Minnesota’s sprawling fraud crisis has garnered national headlines in recent weeks, but several critics say the problem festered for years, aided by local media that appeared uninterested in holding people in power accountable.
"In newsrooms, they’re told, ‘We can’t run that because we’re going to be accused of being racist,’" Townhall columnist Dustin Grage recently told Fox News Digital about news outlets in Minnesota essentially enabling the fraud by not calling out shocking taxpayer waste occurring primarily within the local Somali community.
The outlet that is considered by many the top news source in the region, the Minnesota Star Tribune, has faced criticism on social media in recent days over some of its headlines, including "Minnesota Somali community grapples with fraud cases while pushing back against stereotypes" on Nov. 26 and "Trump claims Minnesota lost billions to fraud. The evidence to date isn’t close" on Dec. 11.
On Thursday, federal prosecutors held a press conference where they revealed that the true scope of the fraud scandal could end up costing taxpayers around $9 billion, prompting some conservatives on social media to point out the Dec. 11 headline.
"The Minnesota Star Tribune masquerades as a newspaper," New York Post columnist Miranda Devine posted on X. "It's actually a Democrat front, hiding news, twisting facts, lying outright. One of the worst in the country."
Additionally, the paper’s CEO is Steve Grove, who served as Gov. Tim Walz’s former commissioner of employment and economic development, which has sparked criticism from some who say that the paper is hesitant to pin Walz to the fraud crisis.
Fox News Digital spoke to several locals who argued that media outlets either didn’t cover the scandal thoroughly enough or, in cases where it was covered, Walz’s oversight role was downplayed.
"The Minnesota Star Tribune has proven itself to be nothing more than communist fish wrap," Republican House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who represents Minnesota 6th Congressional District, told Fox News Digital.
"They’ve shown their true colors throughout their sorry coverage of the massive fraud in my home state. Fraudsters stole over a billion dollars from taxpayers on Tim Walz and [state Attorney General] Keith Ellison’s watch. However, the blame also falls on the largest, most widely read newspaper in the state for failing to hold Minnesota’s so-called ‘leaders’ accountable as decent journalism requires. Their bias stinks to high heaven, but that’s not surprising given that their top dog is a former Tim Walz appointee."
INSIDE MINNESOTA’S $1B FRAUD: FAKE OFFICES, PHONY FIRMS AND A SCANDAL HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
Last week, the conservative media watchdog Newsbusters reported that even after the scandal broke into the national spotlight, major news broadcast networks were still downplaying the fraud issue and focusing more on President Donald Trump’s rhetoric on the matter.
Grage told Fox News Digital the news landscape has shifted over the last decade or so from a point where the news was covered fairly in the era of governors like Independent Jesse Ventura and Republican Tim Pawlenty, into "complicit media that carries water for Democrats."
"Conservatives in these newsrooms, they have told me that they try to push stories, but a lot of the time they bump into roadblocks with their newsrooms," Grage told Fox News Digital.
Grage painted a general picture of newsrooms in Minnesota filled with staffers sympathetic to the DFL, Minnesota’s Democrat Party apparatus, and said a key problem is the fear of being labeled "racist" in their coverage of fraud in the Somali community.
"In regard specifically to the Somali fraud scandal, newsrooms will come back at them and say, ‘Well, we can't run that because we're gonna be accused of being racist.’ And at the end of the day, that's where a lot of this has stemmed from," Grage told Fox News Digital. "I mean, we can talk about the media complacency, the severe funding deficits for Republicans in our campaigns, but a lot of the time it's just simply put, people are afraid of being called a racist."
Fox News Digital reached out to the Minnesota Star Tribune for comment.
