![]() ![]() Bennett filed a lawsuit in October 2021 in which he claimed the Dallas Express had “never been owned or run by Metric Media.” Bennett initially won in trial court, but lost in appellate court, in part because the characterization of the Express as a “right-wing propaganda site” in the Dallas Weekly was held to be constitutionally protected opinion. The letter also demanded the removal of references to Dallas Express in a July 2021 article I wrote for the Dallas Observer revealing that a Republican PR firm had created a test website for DJN. In August 2021, the Dallas Weekly and I received a letter threatening a lawsuit for our coverage. The Dallas Express, meanwhile, has not mentioned the groups’ ties to right-wing donors when publishing op-eds and quoting sources from the organizations. National and international outlets like VICE, Jewish Insider, and the Independent have also documented the controversial activities of these groups. As I previously reported for the Texas Observer in a related article, these four groups push conservative policies and received an inordinate amount of coverage from the Dallas Express compared with other regional publications, which have primarily run critical articles about the group, including: the Dallas Morning News, Dallas Observer, D Magazine, Dallas Weekly, Spectrum News, PeopleNewspapers, and the Texas Tribune. Since January 2021, the Dallas Express has run at least 112 articles and opinion pieces that mention one of four “zombie astroturf groups” in the area: Keep Dallas Safe, Dallas Justice Now, Save Texas Kids, and Protect Texas Kids. ![]() Bennett is the founder and CEO of Ashford Inc., a publicly traded company that controls over 100 hotels. īennett has described the paper as “strictly objective” and nonpartisan, but their “core values” included clearly conservative talking points like “taxes are generally oppressive” and “regulations undermine individual and business productivity.” These stated values-which were subsequently removed after my reporting-and Bennett’s political activities led me, in the Dallas Weekly article, to describe the website as “right-wing propaganda.” One month after D Magazine linked the Dallas Express to Metric Media, I reported for the Dallas Weekly, a Black-owned weekly newspaper, that Trump-supporting billionaire hotel magnate Monty Bennett was named publisher of Dallas Express. ![]() Researchers have dubbed such astroturf outlets that hide their true partisan purpose as “pink slime journalism.” Metric Media has also been linked to a series of “pink slime” newspapers that recently attacked Democratic candidates in the run-up to the Illinois Spring elections, according to NPR. One of those companies, Pipeline Media, also boasts Texas billionaire and Republican megadonor Tim Dunn as a board member. In January 2021, D Magazine reported that the paper was “run by a Chicago-based operation called Metric Media News that owns hundreds of such dubious news sites all across the country.” Metric Media News, founded by conservative Chicago businessman Brian Timpone, is part of a broader network of right-wing websites that masquerade as nonpartisan, local news. Half a century after the paper went defunct, the Dallas Express was brought back to life under new management. Founded in 1892 and shuttered in the mid-1970s, the newspaper focused on issues ignored by the predominantly White press in a segregated city “that had been effectively run by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.” įor over 80 years, the Dallas Express operated as a weekly, Black-owned, progressive newspaper that covered racist lynchings, fought against segregation, and focused on the issues that mattered to the Black community in Dallas. This piece is part of Special Correspondent Steven Monacellis’ reporting on extremist groups masquerading as grassroots, social justice organizations. ![]()
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