Late last year, after a right-wing influencer released a dramatic video laden with false allegations about Somali-run day care centers in Minnesota, right-wing news outlets and activists descended on Somali workers at day care providers across the country, demanding to see the children in their care.
Among the pack of camera-carrying conservatives confronting the Somalis were reporters from the Washington state affiliate of The Center Square, which the Associated Press, in its roundup of the targeted attack, labeled as “right-leaning.”
But if you look at Center Square’s website, you wouldn’t know it’s funded by conservative donors aligned with the political right, much less part of a national right-wing media network that promotes politically charged conspiracies and conservative issues. Center Square’s website states only that the nonprofit platform’s coverage reflects a “taxpayer sensibility” and is produced by “editors and reporters with extensive professional journalism experience.”
The news service’s stealth conservatism hasn’t stopped its articles from appearing regularly on scores of local news sites around the country, including in Washington state, where its reporters confronted the Somali daycare workers.
Owned by the nonprofit Franklin News Foundation, Center Square claims to reach more than 245 million readers monthly through more than 1,000 media partners, including the Sinclair Broadcast Group, Paxton Media Group, and Lockwood Broadcast, making it the “second-largest newswire in the country,” according to Center Square, and the “largest” doing it “for free.”
The outlet repeatedly states that it provides news coverage of “all 50 states and the federal government in Washington, D.C.”
Center Square spreads its content, in part, via BLOX Digital, formerly TownNews, which provides thousands of media organizations across the country with an online platform designed to make the complex job of publishing an online newspaper easier.
Among its many services for newspapers, BLOX offers a “Content Exchange Network” that allows BLOX customers to share their articles and other content with each other. Center Square articles are among the news sources offered, and a major component — along with Paris-based international wire service Agence France-Presse (AFP) — of the national news articles distributed.
At least 65 BLOX customers run Center Square content on their platforms, including, as examples, KJNB TV (Fox and CBS), AK; Selma Sun, AL; Tracy Press, CA; Mountain Democrat, CA; Imperial Valley Desert Review, CA; Chatsworth Times, GA; Star City News, IN; Appalachian News-Express, KY; KTBS 3 (ABC), LA; Daily Chronicle, MA; WFVX (Fox), ME; Grand Rapids Herald-Review, MN; Phelps County Focus, MO; Delta News TV, MS; Fairfield Times-Leader, MT; Kinston Free Press, NC; Sierra County News, NM; Perry County Tribune, OH; Towanda Daily Review, PA; Rogersville Review, TN, Liberty Hill Independent, TX; Fauquier Now, VA; Sunnyside Sun, WA; and the Ashland Daily Press, WI.
For the state-level news it offers, BLOX relies heavily on Center Square articles along with other offerings. In Colorado, for example, the feed includes Center Square, Backstage, Cheapinsurance.com, Colorado Newsline, and Stacker. In Wisconsin: Center Square, Stacker, and the Wisconsin Examiner. In Arizona: Center Square, Arizona Mirror, Stacker, Backstage. In Pennsylvania: Center Square, Globe Newswire, EINPresswire, WFMZ, Pennsylvania Capital-Star, ErieNewsNow, Stacker, and WENY.
Blox promotes its exchange program as providing “hundreds of trusted sources.” Its website states, “Grow your audience, expand your coverage and boost revenue with top-quality multi-media content from BLOX Digital Content Exchange.”
BLOX’s “Trusted” Sources?
Just a few months ago, adding to other evidence of Center Square’s ties to the far right, William Bredderman and Aneela Mirchandani revealed in Mother Jones that Center Square is part of a conservative network of media entities, funded at least partially by the Informing America Foundation, that coordinate with each other to amplify stories that the mainstream news outlets ignore — possibly like the Somali-run daycare story.
In a speech after receiving an award from the American Legislative Exchange Council, funded in part by the Koch Brothers, Deborah Myers, the director of the Informing America Foundation, said that “12 national news organizations and media outlets,” funded by her organization, convene every morning to discuss stories that “our journalists are covering” but the mainstream news narrative “completely ignores” – and to plot what stories to focus on and spread jointly. (This was first reported by Mother Jones.)
The Franklin News Foundation doesn’t disclose its donations from Informing America — or the names of any of its heavy-hitting right-wing contributors, saying instead that it believes in “anonymity for those who give charitably as an extension of free speech.” Even in its early days, it tried to hide its donors. Center Square’s current managing editor, Arthur Kane, pushed back in 2016 on evidence from Denver journalists that the Watchdog, his employer at the time and the precursor to Center Square, was funded by the conservative Koch Brothers, writing that the journalists’ evidence was “thinly sourced.”
Though Kane and the Franklin News Foundation may try to hide the names of their contributors, many can be excavated from the tax filings of the foundations that donate to the Franklin News Foundation, which raised and spent over $5 million in 2024 and has 60 full-time, part-time, and freelance contributors.
Since its founding in 2009, the organization has evolved from being dependent on Koch Brothers funding to enjoying eye-popping support from some of the country’s wealthiest right-wing donors.
In recent years, the Franklin News Foundation received a total of the following amounts from these top conservative entitities, among others: $750,000 (2022, 2023, 2024) from Informing America, the foundation that nurtures a network of conservative outlets; just under $4 million (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024) from Donors Trust for “general operations.” Previously, DonorsTrust reported that it gave the Franklin News Foundation just under $1 million in part “to balance the liberal media with conservative & libertarian media.” It received $775,000 (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024) from the Allegheny Foundation, $3.3 million (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024) from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, $1.4 million (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024) from Searle Freedom Trust, and $1.5 million (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024) from the Bradley Impact Fund.
BLOX “Does Not Evaluate” the Content It Distributes
Asked how BLOX evaluates the news sources it offers to clients, BLOX Chief Operations Officer Rick Rogers said in a statement to the Colorado Times Recorder, which is a progressive news site with progressive donors: “The BLOX Digital Content Exchange is a network that enables media organizations using the BLOX content management system to share their content with other Content Exchange participants, who may choose to publish that content. The Center Square is a BLOX CMS customer and participates as a content provider. BLOX Digital does not evaluate or monitor content distributed through the exchange.”
When the Colorado Times Recorder pointed out that BLOX’s website stated that the company’s editorial team “combs through” the content that’s contributed by BLOX partners and offers its clients the “cream of the crop,” BLOX CEO Brad Ward replied, “We will definitely change that. We do not have anyone who curates the content.”
Shortly thereafter, the “cream-of-the-crop” text from BLOX website was deleted, along with the claim that BLOX staff “combs through” the content, but the company’s claim to offer “trusted sources” of free news stories remains.
In light of the misstatement on the website, does Ward plan to notify BLOX clients that the company doesn’t vet the content included in the exchange?
“Our clients opt into the content exchange,” Ward replied. “As journalists themselves, they choose and vet the content they wish to use.”
That appears to be wrong, at least in some cases.
When contacted by the Colorado Times Recorder as part of an investigation three years ago, two news outlets did not even realize that BLOX was feeding their websites content from Center Square.
Grand Junction Sentinel Publisher Jay Seaton and Selma Sun Publisher Cindy Fisher both said at the time that they were unaware that BLOX had populated their websites with hundreds of Center Square articles. In both cases, this was apparently due to a technical glitch or a misunderstanding.
“We stopped because you alerted us to the fact that BLOX was feeding that content onto our site,” Seaten said via email. “We were not aware. No Sentinel staffer ever posted that content to our site.”
The Center Square articles were subsequently removed from the Sentinel’s platform, and they stopped appearing there. Center Square articles remain on the Selma Sun site, even though Fisher said via email she didn’t know anything about the news service.
Unintended postings of Center Square articles aside, it’s not known how many publishers or editors who offer Center Square articles via the BLOX feed know that the outlet is aligned with the political right — or have concluded that the content does not have a political agenda.
But it’s safe to say, based on over a dozen unreturned calls and emails to editors, that many journalists have higher priorities than trying to figure out whether they should drop a free news feed from BLOX based on a complicated claim of right-wing bias.
Of the three editors who did answer calls, two did not know anything about Center Square, even though the articles were on their websites. A third was aware that it is slanted right.
“I don’t know anything about it,” said Noel Stack, editor of the Mountain Democrat, a BLOX Digital customer in Placerville, California, when asked if she’s evaluated Center Square as being politically left- or right-leaning. “Anything that’s not our original content comes to us through BLOX, and honestly, I don’t really pay attention to it. I just pay attention to our local stuff.”
Stack’s Mountain Democrat carried about 100 Center Square articles, according to a search in early March.
Betty Miller, the editor of another BLOX client, the Imperial Valley Desert Review, said she doesn’t “know anything about Center Square,” except that she sees them at the bottom of her newspaper’s website, and she’s noticed her news outlet’s articles on “other news organizations’ websites.” Miller’s site carried about 1,000 Center Square articles, according to a search in early March.
“I’ve Got Enough To Do”
Asked for an opinion on whether Center Square leans right or left politically, Miller said, “It’s supposed to be just news, but you know all news is slanted one way or the other. I’ve got enough to do without reading other people’s articles, even though they are on our site,” she said.
Guy Lucas, who’s the editor of the High Point Enterprise in North Carolina, says content from Center Square, which his newspaper receives as part of the BLOX exchange, is factual but “definitely right-leaning,” which aligns with his conservative audience. Some articles are so “slanted” that he would prefer not to use them, but they flow into his newspaper’s website on a feed that he does not review.
He said, “Some people might object to Center Square, but I hear from readers all the time who object to AP,” which Lucas believes “leans left.”
That’s not the prevailing view about AP, which is seen by journalists as an enduring example of professional journalism.
Still, it’s in the crosshairs of the Franklin News Foundation. “Far too much of the mainstream media’s reporting is extremist opinion masquerading as journalism,” stated a section (now deleted) of the Franklin News Foundation’s online “Impact Statement.”
Center Square isn’t advertising itself as the right-wing alternative to the AP, but instead as an “objective, balanced, citizen-focused” alternative wire service. Labeling itself as conservative, even though it would be accurate, would stop some outlets from picking it up, says Jeffrey Blevins, a media and politics professor at the University of Cincinnati, who calls AP a “mainstream” and “independent” nonprofit.
“They want to take on AP,” says Blevins. “That’s really ambitious, and if Center Square has that conservative, right-leaning label, that’s probably going to hinder that effort,” he says.
Center Square hopes to overtake the Associated Press, in part, by offering its content for free, a price that’s of clear appeal to cash-desperate local news outlets, whose decline is creating so-called “news deserts” around the country — and fueling the rise of partisan outlets, catering to readers in search of community news.
“Unlike newswires like the AP that charge outlets to republish their version of the ‘news,’ we offer local news outlets a meaningful choice by distributing our content to them free of charge,” states Franklin’s website.
“Elevated Pink Slime”
Blevins calls Franklin’s approach “an elevated or an advanced form of pink-slime journalism, if you will, that is better packaged.”
“There are more actual reporters involved than what you see with the lower-tier, early, ‘pink slime’ outlets,” he said, referring to, for example, outlets owned by Metric Media, which publish fake bylines, plagiarized articles, conservative talking points, and such — the journalism equivalent of the pink additive to ground beef.
“Evaluate Our Work”
Asked to answer specific questions for this article, Chris Krug, who makes over $420,000 annually as the director of the Franklin News Foundation and the publisher of Center Square, emailed a statement to the Colorado Times Recorder and wrote that he planned to publish it on Center Square’s platform so that “anyone reading your coverage can evaluate my response in full rather than through selective quotation.”
Overall, Krug wrote, “The suggestion that the outlets carrying our content are somehow unaware of what they’re publishing is an insult to every editor in our partnership network. These are professionals. They can read. I presume that is a prerequisite to have such a responsibility.”
“The real question your reporting avoids is this: Why does taxpayer-focused accountability journalism make some people so uncomfortable that they would go after journalists who write factually about government spending?” he wrote.
As for the Associated Press labeling Center Square as “right-leaning,” Krug wrote, “You cite the AP’s characterization of The Center Square as ‘right-leaning’ as though it were a disinterested assessment. It is not. The AP is a direct competitor, and a struggling one here in the United States.”
One of the Colorado Times Recorder’s specific questions for Krug focused on a job description for Center Square’s “western states investigative reporter,” currently posted here. According to the job posting, the reporter is expected to uphold “Center Square’s editorial standards and tone when pursuing stories surrounding the five core content pillars of the Enterprise Investigations Unit (EIU): 1. Parental rights; 2. Lawfare and legal bias; 3. DEI scrutiny; 4. ESG and woke capitalism; 5. Bureaucracy watch, including DOGE-like investigations into key state government waste, fraud, abuse and bureaucracy.”
Asked whether this job description better reflects what you’d expect to find from a right-wing outlet than one with a focus on “taxpayer sensibility,” Krug wrote, “Every one of those areas involves significant expenditures of taxpayer money, substantial government authority over citizens’ lives, and legitimate public debate about whether that money is being spent wisely and that authority is being exercised fairly. Investigating how tax dollars are spent is not a partisan act. Asking whether government programs are delivering what they promised is not ideological. It is the foundational obligation of a free press in a democracy, and the fact that large portions of the journalism industry have abandoned it — or decided that certain spending categories are too politically sensitive to scrutinize — does not make the scrutiny partisan. It makes the absence of scrutiny a failure.”
Daily Meetings with Partisans?
Despite his organization’s claim to be “dedicated to the principles of transparency” and the “highest standards” of “accessibility,” Krug didn’t answer repeated requests to state whether Center Square is present at the Informing America Foundation’s daily meeting to amplify stories from conservative media organizations.
Based on Informing America’s grantees, the organizations present at this meeting have deep GOP ties and produce right-wing content. They could include, for example, Empower America (led by a GOP operative), and Performance One Media (which supports Steve Bannon’s War Room).
Krug also refused to say whether Center Square chose to write about the Somali daycare workers as a result of its attendance at this meeting.
In interviews and elsewhere, Krug likes to point to a rating from Ad Fontes Media showing that Center Square’s reporting is roughly in the center among outlets.
NewsGuard, an organization that produces “source reliability ratings,” gives Center Square a score of 92.5 out of 100 and states that the outlet “mostly adheres to basic standards of credibility and transparency,” losing points for not disclosing its funders. NewsGuard states that “simply receiving funding from a group with partisan goals or activities” does not mean an organization can’t gather and present news responsibly.
NewsGuard gave AP a 100% rating.
Other media bias organizations, however, place Center Square on the conservative side of the political spectrum.
AllSides.com lists Center Square as “Leans Right,” which it defines as “media bias in ways that moderately align with conservative, traditional, libertarian, or right-wing thought and/or policy agendas. A Lean Right bias is a moderately conservative rating on the political spectrum.” Allsides, which labels the Colorado Times Recorder as “Leans Left,” also identifies the conservative positions of Center Square’s donors, specifically Donors Trust, but notes that “funding and ownership do not influence bias ratings. We rate the bias of content only.”
Similarly, another venerable rating site, MediaBiasFactCheck, gives Center Square the same center-right label, which they say applies to sites that “often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by appealing to emotion or stereotypes) to favor conservative causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information but may require further investigation.”
Blevins says that, as advanced pink slime, Center Square has figured out how to have an under-the-radar right-wing “political agenda” and present readers with the basic elements of journalism, which helps it score higher ratings from watchdogs.
“It really won’t necessarily have a political slant, until there is a hot-button issue or there’s an election campaign or there’s some type of referendum in the state,” says Blevins. “Then they’ll become very active with a political agenda. When it comes to our political and economic agenda, that’s when it’s going to be pretty heavy-handed.”
Beef, Not the Pink Slime?
“Here is what you and the academics that you referenced miss, I believe willingly,” wrote Krug. “The approach that The Center Square takes to coverage of government, government response, and spending, which is at the core of the subject matter where we invest our journalistic resources, is not conservative,” wrote Krug. “It is not liberal. It is what journalism once was before too many newsrooms decided their job was to guide public opinion rather than inform it.”
“If you’d like to evaluate our work, evaluate the work — not the donor list of a defunct predecessor, not a chart from Mother Jones, and not the labeling preferences of organizations that compete with us,” Krug wrote, calling Mother Jones an “advocacy” organization and criticism of Center Square as conservative as “guilt-by-association rather than through systematic evaluation of the journalism itself.”
It’s true that while deep content analysis of Center Square’s journalism has yet to be produced, there’s evidence that its content is conservative, extending to a broader conservative agenda than tax-related issues, and that the Franklin Foundation has the capacity to operate as Blevins describes.
Shaping the Election Debate on Issues Like Immigration
Unlike the Associated Press, for example, Center Square justifies its value to its funders by touting its ability to deliver content to voters in “key swing states” and to shape the 2024 election debate on “pivotal issues” like “inflation and immigration,” two drivers of the GOP’s 2024 election triumphs — even if, as NewsGuard’s Chief Operating Officer Matt Skibinski told the Colorado Times Recorder, those issues are not “explicitly partisan” and, “many news sites aim to shape the discourse on pivotal issues.”
“In key swing states like Arizona, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, [The Center Square] reached millions of monthly readers directly and through their local outlets, shaping the discourse on pivotal issues like inflation and immigration,” the Franklin News Foundation brags in its “Impact Statement,” apparently referring to stories published by BLOX’s clients in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, among other local media platforms, like the Star News Network, that carry Center Square content in those key states.
In addition to the BLOX clients in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the swing-state outlets publishing a steady stream of Center Square articles include the Arizona Sun Times, the Pennsylvania Daily Star, and the Wisconsin Daily Star, which are part of a chain of right-wing outlets owned by Star News Digital Media, which also receives funds from Informing America as part of its news “ecosystem.”
While Center Square touts all its distribution, it’s particularly proud of infiltrating mainstream news outlets.
“As a newswire, The Center Square is republished by legacy publishers nationwide, reaching those who are politically engaged but undecided on the issues,” the Franklin News Foundation claims, adding that “The Center Square news appeared on platforms such as MSN.com, Flipboard, and AOL.com, as well as inside the pages of major publications like the Baltimore Sun, New York Post, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Las Vegas Review-Journal.”
Center Square seems to be doing its best to make sure that those publishers and other journalists — not to mention the “politically engaged” news consumers it’s targeting — don’t know about its strategic entanglement with some of the most powerful right-wing forces in America.
And Center Square is likely happy that those who should know it’s conservative, like the leaders of BLOX Digital, are helping to keep it under wraps.
