“This is the record that Bob Hugin doesn’t want the public to know, that Bob Hugin doesn’t want to answer questions about. This is Bob Hugin’s record,” Sandberg said. “What is getting lost in this is that all the information on it is true. No one is hiding that fact,” Menendez spokesman Steve Sandberg said in a phone interview. It says clearly that it was paid for by the Menendez for Senate campaign. The Menendez campaign has made no secret of its sponsorship of the website, announcing its launch to reporters in a press release last week. At the bottom of the website’s home page, it states - in small print - that the page is “Paid for by Menendez for Senate.” Still, the fact that the website immediately takes a scathing tone on Hugin and is devoted to negative attacks on him would likely make it difficult for a user to confuse it with a real news website. “Now he’s trying to dupe voters with his very own fake news website,” Neely tweeted. Harrison Neely, a New Jersey Republican consultant whose firm does work for Hugin, noted that Menendez last year proposed a $100 million program to combat Russan disinformation. Republicans have seized on the website’s appearance, alleging hypocrisy. “Even the national press is calling out latest act of desperation: setting up a ‘fake news‘ website scheme,” Hugin‘s press secretary, Nick Iacovella, tweeted. “Politicians are using fake news schemes to get elected,” read a July 17 Axios headline. senator sets up phony health news website to attack challenger Bob Hugin,” read a July 13 headline on the health news website STAT. election, Menendez’s website has come under scrutiny by some real news outlets. Advertisementīut in an era when “fake news” stories have been published both to generate web traffic and were used by a foreign power to manipulate the 2016 U.S. In New Jersey, local candidates for years have circulated “newspapers” that praise their own records and attack their opponents. The tactic of dressing up attacks on opponents as news is nothing new. But it also includes a lengthy article trashing Hugin that carries the byline “HealthNewsNJ Staff.” The website links to several stories about Celgene’s controversies that appeared on legitimate news websites. “How greedy drug company CEO Bob Hugin gouged cancer patients and enabled Donald Trump,” the website’s first headline reads. Menendez (D-N.J.) announced last week to highlight Hugin’s record leading the New Jersey-based drug company Celgene, which has drawn criticism in some quarters for raising the price of cancer drugs, parking money overseas and a $280 million settlement in a fraud lawsuit. Bob Menendez’s campaign set up to tarnish his Republican opponent is coming under fire from Republicans and some media outlets for having the appearance of a legitimate news site.īut the Menendez campaign says it’s been upfront about the fact the website is from the campaign and that Republicans are just trying to create noise to distract from the information the site presents about GOP nominee Bob Hugin.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |