Fake Catholic Newspapers Dispersed in Swing States: Report

Amid this year’s election, newspapers under the name Catholic Tribune, which have no association with the Catholic Church, have been dispersed in swing states, a new ProPublica report found.
Versions of the Catholic Tribune newspaper have been mailed out in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Nevada, according to an article titled “Who’s Mailing the Catholic Tribune? It’s Not the Church, It’s Partisan Media” published by ProPublica, an independent nonprofit newsroom, on Sunday.
These states, along with North Carolina and Georgia, will decide the November 5 presidential election between former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
Most of the articles that the Catholic Tribune newspapers published are “inflammatory and overtly partisan,” according to ProPublica, and focus on so-called “culture-war” issues such as LGBTQ+ issues.
One headline in the Wisconsin Catholic Tribune asks, “How many ‘sex change’ mutilation surgeries occurred on Wisconsin kids?”
Dioceses and parishes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada have warned their communities about the fake newspapers, including the Diocese of Grand Rapids.
Annalise Laumeyer, a spokesperson for the Michigan diocese, told ProPublica that she contacted local media to notify members of the church about the Michigan Catholic Tribune, so they’re not misled.
“It gives the impression that the Diocese of Grand Rapids or the Catholic Church is behind this newspaper,” Laumeyer said of the Michigan Catholic Tribune.
Wisconsinite Jason Bourget, a member of the Diocese of La Crosse, was mailed a copy of the Wisconsin Catholic Tribune.
“I put it with all the other political ads, right in the garbage,” he said.
ProPublica found through tax and business documents that the fake newspapers were coming from former journalist Brian Timpone’s Chicago-based publishing network. The network has gotten money from “right-wing super PACs” funded by Richard Uihlein, founder of supply company Uline, according to ProPublica.
One of Timpone’s organizations, Metric Media, has been found by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School to have distributed “thousands of algorithmically generated articles.” The Tow Center also quotes Matt Grossmann, director of Michigan State University’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research, saying “‘Many [articles] on [Metric Media site The] Lansing Sun appeared to be right-leaning'” in its December 2019 report.
Timpone has contributed to conservative campaigns and causes, according to ProPublica. Meanwhile, the articles in the Catholic Tribune newspapers were also published on websites operated by Metric Media, with almost every story missing a reporter byline, an analysis by ProPublica found.
Neither Timpone nor Uihlein responded to requests for comment from ProPublica. Newsweek reached out to Uihlein through Uline’s media requests email and Timpone through an email for Metric Media email late Sunday afternoon.
Poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight, which estimates the candidates’ polling averages by analyzing multiple polls, has Trump and Harris tied in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania at 47.8 percent each for both states as of Sunday afternoon.
Nevada is also about even with Harris less than a percentage point ahead of Trump (47.6 to 47.2 percent). The story is the same for Michigan where Harris has 47.6 percent support compared to Trump’s 47.1 percent.
Meanwhile, Trump is about one point ahead of Harris in North Carolina (48.3 to 47.3 percent), about 2 points ahead of Harris in Georgia (48.9 to 46.9 percent) and Arizona (48.8 to 46.7 percent).
FiveThirtyEight has Harris ahead of Trump nationally by 2 points (48.4 to 46.4 percent) as of Sunday afternoon.