I knew NewsGuard was trouble when Randi Weingarten came out to say how excited she was to implement it into public schools. This way kids would learn how to discern "disinformation." But who are NewsGuard and what are their credentials to fact-check the news?
Check NewsGuard's work from 2023:
Some hack with a “fact checking” organization called NewsGuard emailed a lengthy list of questions after monitoring my podcast for “misinformation.” In one of the questions he demands that I provide evidence that Michelle Obama is a man. Funniest email I’ve ever received. Look: pic.twitter.com/etJFaKpWuM
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) November 7, 2023
Law professor Jonathan Turley wrote a column on NewsGuard and several other leftist "fact-checking" organizations like the Global Disinformation Index and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media.
Turley then wrote:
Recently, I wrote a Hill column criticizing NewsGuard, a rating operation being used to warn users, advertisers, educators and funders away from media outlets based on how it views the outlets’ “credibility and transparency.”
Roughly a week later, NewsGuard came knocking at my door. My blog, Res Ipsa (jonathanturley.org), is now being reviewed and the questions sent by NewsGuard were alarming, but not surprising.
I do not know whether the sudden interest in my site was prompted by my column. I have previously criticized NewsGuard as one of the most sophisticated operations being used to “white list” and “black list” sites.
My new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” details how such sites fit into a massive censorship system that one federal court called “Orwellian.”
For any site criticizing the media or the Biden administration, the most chilling words today are “I’m from NewsGuard and I am here to rate you.”
We knew NewsGuard was bogus when it awarded the Washington Post a perfect 100 for its breaking news coverage, its opinion section, and political coverage.
Recommended
Paul Bond has been keeping an eye on NewsGuard, and check out how they rated stories about the woman who was set on fire on the New York City subway by an illegal immigrant from Guatemala who'd been deported during the Trump administration but returned under Joe Biden:
Notice that the two accurate headlines saying that a migrant allegedly murdered a woman by setting her on fire earned a 69.5 percent NewsGuard rating while the inaccurate headline suggesting she just spontaneously combusted gets 100 percent. NewsGuard, a service that scares… pic.twitter.com/mXGenET4Dr
— Paul Bond (@WriterPaulBond) December 23, 2024
… a service that scares advertisers from news outlets that deviate from their favored narratives, prefers stories that hide inconvenient truths — like migrants can sometimes be violent criminals. No wonder @BrendanCarrFCC is investigating NewsGuard.
So "Woman dies after she catches fire in Brooklyn subway car" rates a perfect 100, but the stories about the police arresting a Guatemalan migrant for setting her on fire rate a 69.5 percent.
"Disinformation" is one of those meaningless terms the government and mainstream media use to cover up information that they don't want the people to have. Just like conspiracy theories, they turn out to be true after all.
I remember way back when Twitchy was put on some busybody's Google document for being fake news. I forget who this woman was or what she called herself, but she managed to garner a bunch of publicity.
NewsGuard is garbage. Why or how it still exists is a mystery … I wonder who funds it.
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