When Idaho state legislators proposed a seemingly uncontroversial bill to ban access to commercial tanning beds by minors earlier this year, IdahoReporter.com took up the issue with force.

The state news Web site, an affiliate of the conservative Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity and overseen by the free market Idaho Freedom Foundation, posted six stories on the proposal between Feb. 16 and March 22, when the bill was voted down in a state Senate Committee.

The Franklin Center is a multimillion-dollar organization whose Web sites and affiliates provide free statehouse reporting to local newspapers and other media across the country. Funded by major conservative donors, staffed by veterans of groups affiliated with the Koch brothers, and maintaining a regular presence hosting right-wing events, the organization boasts of its ability to fill the void created by state newsroom layoffs.

The group’s editors claim that their ‘professional journalism’ work is walled off from the organization’s more nakedly political operations and say that their ‘pro-taxpayer, pro-liberty, free market perspective’ doesn’t compromise their accuracy or independence. But many journalism professionals — even newspaper editors who reprint the work of Franklin Center affiliates in their own pages — speak warily of the group’s ideological […]