Oh no, nothing political at all!
WASHINGTON — A right-leaning nonprofit has proposed an 11th-hour effort to place news articles critical of HIllary Clinton and other Democrats in black newspapers in the runup to the November election, BuzzFeed News has learned.
The American Media Institute has approached Republican donors to finance the articles, three sources said. They were to run in a nominally apolitical black wire service that serves the black press, the sources said.
One source shared details of the plan with BuzzFeed News out of concern that the proposal “looks like voter suppression,” the source said. The group’s founder, Richard Miniter, adamantly denied that charge. It is also unclear whether any donors have committed to financing the project in the election’s final weeks.
Miniter, a former Washington Times editorial page editor who is CEO and founder of the American Media Institute, has told associates that the that the stories would be distributed by the nonprofit’s Urban News Service, adding that the articles would include attacks on Obamacare and on the Clintons’ failures regarding people of color.Miniter’s pitch, according to a source closely familiar with its details, centers on the prospect of reaching black voters through news articles, rather than obvious opinion pieces or advertisements.
Miniter heatedly denied that his group has any political agenda. He did not respond to more detailed questions about the Urban News Service plan.
