For those of you who don’t know what the organization known as “NewsGuard” is, it suddenly popped up in 2018 and began rating news organizations for their reliability, truthfulness, and journalistic practices, all while billing itself as a centrist organization with no dog in the fight.
Any organization that says it is centrist but rates everyone else as centrist, will never be true centrist. In fact, they’re usually biased to the left and it was pretty clear that NewsGuard was no different. Its goal is to tackle “misinformation” and found itself doing so during the COVID-19 pandemic, effectively taking the side of whatever the government said.
The bias it displays in its ratings is quite evident. According to the Media Research Center, left-leaning parties tend to score higher than right-leaning ones. These partnerships need alarm bells.
NewsGuard isn’t a reliable source, however. A recent MRC study found that outlets rated “left” or “lean left” by AllSides received an average NewsGuard score of 93/100. Sites considered “right” or “lean right” by AllSides had an average NewsGuard rating of 66/100. The news “credibility” rater also has a major partnership with leftist Microsoft to fight alleged “disinformation.”
NewsGuard also teamed up with the American Federation of Teachers union in order to filter websites that they would consider full of “misinformation.”
Podcaster Tim Pool got flagged by NewsGuard for “irresponsible reporting” over the Hunter Biden emails. Pool checked the data immediately after NewsGuard asked. BuzzFeed, publisher of debunked Steele dossiers, was the big nail in their coffin.
Pool told Fox News that his own agency had certified the two websites that claimed that emails had been verified, as he did to Dan Bongino. NewsGuard claimed that quoting Donald Trump was irresponsible because he’s a liar, but Pool pointed out that the quote he pulled came from a NewsGuard-approved site.
Regardless, Pool told Bongino that he said they’d have a new policy moving forward where all quotes would be fact-checked first in a statement. NewsGuard then took Pool’s statement and added words he didn’t say to his statement in order to change its meaning.
Pool stated that he approached NewsGuard three times for the correct quote. They finally agreed, however, the reputation of NewsGuard was damaged.
“I think it’s a joke,” said Pool.
“It is not a legitimate agency,” he added.
.@TimcastNewsGuard claims that the self-styled arbiters online credibility NewsGuard have made are jokes and not legitimate agencies. pic.twitter.com/urVVw4NFSq
— MRCTV (@mrctv) August 18, 2022
The lesson here is that every rating agency is going to be biased in some way as what is considered “good journalism” is going to be subjective, especially when there’s money to be made from it. While it would be nice if there was an agency that was very accurate and unbiased, you’re asking more of humanity than it can provide. This is foolish.
NewsGuard cannot be relied upon as a reliable indicator of journalism quality. NewsGuard is not up to its claims, as are fact-checking organisations before it.
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