Does biased NewsGuard automatically favor state-affiliated media? The liberal online “credibility” arbiter gave seven traditionally non-autocratic state-affiliated media outlets around the world an average score of 98.6/100.
MRC Free Speech America looked at seven traditionally non-autocratic state-affiliated media outlets from Germany, the U.S., France, the United Kingdom and Canada. Biased NewsGuard didn’t allow government affiliation to harm journalistic credibility.
America’s National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), France’s Radio France Internationale (RFI) and France 24 and Germany’s Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) all received perfect scores of 100/100.
The UK’s British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Canada’s Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) both received excellent NewsGuard scores of 95/100. NewsGuard did rate the state media for openly autocratic nations like Russia, Qatar and China as well.
NewsGuard has treated two of the three openly autocratic state-affiliated media sites differently. They have low NewsGuard ratings. Six Chinese and Russian state media outlets have an average rating of 24/100. NewsGuard still rated several Communist Chinese state-run media outlets higher than several American outlets and U.S. pro-life websites, however.
Qatar’s Al Jazeera, which is partly funded by the Qatari government, had a NewsGuard score of 82.5/100 and a green checkmark of credibility. CNN reported in 2013 that the Qatari government owned Al Jazeera. CNN also reported that Al Jazeera has been called a “terror network.” Al Jazeera has posted articles sympathetic to terrorist organizations, particularly in “Palestine.” Yet NewsGuard rates Al Jazeera credible, while U.S. pro-life sites rated by NewsGuard have an average score of 26.5/100.
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.
AllSides, which rates the institutional bias of news organizations, previously said, “[W]e doubt any media outlet should have a 100% credibility rating. It seems NewsGuard favors large, legacy media outlets that we rate as Lean Left. These outlets are often seen as making up the ‘establishment press,’ and are the outlets that journalists themselves consider to be the most trusted, most established, most transparent, etc., due in large part to their own biases.”
The above ratings show that NewsGuard favors state media outlets even more than it already favors legacy media outlets rated “left” or “lean left” by AllSides. The MRC study found that the average score of the seven traditionally non-autocratic state media outlets was 98.6/100, which exceeds the average NewsGuard rating of 93/100 for “left” and “lean left” sites as described by AllSides.
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.
