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Posted on 01/29/2026 4:47:10 AM PST by DFG
“Deportation fears grip undocumented parents in Southern California”, a headline at the Orange County Register blares.
Even though the former conservative newspaper is now owned by a hedge fund that happens to be the second largest newspaper publisher in the country, the article is actually taxpayer-funded political propaganda even though nothing anywhere below it discloses that fact.
California Democrats appropriated $25 million in taxpayer money to fund an entity known as the ‘California Local News Fellowship’ which in turn planted radical activists inside local papers like Victoria Ivie who writes about ‘Equity’ at the OC Register and covers “trans students”, “LGBT elders”, anti-Israel rallies, and of course all the “undocumented parents” terrified of ICE.
The growing transformation of the media into state media erodes the already thin line between the government ruling parties and their political allies in the media. The media’s faltering business model led Democrats in states like California to more overtly subsidize the media.
Clinton official now serves as a senior advisor to Gov. Gavin Newsom and will be in a position to administer $20 million in subsidies from the California Civic Media Program to media outlets.
That $20 million is a fraction of the expected $250 million, down from the initial $500 million demanded by California Democrats, for the media. The only reason that the media has to settle for seizing a paltry eight figures instead of nine from taxpayers is the state’s budget crunch.
California’s massive subsidies for the media are a combination of taxpayer money and corporate blackmail. State Dems had tried to forcibly extract billions from big dot coms like Google and Facebook for their media allies, but had to settle for matching funds from Google, which was set to provide $125 million until Newsom weaseled out of his share, while Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, long a generous donor to liberal causes, pivoted away to Trump.
While California’s efforts to extract billions from taxpayers and tech corps to fund its political propaganda is extreme, similar efforts are underway in Democrat states across the country.
Federal efforts to provide special subsidies and tax breaks failed in Congress, despite the complicity of some Republicans, but multiple states provide tax breaks and credits. While the media already often enjoys a preferential tax status (most states don’t impose a sales tax on newspapers and magazines), New York passed a bill offering $90 million in tax breaks for Gov. Hochul’s media allies while Illinois offered a smaller $25 million honey pot for Gov. Pritzker’s publishing pals, and have expanded into not only direct tax breaks for the media, but secondary tax breaks for the media’s advertisers like that in Washington, Minnesota and other states.
38 media subsidy bills have been introduced in 15 states in just the last few years indicating the growing consolidation of the media into the state as Democrats scrambled to force taxpayers to subsidize their political allies and their political propaganda in the name of ‘democracy’..
The media rarely reports that it is already one of the most subsidized industries in the country. And those tax breaks are all the more troubling because the media is also the most politically connected industry in the country, supporting political candidates and helping to ‘make or break’ their campaigns, and then receiving special tax breaks and subsidies from those politicians.
For example in Minnesota a bill to provide a tax credit for businesses that advertise in the ‘local’ media was sponsored by State Sen. Grant Hauschild (D) who was endorsed by local newspapers like the Duluth Tribune that had also endorsed media subsidies. The Tribune is owned by a company that controls 22 other papers and 4 radio stations. Its current headline reads “Federal agents fatally shoot another Minnesotan; Walz and Frey plead for an end.”
But some states are moving to more direct subsidies. New Jersey’s equivalent of California’s ‘Local News Fellowship’ is its more ominously named ‘Civic Info Consortium’ which has dispensed six figure checks to partisan media outlets like the Jersey Vindicator and the Trenton Journal. The Jersey Vindictator’s current headlines read like Democratic Party press releases.
And that’s why the money keeps flowing.
The head of Rebuild Local News, a group that advocates for taxpayer subsidies for the media, claimed that “newsrooms will get about $74 million in 2026 from state governments.”
Rebuild’s target is $1 billion a year. And then the sky and the wallets of taxpayers are the limit.
Democrats claim that taxpayer funding of local media is necessary to “protect democracy” and stop “local media deserts”. But having the government subsidize the media covering it is the stuff of banana republics, not democracies, and the majority of media subsidies go to papers aligned with the Democratic Party elected officials who also push for these subsidies.
Media subsidies force taxpayers to subsidize the communications arm of the ruling party. Those subsidies don’t benefit local residents, rather they force them to subsidize companies that they have long since opted out of funding. If local residents really wanted to subsidize local papers, they could pay for them. Government subsidies force residents to fund media they don’t want.
The so-called ‘local media deserts’ disproportionately occur in more rural counties and smaller towns where the public stopped patronizing local papers as they turned partisan and radical, and began hiring journalism grad students who lectured them about ‘equity’ and pronouns. Rather than try to win back the older and more conservative readers, the papers instead turned to the liberal politicians they supported, telling elected officials to take money from their former readers and give it to them. Former readers could stop subscribing to a paper, but they couldn’t stop paying for it.
Not if the government and the media had anything to say about it.
The media can’t be allowed to die not because it provides some vital service to its readers, but because it provides a vital service to the cause of the Democratic Party and the Left.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting may have finally shut down, but state media is more pervasive than ever. The partial federal defunding of public media was a notable victory for an old Republican and conservative project, but Democrats and liberals had an equally long project to subsidize not just public media, but all of media, through a combination of tax credits, non-profit status for establishment media outlets, and government/corporate subsidies.
Over the last decade it became obvious that the mainstream media’s business model was doomed. Traditional print, television and radio had depended on user habit and platform infrastructure that limited competition. Social media algorithms and the broader structure of the internet undid these advantages and made the mainstream media into white elephants.
Normally the collapse of a business model wouldn’t be of great concern to anyone outside that industry, but the Democratic Party and the larger libera\leftist political worldview heavily depended on endangered knowledge industry ‘white elephants’ like the media and academia.
The rise of Trump allowed them to link the withering of the media to a ‘threat to democracy’. Social media monopolies were pressured into unleashing a censorship campaign to stop ‘misinformation’ that not only censored political opponents, but privileged mainstream media content and even compensated the media for censoring opponents through ‘fact checks’.
When that failed, Democrats decided to use their political power to just fund the media.
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Exhibit A: ARDEMGAZ
To this add the subsidies provided to local legacy media by left wing foundations. Increasingly, these organs function as agitprop outlets, no longer practicing real journalism. There’s an excellent chance your local paper and TV stations have been corrupted by leftist dark money.
I haven’t read the paper in at least 6 years. Tampa only has 1 newspaper, the paper is only on Wednesday and Sunday. My dad said Tampa Bay had 3 papers in the 70s...
Explains how local rags are still in business. Ours has hardly any ads in it anymore and circulation is way down, yet they keep printing it.
“Such as it is, the press has become the greatest power in the Weston World, more powerful than the legislature, the executive nd the judiciary. One would like to ask; by whom has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
we never got justice for the “journo-lister” collusion that installed demon obama
Somehow the worthless State newspaper still survives.
Every single aspect of what a local newspaper used to do is now handled by something else. The county will not lose local news if local papers fold. There are plenty of local news blogs and sites with reporting that is just as accurate as the propaganda that comes from these rags.
Not unlike...
Two boys are playing football in Golden Gate Park when one is attacked by a rabid Rottweiler. Thinking quickly, the other boy rips off a board of the nearby fence, wedges it down the dog's collar and twists, breaking the dog's neck. A reporter who was strolling by sees the incident, and rushes over to interview the boy. "Young Forty Niners' Fan Saves Friend From Vicious Animal," he starts writing in his notebook. "But I'm not a Niners fan," the little hero replied. "Sorry, since we are in San Francisco I just assumed you were." said the reporter and starts again. "Little Oakland Raiders' Fan Rescues Friend From Horrific Attack" he continued writing in his notebook. "I'm not a Raiders fan either," the boy said. "I assumed everyone in the Bay Area was either for the Niners or Raiders. What team do you root for?" the reporter asked. "I'm a Dallas Cowboys fan." the child said. The reporter starts a new sheet in his notebook and writes, "Little Redneck Kills Beloved Family Pet."
This piece is characteristic of a person who digs for evidence.
Nice job, Mr. Greenfield, thank you.
Back in the 60’s and 70’s, my parents had two papers delivered each day. The morning paper was the Houston Post. Liberal rag. The afternoon paper was the Houston Chronicle. Conservative paper.
The Post went broke and the Chronicle was the last man standing, but they hired a bunch of leftys from the Post, so it became infected as well.
California Local News Fellows at the UC Berkeley Journalism school
While true, the fact is that media is shrinking in number and influence alongside this corrupting of journalism.
"Americans’ confidence in the mass media has edged down to a new low, with just 28% expressing a 'great deal' or 'fair amount' of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. This is down from 31% last year and 40% five years ago.Meanwhile, seven in 10 U.S. adults now say they have 'not very much' confidence (36%) or 'none at all' (34%).
Trust in Media at New Low of 28% in U.S. Gallup, 2 October 2025.
That distrust grows, as above, the "state funding" which one finds seems not to be 'keeping pace' with the growing distrust.
But then the UC system is a California state entity, in a state wherein its own state debt races forward to be unsustainable. California is the national "champ" in going into hock.
California Debt Clock
“Your Local Paper is Taxpayer-Funded Government Propaganda”. I call my local paper the Salina Urinal..I mean Journal.
“””””Back in the 60’s and 70’s, my parents had two papers delivered each day. The morning paper was the Houston Post. Liberal rag. The afternoon paper was the Houston Chronicle. Conservative paper.””””””
I used to read them both along with the original Houston Press, also worked for them all, from hawking the Chronicle on downtown street corners to paper routes for the others.
who reads a “Local Paper” anymore?
Well I got nothin’ ‘gainst the press
They wouldn’t print it if it wasn’t true
I buy the Richmond Slimy Piss Patch for it’s intrinsic value you know for fire starting and masking for spray painting.
Good tobkeep watch on a certain segment...it is where I found that Oregon has similar “news” funded by the State. Need to go find it again...it has an innocuous name like Oregon News Service or something.
See my tag line.
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