Governor Mike Pence of Indiana is starting a news service named "Just IN".
According to Tom LoBianco at the Indy Star the Pence news service will:
provide pre-written news stories to Indiana news outlets, as well as sometimes break news about his administration, according to documents obtained by The Indianapolis Star.
According to John Strauss, a veteran Indiana journalist who now runs Ball State University's public broadcasting operation: "The real story is they're leapfrogging all the mainstream media people."
This is the same Mike Pence who said:
More than anything else, let me be clear - we need to be willing to fight for freedom, and free markets, and traditional moral values. That's what the American people want to see this movement and this party return to.
Let me get this straight. Mike Pence is all for "markets" except when he can get taxpayers to fund a state-run news outlet to bypass the news markets.
The amazing thing is that most of the news outlets in Indiana (such as the Indianapolis Star) are pretty conservative. The Star endorsed Pence in 2014. Apparently not conservative enough for Mike Pence though. He needs his own government-run news outlet.
The "news agency" would be overseen by an editorial board containing the governor's communications staff and would launch in late February.
If Mike Pence's ideas are so good for the State of Indiana, how come he needs his own propaganda outlet news agency to write about them?
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David Akadjian is the author of The Little Book of Revolution: A Distributive Strategy for Democracy.