USA Today&rsquo;s readers were better informed, they might no longer be readers of USA Today.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Parker Thayer is an investigative researcher at Capital Research Center in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A conservative leader seeks to ban charities from voter registration<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3499,"featured_media":2362610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Copy-of-Untitled-2024-10-30T190556.682.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[44143,32490,44144,32171,37645],"class_list":["post-2362609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-democrat-hacks","tag-media-bias","tag-nonpartisan-reporting","tag-political-commentary","tag-usa-today"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Copy-of-Untitled-2024-10-30T190556.682.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2362609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3499"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2362609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2362609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2362610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2362609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2362609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2362609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}