EVEN WORSE! MRC Exposes NewsGuard for Leftist Bias Third Year in a Row
Joseph Vazquez
December 12th, 2023 3:00 PM
1.NewsGuard’s government funding is unconstitutional. It is fundamental to living in a free and fair society that agencies of the federal government may not endorse the products and services of private companies they favor. Nor may they weaponize national power against companies that officials have decided they dislike, absent duly enacted statutes and regulations and appropriate due process.
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Financing from Big Pharma created a glaring conflict of interest. NewsGuard’s financing from Big Pharma special interests casts its notorious gatekeeping on issues related to COVID-19 and the vaccines into major doubt. The Washington Times reported Nov. 18 that NewsGuard received a $6 million investment from a consortium that included the Publicis Groupe, “which represents some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical and health care companies, including COVID-19 vaccine maker Pfizer.” Shockingly, according to The Times, NewsGuard “denied any conflict of interest” and claimed that the “group’s investors have never contacted them and have no influence over the company’s rating system.” The way NewsGuard has treated right-leaning outlets that have questioned the government narrative on COVID-19, the subsequent lockdowns and the efficacy and safety of masks and vaccines is blatantly outrageous when viewed through the lens of its Big Pharma financing.
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NewsGuard has openly celebrated its dystopian collusion with the federal government. NewsGuard isn’t shy about its funding ties to the federal government. Apparently, it openly boasted of its government collaboration when it tried to convince Twitter to integrate its ratings system into the Big Tech platforms’ censorship operations in May 2021. Independent Journalist Lee Fang reported in RealClearWire that NewsGuard Co-CEO Gordon Crovitz’s pitch to Twitter included an “out-of-the-box tool that would use artificial intelligence powered by NewsGuard algorithms to rapidly screen content based on hashtags and search terms the company associated with dangerous content.” In exchange, the proposed “tool” would then redirect users to “official government sources only” on issues like COVID-19. Other content-moderation partners Crovitz mentioned in his pitch, reported Fang, “include[d] ‘intelligence and national security officials,’ ‘reputation management providers,’ and ‘government agencies,’ which contract with the firm to identify misinformation trends.”
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NewsGuard rates communist Chinese government propaganda as more credible than American publications. The reality that NewsGuard considers Chinese state propaganda to be more credible than American publications is nothing short of nefarious. The MRC first exposed this phenomenon in February 2022, and it still persists to this day. The China Daily, the Global Times and China Global Television Network (CGTN) and The People’s Daily— all run by the communist Chinese government — got scores of 44.5/100, 39.5/100, 44.5/100 and 39.5/100 respectively from NewsGuard. The Global Times, in particular, is the same outlet that has gone so far as to threaten Australia with becoming “cannon fodder” on Twitter. The People’s Daily is also particularly notorious for being the “official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, and is the most influential and authoritative newspaper in China to represent the voice of the Chinese central government,” according to OxfordReference.com. Despite being responsible for spewing propaganda emanating from the Beijing authorities, NewsGuard gives all four outlets the green checkmark for “not repeatedly publish[ing] false or egregiously misleading content.” By contrast, American publications like The Federalist (12.5/100), One America News (25/100), Newsmax (15/100), Life News (17.5/100) and LifeSite News (17.5/100) are considered to be significantly less credible than Chinese state propaganda. (NOTE: Life News and LifeSite News are FSA members, but were not included in the AllSides analysis since they don’t appear in its Media Bias Chart.)
https://newsbusters.org/blogs/free-speech/joseph-vazquez/2023/12/12/even-worse-mrc-exposes-newsguard-leftist-bias-third