FIRST ON FOX: A longtime Democratic political activist behind a network of left-wing media organizations masquerading as “independent” local media outlets has maintained his access to the upper echelons of power. That of President Biden White House.
Tara McGowan, founder and publisher of Courier Newsroom, has visited the Biden White House nearly 20 times, according to a Fox News Digital review.
McGowan, CEO and founder of Courier Newsroom’s parent company, Good Information Inc., participated in several one-on-one meetings with top White House aides. For example, McGowan met with Jordan Finkelstein, who was chief of staff to one of President Biden’s senior advisors, at least six times between October 2022 and October 2023.
Another senior aide who was listed in the visitor logs of McGowan’s visits to the White House was Patrick Stevenson. Stevenson’s LinkedIn page reveals that he is “Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor for Digital Strategy.”
Stevenson’s role in leading the White House’s digital strategy could raise questions about coordination between McGowan’s media network and the White House because of Courier Newsroom’s business model that revolves around online engagement and messaging on social networks.
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George Soros, Tara McGowan and President Biden (Getty Images)
Two other senior White House aides McGowan met with were Madeline Strasser, who previously served as an advisor to then-White House chief of staff Ron Klain, and Nina Srivastava, who also served as an advisor to Klain. Both Klain advisors met with McGowan several times, according to visitor logs between April 2022 and August 2022.
Also McGowan’s Instagram account show a picture of her alongside President Biden and first lady Jill Biden in front of a Christmas tree, but Fox News Digital could not confirm the date or year of the photo.
McGowan, who worked on the former that of President Obama re-election campaign and later for Priorities USA Action, the leading super PAC that supported Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential bid, launched Good Information Inc., in 2021 to counter “fake news” and misinformation .
As part of its operations, Good Information acquired Courier Newsroom, also founded by McGowan.
McGowan’s access to the Biden White House appeared to pay off for his operation when Courier Newsroom landed an exclusive interview with the president late last year.
“The White House invited COURIER for an exclusive behind-the-scenes interview with the President after his rally at the Belvidere Stellantis auto plant in Illinois this fall,” Courier wrote in its year-end report. “One of our national social correspondents was able to chat with the president about jobs and workers, sharing exclusive video footage with our audience on TikTok, Instagram, X and other channels.”
The Courier News interview with Biden appears to have taken place on November 9 and was posted to TikTok on November 13. White House visitor logs show that the second of McGowan’s two visits to the White House with Stevenson, the White House’s top digital adviser, took place one day. after the interview was published on TikTok.
A nonprofit funded by billionaire George Soros has donated millions to Courier Newsroom. (Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“The Biden administration is not getting enough credit for beginning to embrace new models of media, journalism and social influencers in a thorough and strategic way to get its message to audiences no longer reached by the press traditional,” the report said. report states.
Courier Newsroom also launched a seven-figure ad campaign to support Democratic politicians in the 2020 elections, and some of its articles mirrored the politicians’ own press releases, the Washington Free Beacon Previously reported.
At the time, Courier Newsroom had digital outlets in battleground states such as Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. Last summer, Courier announced it was strengthening its infrastructure ahead of the 2024 elections by opening additional newsrooms in Nevada, Texas and New Hampshire, according to a report from Axios.
The move brought the total number of newsrooms to 11 nationwide, with each newsroom having its own website for the state in which it is located.
In 2021, Gabby Deutch, whom the Washington Post described as “the Washington correspondent for NewsGuard, a nonpartisan organization based in New York that examines news sites to combat misinformation”, wrote an opinion piece criticizing Courier Newsroom as a “political operation” and arguing that it “exploits the widespread loss of local journalism to create and distribute something we really don’t need: hyperlocal partisan propaganda.”
Courier Newsroom, meanwhile, has received millions of dollars in funding from liberal mega-donors. THE George Soros funded Open Society Foundations is one such institution that has provided large sums of money for its operations.
Reid Hoffman also supported Courier Newsroom. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The Fund for Policy Reform, one of the Soros Network’s nonprofits, awarded Courier Newsroom three grants totaling $5 million in 2021 and 2022 to “support its nonpartisan journalism, which aims to promote the common good and the general well-being of American communities.” by providing access to information,” its grants database shows.
The Open Society Foundations continued its past financial support of Courier Newsroom, calling it “values-driven journalism.”
“Open Society is proud to be among the many funders supporting Courier Newsroom, which responds to the loss of so many trusted local news organizations across the United States to provide quality, local, community-focused journalism. values and to meet readers where they are – online,” an Open Society Foundations spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
One of the Soros grants was intended to support “journalism on democracy and voting rights issues,” according to the database.
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LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, another left-wing mega-donor, provided Courier Newsroom with significant funding, according to reports. NOT US recently reported that the organization also quietly received $250,000 from Planned Parenthood between 2021 and 2022.
We are “proud to have restored White House press briefings and to engage with a wide range of media outlets,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates told Fox News Digital, ignoring an investigation on the nature of the meetings.
McGowan’s Good Information Inc. did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on his access to the Biden administration and the nature of his visits to the White House.
