FIRST ON FOX: A longtime Democratic political operative behind a network of left-leaning media organizations masquerading as "independent" local news outlets has maintained access to the upper echelons of President Biden's White House.
Tara McGowan, the founder and publisher of Courier Newsroom, has visited the Biden White House nearly 20 times, a Fox News Digital review found.
McGowan, CEO and founder of Courier Newsroom's parent, Good Information Inc., participated in several one-on-one meetings with top White House aides. For example, McGowan met with Jordan Finkelstein, who was serving as a chief of staff to one of President Biden's senior advisers, at least six times between October 2022 and October 2023.
Another top aide who was listed on the visitor logs for McGowan's White House visits was Patrick Stevenson. Stevenson's LinkedIn page reveals he is the "Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor for Digital Strategy."
Stevenson's role in helping lead the White House's digital strategy could raise questions about coordination between McGowan's network of media outlets and the White House due to Courier Newsroom's business model revolving around online engagement and messaging on social media.
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Two other top White House aides who McGowan met with were Madeline Strasser, who previously served as an adviser to then-White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, and Nina Srivastava, who also served as an adviser to Klain. The pair of Klain advisers met with McGowan several times, according to the visitor logs between April 2022 and August 2022.
McGowan's Instagram account also shows a picture of her alongside President Biden and first lady Jill Biden in front of a Christmas tree, but Fox News Digital could not confirm the date or year of the picture.
McGowan, who worked on former President Obama's re-election campaign and later for Priorities USA Action, the main super PAC that backed Hillary Clinton's failed 2016 presidential candidacy, launched Good Information Inc., in 2021 to counter "fake news" and disinformation.
As part of its operations, Good Information acquired Courier Newsroom, which McGowan also founded.
McGowan's access to Biden's White House appeared to pay off for her operation when Courier Newsroom landed an exclusive interview with the president late last year.
"The White House invited COURIER for an exclusive interview with the President backstage after his rally at the Belvidere Stellantis auto plant in Illinois this fall," Courier wrote in its year-end report. "One of our national social correspondents got to talk with the President about jobs and workers, sharing exclusive video footage with our audiences across TikTok, Instagram, X, and other channels."
The Courier News interview with Biden appears to have occurred on Nov. 9 and was posted on TikTok on Nov. 13. White House visitor logs show that McGowan's second of two White House visits with Stevenson, the top digital White House adviser, occurred one day after the interview was posted on TikTok.
"The Biden Administration doesn't get enough credit for how deeply and strategically they have begun to embrace new models of media, journalism, and social influencers to get their message across to audiences that are no longer reached by the traditional press corps," the report states.
Courier Newsroom also undertook a seven-figure ad campaign to boost Democratic politicians during the 2020 elections, and some of its news pieces mirrored the politicians' own press releases, the Washington Free Beacon previously reported.
At the time, Courier Newsroom had digital outlets and staffed them with reporters in battleground states such as Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. Last summer, Courier was beefing up its infrastructure ahead of the 2024 elections by launching additional newsrooms in Nevada, Texas and New Hampshire, according to an Axios report.
The move brought the total number of newsrooms to 11 nationwide, with each newsroom having its own website for the state where it is located.
In 2021, Gabby Deutch, who the Washington Post described as "the Washington correspondent for NewsGuard, a New York-based nonpartisan organization that reviews news sites to combat misinformation," penned an op-ed criticizing Courier Newsroom as a "political operation" and argued it is "exploiting the widespread loss of local journalism to create and disseminate something we really don’t need: hyperlocal partisan propaganda."
The organization, meanwhile, has received millions of dollars in funding from liberal mega-donors. The George Soros-bankrolled Open Society Foundations is one such institution that has provided vast amounts of cash to its operations.
According to a search of its grant database, the Fund for Policy Reform, one of the nonprofits in the Soros network, provided Courier Newsroom with three grants totaling $5 million in 2021 and 2022 to "support its non-partisan journalism, which aims to further the common good and general welfare of U.S. communities by providing access to information."
Open Society Foundations stood by their past financial support of Courier Newsroom, calling it "values-driven journalism."
"Open Society is proud to be among several funders who support Courier Newsroom, which is responding to the disappearance of so many trusted local news organizations across the United States to provide quality, local, values-driven journalism and to meet readers where they are — online," an Open Society Foundations spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
One of the grants was earmarked for supporting "journalism on democracy and voting rights issues," according to the database.
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, another left-wing mega-donor, has also provided Courier Newsroom with significant funding, according to reports.
We're "proud to have restored White House press briefings and to engage with a wide range of media," White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told Fox News Digital, ignoring an inquiry about the nature of the meetings.
McGowan's Good Information Inc. did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment on her access to Biden's administration and the nature of her White House visits.
