RIGGED: How Mass Daily "News" Spreads Right-Wing Propaganda and Crowns False Heroes

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Mass Daily “News” says it reports the news.

A new report from the New England Ledger found something very different.

We read every single thing Mass Daily "News" published for a year so that you wouldn't have to. All 1,333 stories, from last July to this July.

We were looking for a pattern. We found a machine.

The Two City Councilors Who Can Do No Wrong

Start with Boston City Councilors Ed Flynn and Erin Murphy.

Over twelve months, their names anchored eight headlines. Seven of the eight made them the hero. One was routine paperwork.

Zero made them look bad. Not one. In a full year.

Think about what that means at a site that runs on scandal. This is an outlet that finds dirt for a living. It found dirt on everybody in Boston politics. It could not find a single thing on these two.

Look at the verbs it hands them. They "call out." They "demand." They "slam." They "stand with." Every one of those words needs something to point at, and the something is always somebody else. Crime is bad, and Flynn is fighting it. The police are short-staffed, and Murphy is fighting for them. The city is failing, and these two are the ones trying to fix it.

Flynn showed up in 59 stories. The typical councilor got 15.

Then There's Everybody Else

Sixteen headlines named other Boston city councilors.

Sixteen of sixteen made them the bad guy.

Not most. All of them. Obstruction, misconduct, hypocrisy, scandal, bad company, or plain mockery. Every time one of them got their name at the top of a story, it was because they had supposedly done something wrong.

And two of those headlines were about Councilor Sharon Durkan's weight and her looks.

Not her votes. Not her spending. Her body.

The difference is hard to ignore.

Flynn and Murphy were shown as fighters in six of seven headlines. Progressive Council members received adverse treatment in 16 out of 16 headlines.

Our statistician ran the odds on a split like that happening by chance. It comes out to about 7 in 100,000.

Read that again. Then tell us if "News" is the right term to use for them.

A Mayor, A Governor, And Congress

Now go up the ladder.

We pulled a fixed sample of forty headlines about Mayor Michelle Wu, Governor Maura Healey, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, and Senator Ed Markey. Ten each.

Twenty-six were hostile. That is 65 percent.

Healey came out worst at 80 percent. Wu at 70. Markey 60. Pressley 50.

Wu got named in 346 stories. More than anybody else in the state, by roughly double.

And the headlines tell you what to think before you get to the story. "OUTRAGE." "Bike-lane mayor strikes again." "Taxpayers blink." You have already been handed the verdict, and most people never click past it. That is the whole point of putting it up there.

These leaders do not have to be perfect. They should face fair questions like anyone else.

But fair reporting does not begin by choosing who will be the hero and who will be the villain.

Race Stories Follow An Old Script

Race showed up at the top of 33 stories this year. Not buried in paragraph nine. In the headline, where you actually see it.

Twenty-nine of those 33 were hostile. That is 87.9 percent. In a year, in a majority-minority city.

Every single one of those stories was read and the decision written down. Forty were pulled, seven thrown out as incidental, 33 counted. Anybody who thinks we got one wrong can look it up and do the math themselves. That is more than this outlet does for its own headlines.

And look at the words they put up top. "Woke." "Racial quota." "BIPOC bonus." "White kids." "Reparations." Those are lifted straight out of their headlines. Meanwhile this is the same outlet that tells you that race-conscious policy is unfair to white people.

That is the whole trick. Most people never click. They scroll, read eight words, move on. It helps repeat an old and racist idea. It makes Black and Latino neighborhoods look like problems that must be controlled. It gives readers crime, fear, and conflict while hiding daily life, success, joy, and leadership.

These are old conservative myths. Mass Daily “News” gives them a local face.

Stories Move Through A Right-Wing Media Loop

This is the part that explains everything else.

Mass Daily "News" linked Boston Herald pages from 54 of its stories. Thirty-eight of those went up the same day or the day after the Herald published.

But the headlines barely match. About 11 percent overlap.

Read that again. The Herald does the reporting. Mass Daily "News" takes it, keeps the facts, and puts a new angle on it. That is the business model, sitting right there in the link data.

And on the way in, it looks respectable. Mainstream and local outlets account for 263 of its outbound links. Conservative sites, 122.

Then look at where it goes.

The Howie Carr and Grace Curley site posted 45 separate items naming or linking it. Fox News credited it by name. Townhall cited it. Gateway Pundit quoted it. Lucianne republished a whole story the same day it ran, byline and all. Its pages carry posts from Libs of TikTok, Breitbart, End Wokeness, and the Massachusetts GOP.

Progressive or public-interest outlets picked it up zero times.

Not a few times. Zero.

It reads everybody's work. Only one side reads it back. Reporting made for the whole city goes in one end and comes out the other end sorted for one audience.

This Is Not Just Bad Reporting

News outlets make choices every day.

They choose which stories to cover. They choose who gets quoted. They choose who looks brave. They choose who looks dangerous.

Over one year, the choices made by Mass Daily “News” formed a clear pattern.

• Flynn and Murphy were treated like fighters.
• Progressives were tied to failure and scandal.
• Women, LGBTQ+ leaders, and leaders of color faced harsher frames.
• Black and Latino communities were often shown through official voices, crime, crisis, and fear.
• Right-wing outlets supplied and spread the same stories.

Mass Daily “News” may call this journalism.

The record looks more like a propaganda machine.