‘Pink slime’ sites masquerade as real news. There are 65 in Pennsylvania alone.

At first glance, it seems that State Sen. Tracy Pennycuick is the most indispensable person in Montgomery County.

That’s because there’s nearly an entire newspaper dedicated to the Republican, who represents parts of Montgomery and Berks Counties.

To explain: The April 3 online edition of the West Montgomery Times presents 18 stories on its home page.

Fourteen of them — essentially one-sided news releases, many of them repeated — focus exclusively on the accomplishments of Pennycuick. The stories are accompanied by 11 headshots of the senator, all of them the same. Then, if you click on the Local Government page, you’ll find 25 stories about Pennycuick, many of the same as the home page, all with the identical photo. A Pennycuick spokesperson said the office was unaware of the site.

The West Montgomery Times’ Local Government page, by the way, also includes 35 stories that contain lists of county inmates and their ages. Twenty of the stories, each with a different date, begin with the same sentence: “Black is the most common ethnicity among inmates in Montgomery County, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.”

All of it, experts say, is so much “pink slime.”

The West Montgomery Times, which is made to look like the online edition of a newspaper, is a so-called pink slime news site, one of an estimated 65 in Pennsylvania, according to experts.

These publications distort news and spew misinformation, much of it computer-generated, experts say. The goal is to muddy the waters of journalism and discourse so a consensus of thought is not achievable, according to a comprehensive 2020 report, “‘Pink Slime’: Partisan Journalism and the Future of Local News,” written by the the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

The confusion fosters an environment of polarization that spawns culture wars, the report continued.

Pink slime refers to unlabeled bits of cartilage and other chemically treated scrap meat going into some U.S. ground beef, according to Reuters.

It’s come to mean unreliable information sites masquerading as local news often containing algorithmically generated content. There are few if no reporters and no transparency of ownership. Most are run by “dark money” organizations that support conservative causes, experts say. Their purpose is to fill vacancies created by continually folding local newspapers.

The market is ripe for “misinformation to flourish,” said Matt Jordan, director of the Penn State University News Literacy Initiative. Jordan said people can avoid pink slime sites by getting their news from genuine sites, which have reporter bylines, a masthead of editors, and an “About” section that lists the publisher and where they’re located.

“If you don’t know who’s behind what you’re reading,” Jordan concluded, “you’re being boondoggled.”

Since the 2010s, increasing numbers of people have been investing in online content across the United States that “looks like local journalism but primarily functions as political advertising,” according to the Tow report.

One of the largest purveyors of pink slime news in the United States is Metric Media, which, according to Tow, owns most such sites — an estimated 1,200 — including the West Montgomery Times. The company has ties to conservative groups and donors, the Tow report asserted.

Metric Media did not respond to requests for comment. A statement by the company, written in the Happy Valley Times — a sister site of the West Montgomery Times — described by experts as a pink slime site, read, “Our approach is to provide objective, data-driven information without political bias.”

Often, pink slime news outlets won’t overtly state a political view, Jordan said. “They just don’t tell you bad news about the sides they’re promoting,” he added: “Sins of omission.”

Experts said they hadn’t run across left-leaning pink slime sites.

They added that it’s not clear whether the sites, which are not behind paywalls, make money. Where they succeed is in placing conservative ideas in social media, academics say.

It’s hard to know how it’s playing.

“There are no compelling studies measuring the influence of pink slime sites,” noted Anthony Nadler, professor of media and communication at Ursinus College.

Still, the Tow report offered a clue: A 35-year-old Philadelphia man identified as Peter was asked by researchers to read the Pennsylvania Record, a site identified as slime that Tow learned is owned by an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a Republican-leaning lobbying group.

“I don’t appreciate that not being on the website,” Peter said. “It’s suspicious, and it makes more sense why the articles are written the way they are.”

While pink slime may not be reaching everyone, “it’s still polluting the local information space,” said Andrea Wenzel, a professor and expert in local journalism at Temple University. “It’s damaging.”

One of the first slimers was Ben Franklin, a “Founding Forger,” according to a February report in the Columbia Journalism Review.

In a fake 1782 newspaper, Franklin stimulated anger against the British, falsely writing that Native American tribes had allied with the enemy by scalping women and children.

So-called partisan news sites have also been springing up in news deserts. Most are conservative, but Courier Newsroom owns a handful of liberal partisan sites.

Courier’s representatives say the distinction between its sites and pink slime is that they employ real reporters, and openly declare their bias and mission.

“We cover reproductive rights, the implementation of President Biden’s science and infrastructure bills,” said Sean Kitchen, 34, the Harrisburg-based political correspondent for the Keystone, owned by Courier.

“We’re progressive, pro-democracy. Those are our core values.”

Unlike legacy newspapers that strive for objectivity, values-driven publications “are the future of journalism,” said Danielle Strasburger, a Courier spokesperson.

“Partisan, not pink slime.”