Not so local news: Lincoln Media’s attempt to shape public opinion ahead of the US Elections
2 October 2024
By: Max Read
Opaque ‘local news’ outlets created by politically-affiliated groups to channel political talking points are nothing new; previously reported networks in the US include the right-leaning Metric Media and the left-leaning Star Spangled Media. This investigation uncovers a similar effort which appears to be designed to influence the media environment in critical states in the run-up to the 2024 US presidential elections. Though smaller than previous efforts, the Lincoln Media Network (Lincoln Media) demonstrates that ideologically-driven actors are continuing to exploit both the media trust deficit and social media platform enforcement gaps to influence voters’ information diets. This report details how Lincoln Media obscures control of the outlets it operates and deceives its audience about its motivations. It also describes how the network leverages Facebook as a distribution channel, including by violating Facebook’s policies on political ad disclosures.
Lincoln Media Foundation Network Overview
The Lincoln Media Foundation (Lincoln Media) funds and likely exerts editorial control over at least seven websites which produce local news as well as associated social media properties across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Snap. According to IRS records, Lincoln Media is related to and shares key staff with the Lincoln Club, “the oldest and largest conservative major donor organization in the state of California.”
The outlets linked to Lincoln Media were set up in late 2023 and early 2024, targeting Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and the Lincoln Club’s home territory, Los Angeles. Lincoln Media states that it follows professional journalistic standards in pursuing a mission of “empower[ing] the common person… breaking down the barriers of disinformation.” However, ISD found that it is delivering political messages from outlets which appear to be – and in some cases, explicitly claim to be – unbiased local news sites. Given the states and localities Lincoln Media targets, it is likely that these efforts aim to influence the information environment in states that will be critical in deciding the presidential election. The election year scale-up also follows the same trajectory taken by Metric Media four years ago.
Lincoln Media’s network is much smaller and more targeted than similar partisan media influence efforts, with just seven outlets compared to Metric Media’s 1,200 local news pages at its peak. Nevertheless, the network demonstrates that partisan organizations are still able to deceive voters by exploiting platform features: ISD found that the network spent more than $63,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads boosting its content, resulting in up to 18 million impressions. So long as platforms continue to enable this type of influence operation, actors of all political persuasions will view them as a tool to manipulate the media ecosystem and voter behavior.
Attribution
Lincoln Media does not identify the projects that it operates or funds on its website or social media page. None of the outlets’ websites or social media pages overtly disclose their association with the Lincoln Club or Lincoln Media. However, four of the seven websites have privacy policy pages identifying them as “project[s] of the Lincoln Media Foundation.” These disclosures appear only once and towards the end of the privacy policy. ISD assessed with high confidence that the three remaining websites are part of the network based on their creation dates and similar social media branding. Six of the seven outlets’ Facebook pages were created on the same date. All seven Facebook pages have similar branding styles, including a stylized logo profile picture and a cityscape/landscape cover photo.

Figure 1: Lincoln Media outlets’ Facebook pages include similar branding.
Lapses in Ethics and Standards
The seven outlets identified in Lincoln Media’s network fail to meet basic standards of journalistic conduct. None of the outlets have a published ethics policy or disclose their journalists, editors, publishers, or funding sources. Based on the Society of Professional Journalists’ (SPJ) Code of Ethics (the widely accepted authority on these principles in the US), the Lincoln Media network falls below standards expected for media outlets on several points including:
- Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Disclose unavoidable conflicts. None of the outlets transparently disclose their funding sources. Published articles either do not include bylines or attribute the article to the outlet itself. Standard journalistic practice would require attributing articles to journalists by name or attributing editorial commentary to the outlet. Furthermore, ISD identified several Lincoln Media staff who likely have editorial influence based on their job titles and hold or have held political positions that would present a real or perceived conflict of interest. An outlet abiding by SPJ’s guidelines would disclose this information.
- Label advocacy and commentary. None of Lincoln Media’s outlets label articles as reporting or commentary, nor do they clearly disclose their affiliation with the Lincoln Club.
- Never plagiarize. Always attribute. Lincoln Media’s outlets have re-published other, legitimate outlets’ articles without attribution.
- Take responsibility for the accuracy of their work. Verify information before releasing it. Use original sources whenever possible and identify sources clearly. ISD’s review of all articles published in September found no instances of Lincoln Media outlets contacting sources independently. Reviewed publications include instances where Lincoln Media outlets republished quotes or reports sourced from other outlets and cited anonymous social media accounts as sources without verifying their claims.
Tactics
Although smaller than previous efforts, Lincoln Media’s outlets are better calibrated to escape detection and target information to voters in the most politically contested states. Unlike Metric Media’s outlets, Lincoln Media’s websites and branding appear distinct enough from each other to escape immediate identification as a network. None have accounts on X, where they would be more likely to come to the attention of journalists or researchers. Other than the Los Angeles outlet, they target geographies that are contested in the presidential race. This contrasts with Metric Media’s strategy of setting up outlets across the country, even in places with little obvious electoral significance. And the Los Angeles outlet (The Angeleno) appears to be a test case that operated for a few months and then shut down once the higher-priority outlets were up and running. Its last Facebook post was in April.
Lincoln Media’s outlets publish a mix of original material and articles stolen from legitimate news sites, covering local events, sports coverage and crime. For example, in December 2023, The Angeleno lifted an article about a car crash in Los Angeles from KTLA without attribution. True North News, an outlet purportedly serving Wisconsin, reposted the same article a month later without citing KTLA or The Angeleno. Stealing content from legitimate outlets was likely intended to make the Lincoln Media network appear more legitimate to visitors.

Figure 2: Original KTLA article (first row) republished by The Angeleno (second row, left) and True North News (second row, right) without attribution.
Distribution and Ad Disclaimer Violations
While the outlets have accounts across several platforms, they appear to have invested mostly in growing their Facebook following. The seven pages have a combined following of just 3,500, of which a significant proportion is likely driven by advertising rather than organic growth. In total, they have run roughly 1,750 ads on Meta platforms at a cost of more than $63,000: roughly one ad for every two followers, and $36 spent on ads per follower. This spending has resulted in up to 18 million impressions on the ads (Meta’s disclosures provide a range), revealing the network’s dependence on paid advertising for reaching its target audience.
The network’s Facebook and Instagram ads likely violate Meta’s political ads disclaimer policy, which requires disclaimers that “accurately reflect the organization or person paying for your ads.” The disclaimers in ads from each page list the outlet title but do not disclose that Lincoln Media is the funding source. This is a divergence from Metric Media’s and Star Spangled Media’s Meta ads, which list the network — not the outlet — in the disclaimer.
The outlets’ Facebook engagement also shows some signs of possible artificial amplification through coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB). For example, several possibly inauthentic accounts regularly repost articles from the pages, often multiple times in quick succession. The example below shows an account with four friends and no profile picture or biographical information, which reposted Lincoln Media outlets’ content several times within minutes. There are several examples of similar accounts engaging with content from all six of the active outlets. It is possible that these accounts belong to real people and Lincoln Media’s targeted advertising is achieving this unusual form of engagement. Ultimately, Meta’s lack of transparency, especially since the CrowdTangle closure, prevents more systematic investigation of possible CIB.

Figure 3: The same suspicious account regularly and repeatedly shares content from several Lincoln Media outlets.
Conclusion: Why change what works?
The Lincoln Media network is the latest instance of the tried-and-true tactic of using opaque news outlets to influence public opinion. ISD previously uncovered a Kremlin-linked operation that impersonated legitimate news sites to spread anti-Ukraine propaganda and foment social unrest in Europe and the US. Domestic partisan groups on both sides of the ideological spectrum have been found in the past to create news networks to embed political messages within local news coverage.
In some respects, Lincoln Media’s operation fits within this tradition: It obscures the funding source, publishes political editorial interspersed with legitimate news, relies on social media platforms for distribution and “borrows” content from other outlets. In other ways, the operation is more targeted and better calibrated to evade detection than its older counterparts. While its impact on public opinion is difficult to measure, the network’s existence proves that actors trying to influence the information environment – and by extension, voter behavior – continue to see this as a viable and effective tactic. They will likely continue to do so as long as Meta and other social media companies allow them to use their platforms for distribution.
As evidenced in ISD’s Platform Election Preparedness Analysis, social media platforms’ lack of transparency is hampering voters’ ability to know how they are being targeted and by whom. When platforms do release enforcement details and data, it will most often be published months after votes have been cast, depriving platform users the ability to know if they have been targeted by inauthentic advertising or influence operations in a timely manner. Without regulation that mandates platform transparency – particularly regarding the enforcement of their own polices – voters must rely on social media platforms’ own judgements as to what information is made public, and when. This leaves voters with an obscured view of the authenticity of the content they are exposed to and will likely continue to be the case without fuller disclosures from platforms, improved data access for public interest research or legislation that mandates both these solutions.