Northam Campaign: “Gillespie and Republicans…’creating their own Pravda'” Here in Virginia

Just what we do NOT need here in Virginia (bolding added by me for emphasis).

Turns out “fake news” is real, just not the way Donald Trump thinks it is. The Republican Governors Association—the GOP’s official campaign arm dedicated to electing Republican governors nationwide—is connected to two websites that purport to be independent news sources but are, in reality, propaganda platforms that support GOP candidates.

The first, launched in Virginia as a way to boost Ed Gillespie’s flaccid campaign, is the at-least-mildly-obvious Republican Standard, which describes itself as “a new media journal delivering clear, factual and smartly-balanced information to Virginia’s public square.” The Republican Standard, which is run by GOP operatives tied to Gillespie and “to a firm that has been paid by the RGA,” devotes most of its space to pro-Gillespie items and pieces that shed an unfavorable light on Democratic gubernatorial nominee Ralph Northam. (When contacted for comment on the site, the Gillespie campaign refused to say anything, instead referring questions to the RGA.) The site’s senior editor is Shaun Kenney, and his Republican Standard bio conveniently fails to mention that he used to be executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia.

So, yeah, we now have one right-wing political blog here in Virginia that’s bought-and-paid-for by Dominion Energy, the theoretically state-regulated monopoly utility that, in fact, uses its money and influence to buy up/”capture” our Commonwealth’s political system, regulatory agencies, etc. And we have another right-wing political blog that the Northam campaign calls “Gillespie and Republicans…’creating their own Pravda,’ a nod to the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.” So much, apparently, for that “Blogger Code of Ethics” we discussed way back when at the Sorensen Institute. Sigh.