I had this pointed out to me tonight. Which came first? dakotafreepress.com, or dakotazfreepress.com.
One represents nonsensical ramblings about politics and Annette Bosworth, and attacks Marty Jackley. The other one looks like it’s written by Bosworth allies themselves. And also attacks Attorney General Jackley.
Dakotazfreepress.com, subtitled “Free the Dakotaz with News That’s NOT Paid to Shut Up,” has posts dating back through part of last year, and nonsensically is against a number of things, including fluoridation, Avera McKennan, Ciribank and Marty Jackley among others. It boasts a number of posts dating back to September 2014.
You look at it, and at first blush, you wonder if its parody. But then it gets into the same old attacks we’ve been seeing for months from the Bosworth camp. It’s chock full of ridiculous voter fraud claims citing Robot Bee doomsayer Lori Stacey, and I have my suspicions where it comes from, especially given its support of Bosworth and attacks on Marty Jackley.
When you look to see who owns it through a Whois search, as expected, it’s a private registration. But it does reveal another tidbit:
Despite showing posts going back to September 2014, dakotazfreepress.com has only been around since the end of March. So, they actually falsified posts to make them look 6 months older than they really are.
So, another fake website? Just another episode of nuttiness swirling around the Bosworth trial.
Is Dakotaz Free Press Sioux Fall’s version of “The Onion” based out of Chicago with comical outlandish stories? A much smaller version of the National Enquirer?
I was curious about this too. I don’t think they went back and created new content. A tweet sent on Feb 2 to Dakotazfreepress goes to an article published that day.
https://twitter.com/WaterIsAliv1111/status/562372248086904833
It is obviously was created on wordpress. At that time it is likely Dakotazfreepress was probably actually on dakotazfreepress.wordpress.com and they didn’t decide to actually buy the domain until March. The old wp.me redirects would work for the new domain once they switched over.
The only odd thing is that dakotazfreepress.wordpress.com doesn’t have the same content, but that could be because they wanted to use it for different content after getting dedicated hosting for the dakotazfreepress.com content.
They probably think it makes them look more “grassroots” if they have more names…