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September 20, 2024 01:56 PM UTC

Denver Gazette Running Ads With Falsehoods About Gangs Seizing an ‘Aurora Apartment Complex’

  • 2 Comments
  • by: Jason Salzman

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Originally published at the Colorado Times Recorder

It’s now well established that Venezuelan gangs did not take over apartment complexes in Aurora, but the Denver Gazette, a conservative online newspaper owned by GOP billionaire Phil Anschutz, is still running Facebook advertisements falsely claiming that a “Venezuelan gang used violence to seize an Aurora apartment complex” and “New video seems to show Venezuelan gangs taking over two Aurora apartment complexes.” See these ads and other dubious ones here.

The ads, which link to Gazette stories that contained information known to be false (“gangs taking over two apartment complexes”) when they were published earlier this month, are still being actively promoted by the Gazette on Facebook. Aurora Police never found evidence of a gang takeover of an apartment complex, much less two of them.

A misleading Gazette Facebook ad, also still active, states that “Mayor Coffman says the armed takeover of several Aurora Apartments was a ‘nightmare situation.'”

Another misleading ad reads, “Aurora councilmember promotes claims of Venezuelan gang takeover of city apartments.”

Both Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman and Aurora Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky are now saying that claims of gang activity in Aurora, which they rang alarm bells about, were hyped.

Yet, the Gazette is still running the ads.

Coffman and Jurinsky are waging a PR offensive trying to protect Aurora’s image, but that’s an uphill climb with former President Donald Trump falsely saying Venezuelan gangs have taken over Aurora and announcing he’ll be dropping into Aurora in the coming weeks to prove it. “You may never see me again,” joked Trump at a rally when he told people he’d be going to Aurora.

The Gazette‘s ads, while promoting dark imagery about immigrants that the GOP sees as beneficial in November’s election, are undermining Aurora’s efforts to fight misinformation about the gangs.

In an email to Vince Bzdek, the Gazette‘s executive editor, the Colorado Times Recorder asked the following questions:

Were you aware of these ads, and why are you running them?

Will you stop running these ads given that the information you’re promoting is now widely considered false?

And, especially in light of Trump’s upcoming visit, will you pay for an ad correcting the false information in the current ads?

Bzdek did not respond.

RELATED: Spiked: A Conservative ‘Shadow’ Hangs Over Colorado Newspapers Owned by GOP Billionaire Phil Anschutz

This is not the first time the Gazette has launched misleading ads. Last year, Bzdek defended a Gazette ad campaign urging people to leave The Denver Post “in the past” and to turn to “reliable news you can trust” in the Gazette, implying — without evidence — that you cannot trust The Post. Bzdek, who spent 18 years at the Washington Post as a writer and editor, said he fully supported the campaign, explaining that it’s intended “to distinguish ourselves, and communicate that Denver has an alternative news source.”

The Denver Gazette was launched in 2020 and is a property of Anschutz’s Clarity Media Group, which also owns the Colorado Springs Gazette and Colorado Politics, a political print and online newspaper. Conservative news content from Clarity Media’s Washington Examiner is published in Colorado on these platforms. Anschutz is a major donor to Republican and conservative causes in Colorado and beyond.

Aurora Gazette?

The Gazette’s misinformation may not win the newspaper any fans in Aurora, but Bzdek has said he hopes to expand the Gazette’s chain there.

Asked on a conservative radio show last year if he’d like to start an Aurora Gazette, Bzdek replied, “We feel like we’re adding to coverage there already. But I would love that.”

Comments

2 thoughts on “Denver Gazette Running Ads With Falsehoods About Gangs Seizing an ‘Aurora Apartment Complex’

  1. Perhaps the Gazette brand will be expanded to Aurora.  Or perhaps the editor will consider it part of as different initiative.  Corey Hitchens reported in his weekly update of Inside the News in Colorado

    “On Oct. 15, The Gazette will launch The Colorado Network, a digital platform that will enlist freelance journalists around the state to cover news for The Gazette,” the outlet’s executive editor, Vince Bzdek, announced this week. …

    Bzdek added that he hopes the effort will aid in “plugging some of the holes that have opened up in the coverage of issues important to rural areas.”

  2. if you want to know what's going on in Aurora, read the Aurora  Sentinel.Susan Greene's reporting on the Aurora CBZ slumlord takeover  seems neutral and reality-based to me. Yes,  there were bad guys in these apartment complexes, they might or might not be gang-affiliated, and most of them are in police custody now. 

    And there's Dave Perry's salty take on the clusterf*ck that Jurinsky started and Coffman perpetrated. 

    Because of [Jurinsky's] scheme, Aurora is in danger of having businesses avoid investing in the city or even consider moving away from here. More than 100,000 Aurora homeowners invested in their properties are at risk of seeing their values diminished by Jurinsky’s outlandish and false claims.
    And local community leaders in the metro area have already pointed out how Jurinsky’s extremist speech toward Venezuelans endangers every Latino and Hispanic person of color.

    Just ask the city’s large Asian American community how life was for them after Trump launched the “China Flu” or Aurora’s burgeoning Muslim population when Trump pushed the “Muslim Ban” across the country and into Aurora.

    Talk like this has consequences. 

    Jurinsky can’t credibly speak for the city to a catastrophe she incited. She speaks only for herself and her partisan allies. Someone unafraid of her needs to make it stop.

     

     

     

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