Ever hear of the Moorhead Update? No?
Of course not: it's part the National Republican Congressional Committee's chain of fake news sites, the National Journal reports in NRCC Launches Fake News Sites to Attack Democratic Candidates:
The House GOP campaign arm, previously criticized for phony Democratic candidate sites, is now in the faux-news game.
The National Republican Congressional Committee, which came under fire earlier this year for a deceptive series of fake Democratic candidate websites that it later changed after public outcry, has launched a new set of deceptive websites, this time designed to look like local news sources.
The NRCC has created about two dozen of these new faux news sites targeting Democrats, both challengers and incumbents, and is promoting them across the country with localized Google search ads. . . .
"This is a new and effective way to disseminate information to voters who are interested in learning the truth about these Democratic candidates," said Andrea Bozek, communications director for the NRCC. . .
The NRCC's online push comes despite the blowback the committee received for the look-alike Democratic sites, which prompted a complaint from a watchdog group to the Federal Election Commission. Under public pressure, the NRCC changed the design of those sites to make it clearer that contributors were sending their money to the House GOP campaign arm and not the Democratic candidates whose pictures appeared on the page. . . .
Josh Schwerin, a spokesman for the DCCC, still criticized the approach. "House Republicans' campaign strategy to overcome their own historic unpopularity is to resort to deception—again," he said. . . .
As we reported in a February post, NRCC creates fake Collin Peterson site "to lure" voters, CNN special investigations unit reports, Peterson was targeted by the earlier deceptive tactic as well.
While skirting the legal side of campaign law, the tactic is a bit not Minnesota Nice. Read the entire article at the National Journal.
Making Real News Fake: The Case of the Point of View Video
The screenshot above also includes a staple used by the NRCC against Peterson: Point of View host Chris Berg's Summer 2013 kvetching about how Peterson won't show up for an interview.
Chet at North Decoder has his own take on this episode in the August 2013 The Clueless National Republican Congressional Committee, but Bluestem sees the out-of-context use of the clip (apparently no longer online at the Red River Valley TV station itself, as is often the case with older broadcast material online)
Instead, we find it useful to identify when Collin Peterson actually was on Chris Berg's show last summer. Since the station doesn't spend bandwidth on keeping clips of shows online forever, we looked for other documentation of where the twain met.
According to a May 31, 2013 post on the conservative North Dakota blog, Say Anything, Minnesota Democrat Says North Dakota Democrat Attack On Kevin Cramer Is Inaccurate, Peterson was a guest on Berg's show in late May 2013:
Last night Valley News Live’s Chris Berg interviewed Minnesota Congressman Collin Peterson at a farm bill forum he held alongside North Dakota Congressman Kevin Cramer. During the interview, Berg asked Rep. Peterson about claims North Dakota Democrats have made about Rep. Cramer and the farm bill. . . .
Rep. Peterson also explained what changes are being made to the food stamps program (or SNAP), saying he’s more comfortable with what Democrats are doing with the program than with what his own [sic] party is doing. . .
And as the screenshot of the station's May 30, 2013 Facebook posting reveals, Peterson was to be a guest on the show that night:
We've also posted Say Anthing's screengrab of Peterson, presumably from that segment.
Less than three months late, Berg's complaints were aired--and shared by the NRCC in a press release on August 21, 2013 (North Decoder blog). Eight days after the press release, on August 29, the television posted to Facebook:
A clip of the interview was embedded on the real news site, Farm Policy by Kevin Good on August 30, 2013, in the post, House Ag Committee Ranking Member Collin Peterson Discusses Farm Bill. Good wrote:
House Ag Committee Ranking Member Collin Peterson (D., Minn.) was a guest yesterday on the Valley News Live (Fargo, N.D.) Point of View television program with Chris Berg. In part, the conversation focused on the Farm Bill.
As in the other cases, the clip is no longer available.
And there's more.
According to another Say Anything post, September 26, 2013's Democrat Congressman: Senator Heitkamp’s Claims About Food Stamps Are “Hypocrisy,” Peterson appeared on Point of View on September 25, 2013:
Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson appeared on Chris Berg’s 6:30 Point of View program last night alongside Rep. Kevin Cramer, and when confronted with disparities between Senator Heitkamp’s comments and one of his own press releases on the issue, Rep. Peterson suggested there’s “a lot of hypocrisy” on the issue.
How fake is the NRCC's fake news? Pretty fake. Peterson appeared on Berg's show three times in the space of under four months, and the presumption that there's something wrong with drawing one's salary makes Bluestem eager for the announcement that Peterson's Republican challenger Torrey Westrom will donate his congressional wages to pay for seniors' prescriptions.
It's not like that's never been done by a Minnesotan serving in DC.
Given the abject failure of recent skeevy attacks in the state auditor's primary, we doubt Minnesota voters have much patience with this sort of malarkey.
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