Courier’s news machine turns against data centers

Readers encountering The ‘Gander in Michigan, UpNorthNews in Wisconsin, and the Copper Courier in Arizona might think these news outlets providing skeptical coverage of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers are refreshing examples of homespun, objective journalism. But their folksy branding hides a secret. All of them are fronts for a DC-based, left-leaning political advocacy firm named Courier Newsroom.

Founded by Democratic strategist Tara McGowan, Courier was initially incubated inside a left-of-center nonprofit named ACRONYM. Courier has since become a for-profit firm running news outlets in at least 20 states. The Courier affiliates are still regurgitating talking points from left-of-center advocacy groups, but now with a profit motive. One target audience lately is Americans with worries about data centers being built in their communities.

Frustrated with recent policy setbacks and eager for a path back to popularity, several left-wing anti-energy climate groups have begun to stoke these concerns about data centers into flames of hysteria. Some far-left environmental activists have even gone as far as helping to create activist groups claiming to be conservative that organized nationwide protests against datacenters.

The Courier network seems to have taken up this cause. Since 2025, Courier outlets in sixteen states have published at least 242 media products (such as articles, videos, and newsletters) attacking or otherwise unfavorably mentioning artificial intelligence and AI data centers using the guise of an ordinary local paper.

The graph below (fittingly, made with the help of AI) charts the dates of the Courier coverage against data centers and reveals a clear trend. Last summer, Courier affiliates were hardly covering the issue. Then, following a brief upward blip in December, Courier’s all-out blitz against data centers began around April 2026 and lasted well into June and early July, when this data was collected.

Courier’s coverage trend regarding this issue over the last year, including the spring/summer spike, closely (to say nothing of suspiciously) matched Google search trends data showing overall relative interest in terms such as “data center,” “AI data center,” and “data center news”:

A benign explanation for this close correlation is that Courier affiliates were just responding to spikes in public concern. Maybe that’s true, but there’s a less innocent explanation.

Nominally, Courier may call itself a “newsroom,” but in the fine print they admit they’re all about the politics.  Courier has repeatedly bragged that they know the secret to manufacturing public concern over hot-button political issues.

In 2022, for example, Courier and Data for Progress conducted a sophisticated study showing Courier’s artificially boosted coverage of abortion in Michigan swayed four percent of readers on the issue. In 2021, Courier’s case study in Virginia showed that exposure to paid advertising of policy-related articles was highly cost effective at increasing voter turnout. In 2023, the Courier newsletter boasted that their studies showed “our newsletter subscribers, folks who saw local reporting on the midterm elections and candidates running for office in their states and communities within our newsletters showed a five percentage point swing in their likelihood to support candidates who shared their values,” and that “individuals who had been subscribers to our newsletters for longer than 8 months were the most likely to change their minds.”

Courier is clearly comfortable with using orchestrated coverage blitzes to shift public opinion. So, it’s reasonable to suspect their sudden interest in AI data centers is not merely an organic example of just covering the news as it happens. If Courier’s boasting is to be believed, this could be an example of them creating stories as much as covering them. That might also explain the advertisements that Courier outlets have purchased promoting their anti-data center coverage in states such as Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan,  and Arizona.

One script, many stories

In covering the data centers, Courier’s allegedly local news outlets have conspicuously leaned on the same handful of talking points and experts, producing a narrative that is repeated from state to state. The stories all claim shady tech companies are invading communities, draining water, driving up electric bills, and receiving lavish tax subsidies. The stories encourage common sense citizens to join with far-left environmental activist groups to oppose and prohibit new data center construction.

The locations change, the story does not.

Take these three articles, for example, written by two separate authors for three different Courier affiliates:

–Fairfax County mom fights for clean air as VA data centers expand

–This Wisconsin mom fought back against proposed data center construction in her neighborhood—and won.

–PA data center surge sparks local fears over pollution, power costs, and weak oversight

All three articles begin by introducing a sympathetic mom in the respective state who, one day, became scared that data centers would pollute the air and overwhelm the local power grid. Then, each of the moms jumped into action, creating local activist groups to oppose the construction of a data center and support creation of legal impediments such as a data center moratorium.

It just so happens that all three of these moms, from three different states, are described as members of a group called the Moms Clean Air Force. Three different stories were written about three different moms fighting against data centers in three different states, and all of them happened to be members of the same group? What a remarkable coincidence!

Or not.

The Moms Clean Air Force, like Courier, is also not what it seems to be. According to tax filings the group is a front for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), one of America’s largest, anti-energy, left-wing activist groups, with a $300 million annual budget.

In 2021, the Environmental Defense Fund received a $1.2 million grant (see Page 11), earmarked for the Moms Clean Air Force project. The donor was the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, the private foundation of British investor Jeremy Grantham. As a prominent (and obviously very wealthy) hedge fund manager, Grantham has repeatedly claimed AI is creating a bubble in the stock market that will soon pop.

If the rich professional investor is warning that AI data centers are a bad investment, then it isn’t a stretch to guess that his portfolio is positioned to benefit if he’s correct. Sending some of his loot to nonprofits supporting data center moratoriums could be very profitable for him.

Whether Courier is doing so on purpose or not, the language across the Courier articles is helping Grantham’s cause. Data centers aren’t merely being built, but instead always “creep” into communities. States are never just seeing an increase in data centers, they’re being “overrun.” The facilities are “water-guzzling,” “energy-hungry,” or even “vampires” and their owners are “billionaire Tech Bros” profiting from “corporate welfare.” Government officials operate “behind closed doors,” while residents are “shut out” or “gaslighted.”

The repetition is not limited to rhetoric. The same set of policy fixes appears in articles posted in multiple states: special utility tariffs, repeal of supposed tax exemptions, water-use disclosure, zoning restrictions, environmental reviews, community-benefit agreements, and local or statewide moratoriums. Data center moratoriums seem to be a Courier favorite, with the policies being discussed favorably in publications from Wisconsin, North Carolina, Texas, Nevada, New York, Nebraska, and New Mexico.

It’s a repeat of the policies that environmental activists have used to undermine non-AI American industries for decades.

Journalism equals organizing

Sometimes Courier stops pretending to be news at all and instead overtly campaigns against data centers and encourages readers to help stop them.

UpNorthNews published “3 ways Wisconsinites can get involved as data centers try to creep into their communities.” Courier Texas told readers exactly “what you can do” about the state’s data-center boom. Weekly “Guide[s] to Taking Action” advertise the times and dates of “Protests against data centers” across Michigan. Nearly all Courier outlets advertised at least one “data center town hall” sometime in the last year.

Courier also ties the data center issue to elections and partisan politics. Its outlets have profiled numerous Democratic candidates simply for calling for moratoriums, tax changes, or stronger regulation on data centers. Courier Texas posted a video of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico outlining his data-center policies. In Wisconsin, gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong was profiled glowingly for endorsing a state moratorium. Courier Georgia profiled three Democratic gubernatorial candidates and asked each of them to explain their views on data centers as part of an article on rural policy priorities.

The implied message is that Democrats bashing data centers will be rewarded with precious and favorable media exposure.

Courier’s campaign also draws from a large network of environmental and progressive organizations. Recurring sources include the aforementioned Moms Clean Air Force (the EDF front), but also Food & Water Watch, Good Jobs First, various Sierra Club chapters, and numerous state-level environmental activist groups. The groups supply nearly all the reports, statistics, and quotes Courier uses to become their communications department.

Who pays for this?

Data centers consume a lot of electricity, require water for cooling, and the possibility of AI replacing human jobs has become a terrifying prospect for some. But every technology comes with tradeoffs—costs and benefits—and it’s often not difficult to exaggerate or even fabricate the costs.

Many of the groups mentioned above (in particular, the Environmental Defense Fund and Sierra Club) are fanatically anti-energy NGOs that have spent decades demonizing and opposing nuclear energy, even though it is widely regarded as the strongest combination of safe, clean and reliable energy humans have ever exploited. Courier’s stoked-up data center hysteria may be similarly detached from reality, yet just as politically useful.

It’s clear who is benefitting from this coverage. Might some of the beneficiaries be paying for it?

Because Courier Newsroom is a for-profit company, and because the tax disclosures of their nonprofit clients are generally published on a two-year delay, it is not possible to get a complete look at Courier’s current finances. But a glimpse at the recent past does give clues as to who has—for whatever reason—been putting money in Courier’s pocket.

The largest known recent client is Future Forward USA Action, the “dark money” affiliate of Joe Biden’s, and later Kamala Harris’s, presidential campaign, which granted Courier $13.5 million in 2024. Courier was also paid $2.5 million by ActBlue, the fundraising engine of the Democratic Party, in December 2025.

Additionally, Courier received $260,000 from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, and $100,000 from the Windward Fund in 2024. Both are core pieces of the $1-billion-per-year activism network controlled by the left-wing management firm formerly known as Arabella Advisors.

It isn’t hard to imagine that one of these groups, or some similarly placed left-leaning activists friendly to Democrats, deducing that the data center issue is an expeditious way to fracture the Republican coalition, bolster their own base, and perhaps revive the floundering climate change coalition. Courier’s own bragging shows that helping with such behavior is literally part of their business model.

And they’re a profit-seeking enterprise.

Courier’s data center coverage appears to be as artificial as the artificial intelligence coming out of the data centers. What might be real is the money they’re receiving to produce it.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/couriers-news-machine-turns-against-data-centers/