The leftist firm NewsGuard is going from skewing its rating system to favor left-wing websites to monitoring cable and broadcast TV news in an apparent attempt to become the new ministry of truth.
A press release revealed that NewsGuard was expanding its partnership with IPG Mediabrands to co-create “the first-ever tool to evaluate and rate individual broadcast and cable news programs and networks.”
In addition, the new scheme would go “beyond NewsGuard’s current offering of reliability ratings for news and information websites, giving advertisers greater insight before they invest their media dollars.” The press release stated that "[t]he new rankings will encompass 117 shows on 27 networks and will launch in spring 2022."
This is the same NewsGuard that attacked figures like Rush Limbaugh and mischaracterized a post on Limbaugh's Facebook page. NewsGuard claimed that Limbaugh’s Facebook page shared "a link to Limbaugh’s site with false claims that the coronavirus was created in a lab as a bioweapon and that it is similar to the common cold.” It turns out that NewsGuard was neither accurate about what Limbaugh actually said, nor even the date of the post.
NewsGuard even went after pro-life organizations like Live Action, giving it a dubious score of “30” out of 100 and accused that it “severely violates basic journalistic standards.” Meanwhile, NewsGuard rates baby slaughter mill Planned Parenthood with a “75” score and claimed its “website adheres to basic standards of credibility and transparency.” [Emphasis added.]
But that’s not all. NewsGuard’s “Nutrition Label” rating for LifeSiteNews relied on pieces marked as “opinion” to lambast the pro-life website for information that the outlet considers to be not factual, such as the link between breast cancer and abortion. However, leftist Jezebel, a site that appeared to highlight and sympathize with “unlicensed, untrained illegal abortionists,” is considered a good site by NewsGuard.
That’s the same Jezebel that published a piece that said the author would be thrilled if former President Donald Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller died of COVID-19. Jezebel currently enjoys an “87.5” rating on NewsGuard.
NewsGuard also discovered a new way to fight conservatives while pretending to war against so-called “misinformation” online. It developed a service to “place ads on credible news sources.” Its system for determining whether a source is “credible” overwhelmingly favors left-wing news outlets. A NewsGuard case study for its new service claimed that “major brands using programmatic advertising regularly send ad dollars to misinformation and disinformation websites.”
A December 2020 report by NewsGuard illustrated the bias the site has against conservatives. It claimed that organizations listed “published falsehoods about both COVID-19 and the 2020 U.S. election.” The list included outlets like Breitbart, The Blaze, The Epoch Times and LifeSiteNews. The “Trustworthy and Trending” list, on the other hand, included liberal propaganda outlets like NBC News, The New York Times, Microsoft’s MSN.com, The Washington Post and the taxpayer-funded National Public Radio.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact NewsGuard and demand that the firm provide equal footing for conservatives. Tech companies need to embrace viewpoint diversity. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
