“‘Fact checking’ is just a euphemism for the Ministry of Truth. It is not about 'facts,'” journalist Kyle Becker tweeted about biased NewsGuard.
Becker News CEO Kyle Becker pointed out on Twitter that the rating site NewsGuard partners with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. government. The WHO, Microsoft, and the U.S. State and Defense departments are among NewsGuard’s partners.
“This front group is spearheading an unconstitutional attack on freedom of speech and the press to undermine critics of the U.S. government,” Becker insisted. He cited NewsGuard’s Coronavirus Misinformation Tracking Center page to illustrate his point.
Regarding the COVID-19 “misinformation” page, Becker noted: “I… didn't see anything there I had reported; but I did question ‘full authorization’ of Pfizer … This legally does not add up.” The only FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccines in the United States are Pfizer’s Comirnaty and Moderna’s SPIKEVAX. These vaccines are not available to the U.S. general public, and the actual available Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are under Emergency Use Authorization only.
“I did not see a single ‘fact check’ for false statements made by policymakers over Covid, such as vaccines 'stop the spread,' or anything about there being no heart inflammation side effects, etc.,” Becker tweeted. “It's all directed against Big Government's and Big Pharma's critics. As expected.” NewsGuard’s COVID-19 “misinformation” page mixes unproven statements with statements supported by solid evidence in its list of “myths.” NewsGuard’s COVID-19 “myth” classifications seemingly defend several organs of U.S. authority.
Chief among those are government operations like the FDA, and technocrats like National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates, also the co-founder of NewsGuard partner Microsoft. Fauci originally claimed that COVID-19 “can’t” infect vaccinated individuals, a statement he has since contradicted.
“There is a process for correcting misinformation called 'corrections' and arguing policy on the editorial pages. It is not slandering those whose opinion activists & politicians disagree with,” Becker commented.
Government entities admitted they were wrong about things formerly aggressively dubbed “misinformation” earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the Wuhan lab leak theory of COVID-19’s origins.
Yet NewsGuard is seemingly helping the government target alleged “misinformation” online. “It is not the U.S. government's job to use third parties to police its critics. This kind of assault on freedom of the press is what you'd expect in Putin's Russia, not in the United States,” Becker added. “This ‘fact checking’ fraud needs to stop. Now.”
Becker concluded that NewsGuard is apparently “in severe breach of journalistic ethics,” due to conflicts of interest that include even the U.S. government, which is “constitutionally forbidden from abridging speech.”
An MRC Free Speech America study found that NewsGuard’s average ratings for sites that AllSides deemed “left” or “lean left” were significantly higher than ratings for “right” or “lean right” outlets.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact ABC News (818) 460-7477, CBS News (212) 975-3247 and NBC News (212) 664-6192 and demand they report on NewsGuard’s clear left-wing bias.
