Surprise! The Taxpayer-Funded State-Department-Sponsored Company "NewsGuard" Rated Liberal Sites with a 91% Average Trustworthiness and Conservative Sites with a Failing 65%

Which tells advertisers not to advertise on those sites.

Sites like The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Daily Wire, etc.

But Huffington Post? Highly trustworthy! Fortune 500 corporations -- please fund these strictly factual sites!

The first amendment guarantees liberals the right to use government-coerced taxpayer monies to punish speech they don't want anyone to hear. That's the gist of it, right?

In a study published Tuesday, Media Research Center (MRC) Free Speech America found that NewsGuard, the taxpayer censorship giant self-tasked with rating media outlets on reliability, "overwhelmingly favored left-leaning outlets over right-leaning ones." This is the third year MRC Free Speech America has exposed NewsGuard for its partisanship, and, according to MRC, NewsGuard has become "even worse" than years prior.

Using AllSides, an organization that classifies media outlets by their "right" to "left" bias, "MRC researchers determined that NewsGuard provided a stellar average 'credibility' rating of 91/100 for 'left' and 'lean left' outlets (e.g., The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, Vox)," wrote MRC researchers. Meanwhile, "right" and "lean right" outlets, such as Fox News, the New York Post, and The Daily Wire, were given "an outrageously abysmal average score of 65/100."

"NewsGuard's rating for right-leaning outlets in particular was worse than the still-low 66/100 average rating it slapped on right-leaning media across the prior two MRC studies released Jan. 6, 2023 and Dec. 13, 2021," MRC noted.

One of the strongest examples of NewsGuard's brazen bias is how it excused legacy media outlets' false labeling of the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story as "Russian disinformation" back in 2020.

The Washington Post, USA Today, and Politico -- all outlets that discredited the story -- were given "flawless 100/100 scores." The seriousness of what these legacy media organizations did cannot be understated. As MRC noted, polling indicates that suppression of the laptop story played a deciding role in the 2020 election.

According to MRC, NewsGuard's decision to ignore the discrediting of the laptop story isn't surprising, given that NewsGuard itself contributed to its suppression. Indeed, "NewsGuard co-CEO Steven Brill joined CNBC just before the 2020 election to castigate the Hunter Biden laptop story as a probable Russian 'hoax,'" MRC wrote in its report.

While outlets that engaged in journalistic malpractice and election interference are given gold stars, NewsGuard severely punishes conservative outlets like The Federalist. NewsGaurd gives The Federalist a failing 12.5/100 score. "After roughly two years," wrote MRC, "NewsGuard is still criticizing The Federalist's questioning of the efficacy of masks for COVID-19." At the same time, liberal CNBC, which has a "95" NewsGuard rating, "cited a study showing that cloth masks were only 37 percent effective at filtering out virus particles," wrote MRC.

In another example of NewsGuard's double standard, the organization gave Not the Bee a 62.5/100 score "in part because it supposedly 'does not disclose that the site advances a conservative perspective that is apparent in its content,'" MRC reported. "This is grossly hypocritical in light of NewsGuard's perfect scores for blatantly liberal outlets like the explicitly left-wing New York Times," MRC pointed out.

...

"NewsGuard wields its ratings as a cudgel, attempting to scare away advertisers from doing business with media and organizations that have been accused of promoting so-called 'misinformation' or wrongthink on a whole host of issues like abortion, climate change, COVID-19 and elections," explained MRC. "In so doing, NewsGuard effectively strips media outlets with which it disagrees of their ad money, slowly bleeding out their coffers."

As MRC demonstrates, NewsGuard is a political arm of the left, yet it receives hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from Biden's Department of Defense. "This is the same Biden administration that tried to erect a radical Disinformation Governance Board tied to leftist billionaire George Soros to collaborate with Big Tech companies to target Americans' speech on social media platforms," wrote MRC.

News Guard also received funding from Big Pharma....

MRC is calling on Congress to cease illegally funding an organization that is actively destroying free speech in the U.S. in its pursuit to shut down conservative outlets.

Read the whole thing.

In very much related news: Biden told his FCC that they ought to look into his political enemy Elon Musk, and you'll never guess what the FCC did next.

Here's the background on Starlink, a program designed to provide the internet by satellite to places too poor or too remote for laying cable transmission wires:

The program is supposed to close the "digital divide" by ensuring that every person in America can access high-speed internet. Given the country's geography, some people will never get traditional internet service simply because the expense of getting cables to their homes is astronomical. The program was to go into effect in 2025, allowing providers to expand their infrastructure. Starlink was one of several providers serving various areas. Advertisement

Starlink was supposed to close that gap, making subsidies available to people who couldn't otherwise afford the high startup costs of setting up the service.

Back in 2020, the FCC identified Starlink as the most viable solution to closing the digital divide for over half a million Americans--a decision so glaringly obvious that only a fool would deny that it was the best available solution.

Brendan Carr, a dissenting member of the FCC, explains:

Brendan Carr @BrendanCarrFCC

Last year, after Elon Musk acquired Twitter, President Biden gave federal agencies the green light to go after him.

And they have.

Today, the FCC adds itself to the growing list of federal agencies engaging in the regulatory harassment of Elon Musk.

I dissent.

President Biden stood at a White House podium & stated that Elon Musk "is worth being looked at."

When asked "How?", President Biden responded "There's a lot of ways."

There certainly are. The DOJ, FAA, FTC, NLRB, SDNY, & FWS have all taken action.

The FCC now joins them.

The FCC's recent decision - like many of the other actions being taken by federal agencies against Musk - fits the Biden Administration's pattern of regulatory harassment.

It is a decision that cannot be explained by an objective application of law, facts, or policy.

First, the FCC revokes Starlink's $885 million award by making up an entirely new standard of review that no entity could ever pass and then applying that novel standard to only one entity: Starlink.

The decision does not even grapple with the evidence--it simply ignores it.

Second, rural America ends up paying the highest price for this decision.

Over 642,000 rural homes & businesses would have gained high-speed Internet access for the first time ever under the deal.

But the FCC just vaporized that commitment & replaced it with . . . nothing.

Remember when the left demanded the FCC revoke the Starlink reward because Musk refused to, what was it, automatically make it freely available to be used in Biden's military targeting in Ukraine?

Well, there you go. Biden demands that citizens make their own private property available for free for use in his military games and if they don't comply, the government changes the rules and revokes a grant.

This guy wants to know about the Fish and Wildlife Services investigation -- was that an exaggeration?

Nope.

Qweentoshi @qweentoshi

US Fish and Wildlife services? Seriously?

Brendan Carr
@BrendanCarrFCC

Some blue land crabs were reportedly found charred after a SpaceX launch.

We need to start seriously talking about imprisoning these motherfuckers. We need the public to get ready for it. We need them to understand the need for it, and the justifications for it.

The Democrat Party cannot just weaponize its partisans to use their taxpayer-paid jobs and Constitution-powered jobs to headhunt their political enemies.

And if they do: We headhunt them back.

Michael Schellenberger just testified about the CISA, which supposedly has the task of defending the country against hacking by China and Russia, but which has decided that what really gets their juices flowing is shutting down conservative American speakers because they don't like Trump.

Remember, we have to re-elect Biden because... Biden will protect us against Trump's weaponization of the government against his enemies!

This.

Cannot.

Go on.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:15 PM

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