CNN anchor and slick-haired blowhard Jake Tapper’s tell-all book on how Democrats covered up President Joe Biden’s mental decline the past four years was just released today. Not surprisingly, website traffic cop NewsGuard is still giving the liberal media outlets that helped perpetuate this cover-up stellar marks for journalistic credibility.
Outlets like CNN, Politico, Bloomberg News, Slate and others have falsely tried to cast Biden’s conservative critics on his deterioration and on the media’s complicity in burying the story as peddling “unfounded” “conspiracy” theories, which now look utterly ridiculous in retrospect of Tapper’s new book. As syndicated radio host Chris Plante has repeatedly noted on his show, Biden’s “brain? She's-a Broke! She's-a no good!”
But these outlets have not corrected the false stories MRC Business uncovered that tried to hide or obscure this and the media and Democrats’ complicity, but yet still managed to attain high scores from 80-100 from NewsGuard for allegedly adhering to the dystopian ratings outfit’s pathetic excuse for “standards for credibility and transparency.”
To be fair, the aforementioned outlets did eventually lend credence in other stories they published to the notion of Biden’s mental state declining as the evidence was too obvious to deny. But it still doesn’t excuse the articles they did run that tried to cast doubt on the entire story and the argument that the media was intentionally ignoring the glaring signs of the former president’s worsening senility, and it definitely doesn’t excuse NewsGuard’s efforts to still treat these outlets as star-studded examples of bang-up job journalism.
Arguably the worst offender was — there’s an ironic surprise — CNN, where Tapper anchors The Lead. The pro-Biden network, which holds a comfortable 80/100 by NewsGuard, was simping for Biden’s supposed genius as early as 2021. Then-CNN Editor-at-Large Chris Cillizza published a retrospectively absurd August 19, 2021 story headlined, “Republicans keep trying to make Biden’s mental capacity an issue.” Cillizza pompously dismissed that “[d]espite the issue being, largely, moot during the campaign, Republicans continue to keep questions about Biden’s mental health front and center.”
Cillizza condemned the warranted speculation of Biden’s cognitive fitness given his numerous gaffes as “the sort of gross, lowest-common-denominator politics that drive people away from public life.” If Republicans “have some sort of proof that Biden is declining,” Cillizza snorted, “they should bring it forward. If they don’t, they should stop doing what they’re doing. Immediately.”
But this wasn’t the only instance where questions on Biden’s mental acuity were dismissed by CNN. On June 25, 2024, CNN’s egomaniacal Reliable Sources reporter Oliver Darcy railed how “Right-wing media figures are desperately pushing conspiracy theories about Biden ahead of” his debate with then-candidate Donald Trump. One of the so-called “conspiracy theories,” according to Darcy, was how “MAGA Media has portrayed Biden as a senile, mentally incapacitated elderly man who cannot remember what he had for breakfast, let alone run the federal government.” In Darcy’s view, Biden’s debate with Trump would afford him “a unique opportunity to puncture the narrative he lacks the mental fitness to be commander-in-chief. That’s a worry for right-wing media figures, which risk seeing their bogus narrative about Biden being ripped up in real time.”
No corrections have since been added to either Cillizza’s or Darcy’s stories, which is humiliating given their former high profile media presence at the network.
Even more embarrassing is that Tapper’s the one confirming that Darcy-dubbed “bogus narrative” as a Johnny-come-lately, when he never dumped on Darcy in real time. But in NewsGuard’s perspective, CNN gets the green checkmark for the following criteria: “Does not repeatedly publish false or egregiously misleading content;” “Gathers and presents information responsibly;” and “Has effective practices for correcting or clarifying errors.” Derp.
Not to be outdone, Bloomberg News boasts a perfect 100/100 score from NewsGuard, despite being one of the earliest offenders in swatting down concerns over Biden’s cognitive health. On November 19, 2021, Bloomberg reporters Jennifer Epstein and Justin Sink used the propagandized doctors’ assessment of Biden’s supposedly tip-top mental state as the lynchpin to harangue his right-wing critics:
Republicans -- including, most notably, former President Donald Trump -- have frequently criticized Biden’s acuity, including making unfounded claims about his mental competence.
Not so “unfounded” really, eh Bloomberg News? But according to NewsGuard, Bloomberg News “adheres to all nine standards of credibility and transparency,” despite never updating its story on Biden’s competence. According to NewsGuard, the outlet is flawless!
Politico tried to discredit the entire notion that the liberal media was part of the cover-up for Biden in a July 7, 2024 news item for its magazine by reporter Ian Ward following the president’s disastrous debate performance with Trump. “Conservatives See a Conspiracy Around Joe Biden’s Stumbles,” read Ward’s cliche headline. This “conspiracy” theory, according to Ward, was that the media was trying to protect Biden. The accusations weren’t “fully backed up,” cried Ward, “as the media had covered concerns about Biden’s age many times before the debate. But this new round of media bashing underscores the extent to which the modern Republican Party now defines itself in terms of opposition to what it perceives as a corrupt establishment — or a liberal ‘regime’ — that includes both the Democratic Party and the mainstream media.”
🚨NEW: Chris Cuomo says Jake Tapper’s "Original Sin" book is itself a cover-up🚨
— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) May 21, 2025
"It’s a cover for something that’s much more serious to me than Biden's age and stage ever were: the reality that many in the media knew d*mn well that Biden was losing it, but they played it down… pic.twitter.com/WGQ0FANaai
Well, it turns out that it was Ward’s rebuttal that wasn’t “fully backed up,” as NewsBusters Media Editor Bill D’Agostino already compiled the receipts of the numerous times news networks gaslighted the public on Biden’s mental fitness over the years. Ward, in effect, was brazenly gaslighting the public about the media gaslighting. Go figure.
WATCH: Media Lied for YEARS About Biden's Mental Fitness; WE HAVE THE RECEIPTS
Politico also unironically holds a perfect 100/100 score from NewsGuard.
Last but not least, we have the leftist Slate, which scores a glowing 87.5/100 from NewsGuard for “credibility.” Journalist and pro-abortion fanatic Jill Filipovic whined in a July 8, 2024 news item that “[i]n the increasingly pitched coverage of President Joe Biden and the question of whether he has mentally declined to the point of needing to be replaced on the 2024 presidential ticket, conspiracies and collusions seem to be around every corner.”
Specifically, complained Filipovic, one of those darned conspiracy theories floating around was that “the Biden team and perhaps even the broader Democratic Party have long known that the president is in no condition to run and have taken great pains to conceal that fact.” Except this is exactly the “conspiracy” theory that Tapper’s high-profile book is confirming. Filipovic even made it seem outlandish that “that reporters knew or should have known about Biden’s decline this whole time and have been refusing to report it out of liberal bias or perhaps professional incompetence,” which has been clearly illustrated by MRC research derived from hours of video evidence gathering.
But Filipovic went further in flushing whatever modicum of credibility she has down the toilet by insinuating that a “more mundane” reason was more likely for the apparent aloofness to Biden’s condition: “Most people—staff, family, the media—were doing what they thought was correct and professionally responsible at the time.” Uhm, excuse us?
But don’t expect NewsGuard to give two cents and a well-timed air biscuit about any of this.
The MRC has shown repeatedly over the years how skewed to favor the left NewsGuard’s ratings system has been. Using the media list provided by AllSides that classifies publications based on their “right” to “left” bias, MRC researchers determined in a study that NewsGuard provided a stellar average “credibility” rating of 91/100 for “left” and “lean left” outlets (e.g. The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, Vox). At the same time, it dinged “right” and “lean right” outlets like Fox News, the New York Post and The Daily Wire with an outrageously abysmal average score of 65/100.The latest analysis denotes a 26 point disparity. NewsGuard’s rating for right-leaning outlets in particular was worse than the still-low 66/100 average rating it slapped on right-leaning media across the prior two MRC studies released Jan. 6, 2023 and Dec. 13, 2021.
NewsBusters Media Editor Bill D'Agostino contributed to this report.
