What The Hell America!

Last fall residents of Mandan, North Dakota woke up to an unfamiliar newspaper at their doorsteps. The broadsheet Central ND News, printed on newsprint, had columns, standard-sized articles, and headlines.

But there was an odd theme to its stories. Many referenced events that had happened nearly a decade earlier, when protestors had swarmed the rural community to oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline.

“On This Date in 2016: Dakota Access Pipeline protesters gather in Morton County,” read one headline. Another in the series read: “On this day in October 2016: Morton County issues felony arrest warrant for pipeline protestor who charged police officer on horseback.”

Now, just over two weeks into a $300 million trial brought by the owner of the pipeline against Greenpeace, the environmental organization is blaming the paper and other curious texts that targeted the local community in the weeks leading up to the trial.

Greenpeace has argued the media coverage has made it difficult to get a fair trial and unsuccessfully attempted to move the trial to the nearby city of Fargo. If Greenpeace loses, the international environmental activist group could risk bankruptcy.

“The bias stemming from jurors’ personal experiences has been compounded by an apparent campaign to exert influence over potential Morton County jurors. In November 2024, Greenpeace Defendants became aware of a direct mailer, stylized as a local newspaper called ‘Central ND News,’ sent to Morton County residents,” Greenpeace wrote in a filing to the North Dakota Supreme Court. “Greenpeace Defendants are at immediate risk of irreparable harm if this trial were to proceed in Morton County.”

At least four more print editions of the Central ND News have been distributed to residents in Mandan and neighboring Bismarck since last October, including one as recently as this week.

The papers bear the tagline “Real data. Real value. Real news,” but their articles are largely anonymous, echo conservative talking points on key culture war issues, and frequently opine on the destructive nature and lawlessness of the pipeline protests in the rural community between 2016 and 2017.

A recent issue of Central ND News included local school–related news alongside a critical look back at DAPL protests and coverage of a report released by the North Dakota Petroleum Association:

“Honestly, when that thing comes to our house, we recognize it as garbage, and that’s where it goes,” said Cecile Wehrman, executive director of the North Dakota Newspaper Association.

“My concern is that in a community like Mandan, or even in Bismarck, where a free publication is arriving in mailboxes and just out of curiosity, somebody picks it up and thinks, ‘Oh, here’s a new newspaper.’ And they may not be accustomed to reading a different newspaper and they just inhale what this is presenting as news,” she continued. “And it’s clearly, from a journalistic standpoint, not strictly objective reporting. There’s a clear partisan agenda to it.”

There’s no evidence that any reporters or editors for the Central ND News live in Morton County, let alone the state. Though the paper’s “About” page promises to “fill the void in community news after years of decline in local reporting by legacy media” with “100% original reporting,” no staffers are listed on the site, few stories have bylines, and outreach to the listed email went unanswered.

The site lists no physical address in the state. The return address posted on distributed papers matches the Chicago business mailing address for companies within the Metric Media network.

Metric Media is a conservative-leaning digital media conglomerate. It operates roughly 1,300 sites that researchers have categorized as “pink slime” journalism — stories that appear to be news but have a partisan agenda.

Metric is operated by Brian Timpone, a conservative businessman and former TV reporter based out of Illinois. Timpone did not respond to a request for comment.

Metric Media has been linked to print newspapers that have shown up at homes on the eves of key elections and that have pushed certain policy positions such as pro-life initiatives. Last year I, along with ProPublica, reported that Metric Media in late 2020 also bought a local Ohio newsroom that then started reporting anti-solar coverage about a proposed solar farm in town. It has been found to engage in pay-to-play tactics and Metric’s nonprofit arm has received $1.4 million “for general operations” from DonorsTrust, a dark-money group that has received funds from fossil fuel industry billionaires Charles and David Koch, tax filings show.

The Central ND News appears to be similarly tied to oil and gas financial interests. Public records show that a month before Morton County residents received the first paper last fall, the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners — the pipeline company that owns the DAPL and is suing Greenpeace — gave $5 million to the Super PAC Turnout For America, which just over a week later paid $250,000 to Northern CB Corp for “media services.” Northern CB Corp is owned by Timpone, who founded Metric Media.

It was the first time Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren had donated to the PAC, according to records. In 2017, Warren talked to CNBC about Greenpeace: “Everybody’s afraid of these environmental groups and the fear that if you fight back it may look wrong…but what they did to us is wrong and they’re going to pay for it.”

Energy Transfer Partners spokesperson Vicki Granado said in an emailed statement that the pipeline company has “no affiliation or involvement” with the Central ND News and that they have been advertising in the county since the DAPL has been operational.

She added that the lawsuit against Greenpeace is not about free speech.

“We support the rights of all Americans to protest and express their opinions lawfully, however, when it is not done in accordance with our laws, we have a legal system to deal with that,” Granado said. “Their organizing, funding, and encouraging the unlawful destruction of property and the dissemination of misinformation goes well beyond the exercise of free speech.”

The first issue of the Central ND News was sent primarily to residents in Mandan, the nearly 25,000-person town where the pipeline protests took place, according to residents. It’s also where the trial against Greenpeace is being held. Energy Transfer Partners sued Greenpeace in 2019 for, in part, inciting protests near the Standing Rock Reservation and the DAPL.

Energy Transfer Partners’ suit has been criticized as a SLAPP suit, or strategic lawsuit against public participation. While many states have adopted bans to curb such lawsuits that are sometimes viewed as a means of intimidation, North Dakota is not one of them. Former President Barack Obama had blocked the completion of the pipeline in 2016, but Trump reversed course once he took office and the pipeline has been operating commercially through North Dakota since June 2017.

If Greenpeace loses, lawyers say the group could face significant hurdles in the state’s appeals court. Environmentalists also warn that a win for Energy Transfer Partners could cast a shadow over free speech and stifle future protests.

At the time that the first issue of the Central ND News appeared in town, the trial was already set to begin in Mandan early the next year. In November, Greenpeace lawyers filed a motion for limited discovery into the newspaper, arguing there was an “urgency of uncovering who was responsible for sending the direct mailer directly to households in Morton County from which the jury will be drawn.”

The lawyers’ ultimate goal was to subpoena and depose the Texas-based company that printed the paper to determine who paid for the paper and if Morton County residents were targeted. Energy Transfer Partners is also based in Texas. They were denied.

Since Greenpeace’s initial filing, the Central ND News has expanded its reach. Residents in neighboring Bismarck began receiving editions in January. For the past month and a half they have come weekly, according to the North Dakota Newspaper Association’s Wehrman, a Bismarck resident.

The issues now carry a note from the publisher that reads, “We’ve been publishing Central DN News online for four years.” It adds that its goal is in part to “provide news about state and local policy matters and politics to help you assess whether the policy decisions made by your elected officials are aligned with your values and to explain how those decisions impact your quality of life.”

While data from the Internet Archive confirms that the Central ND News has been operating as a website online since 2020, its coverage of the pipeline and Energy Transfer Partners has significantly ramped up. The Dakota Access Pipeline was only mentioned in one article on the site in 2023, but last year that number grew to 41 articles. So far, 19 articles have mentioned the pipeline this year. The paper’s “On this day” series has also picked up the pace in the past year.

The Central ND News has also published stories about publications and reporters who have reported critically on the ongoing trial and questioned the legitimacy of the Central ND News.

On February 27, an unbylined Central ND News article with the headline “News coverage of pipeline owner’s Greenpeace lawsuit funded by left-wing ‘mega-donor’ George Soros, newspaper disclosure shows,” criticized a Guardian article on the same day it reported that a majority of jurors sitting on the Greenpeace trial had connections to the oil and gas industry.

A Nov. 17, 2024 article written by Central ND News similarly questioned the financial donations given to two newsrooms, Floodlight and The North Dakota News Cooperative, after the publications published a joint story earlier that month about the Central ND News. (Note: I was the journalist reporting for Floodlight).

Andy Nghiem, a reporter who said he was reaching out on behalf of the Central ND News to the North Dakota News Cooperative for comment last fall, used an email address for Advantage Informatics, a digital media firm founded by Metric’s Timpone. The Central ND News published the same article in a print version of the paper that was distributed to North Dakota residents in January. It was around then that Morton County residents received an anonymous text message that read: “ND news Co-op partners with group funded by anti-oil and gas activists.” It provided a link to the Central ND News story. Nghiem and The Central ND News did not respond to requests for comment.

Residents also received an issue of the Central ND News right as jury picking for the trial began, according to residents. In early March, Greenpeace made a last-ditch plea to the North Dakota Supreme Court asking for a change of venue to another town, arguing it was impossible to get a fair trial due to local residents’ past experiences with pipeline protestors and the fact that many of them were employed by the oil and gas industry.

Lawyers also pointed to the Central ND News as evidence of jury manipulation.

“During voir dire, a prospective juror brought his copy of Central ND News to court. Another arrived wearing an Energy Transfer hat. Today, as trial began, residents received yet another issue of Central ND News containing the headline, ‘Eight years ago: President Trump signs order to expedite Dakota Access Pipeline,’” Greenpeace lawyers wrote in their request. “Despite the ample evidence demonstrating that a jury drawn from Morton County could not be impartial — and that the jurors actually empaneled are not impartial — the district court has repeatedly denied Greenpeace Defendants’ attempts to transfer this case to a venue where they might receive a fair trial.”

The court denied their request last Wednesday. The court also denied a request by media organizations to livestream the hearing, a decision that has made it hard for the public to follow the case. While lawyers are allowed to get transcripts of proceedings, they can’t share them with the public and reporters who have obtained permission to sit in on hearings must take notes by hand.

Scott Wilson Badenock, Jr. traveled to Mandan to attend the trial in person during its first week as part of a group of attorneys who are independently monitoring the case for Trial Monitors. Badenock, a visiting attorney at the Environmental Law Institute, said that based on the responses from the jurors, he felt it was clear most residents viewed the pipeline positively, and it remained to be seen whether they connected the pipeline protestors with Greenpeace specifically.

“We saw 66 jurors, and I would say ‘ubiquitous’ is not far from the truth in terms of the baseline belief in fossil fuels as an existential positive,” he said. “As far as this community is concerned, fossil fuels are a central part of what makes America great, and what has put food on the table for those communities. And they see that it’s above a profession, it’s really a belief system, and that belief system is shared amongst the entire community.”

Badenock will again attend the trial during its third week of proceedings. He said it does not appear to bode well for Greenpeace and is expecting the trial to wrap quickly.

“I teach my students that until it’s over, it ain’t over. And even when it’s over, it’s not over because you’ve got appeals of course and all kinds of things can happen,” said Badenock. “But, I’ll be very honest with you, if this were a sporting event, it’s the one where you checked out already and started to clean the kitchen because the game’s over.”