John,

It’s Super Bowl Sunday, and while many will tune in to watch the game (okay, and maybe the commercials), Taylor Swift will undoubtedly draw in a host of new watchers as she cheers on boyfriend and Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce.

The storyline is straight out of a rom-com, and people are living for it. Which means the right-wing is working hard to make it weird. Just take a look at some recent headlines:

A Pentagon asset. A Biden plant to rig the big game. And a “psy-op” – whatever the hell that means 🤨

While Taylor Swift can Shake It Off like she always does, here at COURIER we know what this type of misinformation does to our democracy. That’s why we’re committed to calling out right-wing conspiracy theories with free, fact-based coverage in 10 battleground states across the country. If you support our Fearless journalism, can you chip in $13 now?

With 185 million Americans not trusting the mainstream media, they’re turning to social media.

As the bananas “Taylor Swift is a deep state operative” story shows, total reliance on your socials to get the news can leave you vulnerable to right-wing lies and conspiracies. 

So here’s how they do it, John, if you’re…Ready For It:

• Moments (like the Super Bowl) or people (like Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce) become online and offline trending topics.
• Right-wing influencers want to keep the audiences (and money) coming, so they make up insane conspiracies to drive social media engagement.
• People without access to reliable news read and share this misinformation with their friends and families until the conspiracies get so big that they take on a life of their own.

This pattern is how Taylor Swift’s romantic life became a “psy-op” and it’s how Donald Trump convinced more than half of all Republicans that Democrats stole the 2020 elections. 

COURIER was founded to meet people where they are – on their social media feeds and in their email inboxes – and to fight right-wing misinformation with the truth. We build out our newsrooms in “news deserts,” where reliable local news coverage is hard to come by. We provide factual, local news for free.

We fight for democracy and we’re damn proud of it. 

If you have Bad Blood with right-wing misinformation campaigns and want to fight back, please give $13, or however much you can to help us keep the presses running in our newsrooms.

Express Donate: If you've stored your info with ActBlue Express, we'll process your contribution instantly: $5 $15 $25 $50

Thanks for your support,
The COURIER team