NewsGuard has found a new way to discriminate against conservatives while pretending to fight against so-called “misinformation” online.
Liberal ratings firm NewsGuard has developed a service to “place ads on credible news sources.” Its system for determining whether a source is “credible” overwhelmingly favors left-wing news outlets. NewsGuard’s new service, if the organization’s track record is any indication, will likely continue NewsGuard’s leftist bias against conservatives. NewsGuard, in a case study for the program, claimed that “major brands using programmatic advertising regularly send ad dollars to misinformation and disinformation websites.”
The organization created a new service in response to what it deemed “misinformation.” NewsGuard referred to the service as “Responsible Advertising for News.” The service would take NewsGuard’s current rating system and work with brands “to apply this data in the form of exclusion lists, which keep brands’ ads off of misinformation website[s], and inclusion lists, which direct brands’ ads toward credible news sites.” The organization’s rating system is not without consequence. Gordon Crovitz, co-CEO of the NewsGuard, wrote: “Research shows access to these ratings results in a dramatic decline in people believing or sharing false content and a boost in trust for high-quality news sites” in an op-ed for Politico.
NewsGuard’s new service to help advertisers fight what it considers to be “misinformation” could even be dangerous to the idea of free speech, because the organization is so overtly left-leaning. NewsGuard published a list of the “Top Ten Repeat Offenders” in December 2020. It claimed that the organizations listed “published falsehoods about both COVID-19 and the 2020 U.S. election.” The list included outlets such as Breitbart, TheBlaze, The Epoch Times and LifeSiteNews. The “Trustworthy and Trending” list, on the other hand, included a smattering of leftist dumpster fire outlets including: NBC News, The New York Times, Microsoft’s MSN.com , The Washington Post and publicly funded National Public Radio.
NewsGuard is partnered with Microsoft. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the website rated MSN.com, Microsoft’s news aggregate, with a perfect score in 2020. NBC News was also given a perfect score. Elise Jordan, a NBC News/MSNBC political analyst, currently sits on the advisory board for NewsGuard. Meanwhile, NewsGuard Contributing Analyst Leah Vann has published pieces in NBC News THINK.
LifeSiteNews’ “Nutrition Label,” provided by NewsGuard, relied on pieces marked as “opinion” to criticize the site for information that the outlet considers to be not factual, such as the link between breast cancer and abortion. But Jezebel, a site that highlights and sympathizes with “unlicensed, untrained illegal abortionists,” is considered a good site by NewsGuard.
NewsGuard’s liberal bias extends beyond its ratings system, however. NewsGuard co-CEO Steven Brill contributed four times more money to Democratic candidates than Republicans in 2018.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact NewsGuard and demand that the platform provide equal footing for conservatives. Tech companies need to embrace viewpoint diversity. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
