Fact-checkers and media monitors are two entities frequently covered in my daily media column, shown constantly to be tools used not to ferret out facts but to manipulate news narratives. You need no better example of the coercion than the press fallout experienced by the disaster from the Joe Biden debate. His performance exposed the lies told in perpetuity in the press, and the fact-check faction may have been damaged even more.
These were the voices, in the months prior, that had worked to “debunk” evidence that showed Biden’s diminishing faculties. These journalists positioned as the final arbiters of the facts were 180 degrees incorrect, most often intentionally. But as they become self-discredited we then look at the media monitors, these groups that cloak themselves as the judges of what outlets are trustworthy and most accurate. While they claim to be the authority on reputable outlets there is little to no downgrading on those news sources who were completely wrong on the Biden coverage.
One of the bigger names in this media monitor space is NewsGuard. They have arrived on the scene over the past few years and have positioned themselves as the voice of grading news outlets on trustworthiness. To say this is a biased and partisan outfit is more than accurate. Townhall Media sites have frequently been downgraded over arbitrary reasons and fully accurate and attributable content has been flagged as misinformation by this group. Meanwhile, mainstream news outlets with provable inaccuracies may still sport extremely high or even 100% scores.
This brings us to famed D.C. lawyer and professor Jonathan Turley. He recently wrote about being contacted by NewsGuard to explain himself in regards to his legal blog, and the exchange he details is both ominous and amusing. The site, for the uninitiated, issues what it calls a “Nutrition Label” on news sites, based on an internal arbitrary rating system comprised of nine or so categories with varying numbered scores, adding up to a possible 100% rating of credibility.
NewsGuard wonks survey a site and assess a score, then will contact the site’s operator(s) to discuss the results and make score adjustments where applicable. This is something Turley recently experienced, and the process he endured is revealing. One of the questions he was asked involved the explanation of the name on his blog, Res Ipsa Loquitur. That a fact-checking source could not find a way to glean the meaning, even as he supplies the English translation next to the phrase - “The thing itself speaks” - is something that…well, speaks volumes.
One of the evident purposes of NewsGuard is to make its ratings for the sake of giving companies a measure before they advertise on potentially dangerous outlets. This is sold as a means of protecting the image of a company and preventing harm to a brand, when in fact this is a means of driving off advertising support from sites NewsGuard deems unworthy. Turley alludes to this effort in a piece he recently wrote about another news credibility organization, the Global Disinformation Index, where it listed the 10 most dangerous outlets, all of which trended to the right or were independent.
So when NewsGuard was nosing around about Turley’s advertiser backing they were stymied – his blog intentionally sports no advertisements, for the sake of remaining independent. So their questions became of the, “Well, who is backing you” variety. His self-supported website led to a scoring quandary for their assessment, and without a means of scaring off advertisers he was asked to reveal who was supporting him.
Then the inquiry turned to the content of his blog. NewsGuard arrived with the assumption that Turley is a de facto right-leaning or conservative voice. This shows the slant at NewsGuard, given Turley has long been seen as a legal voice and one whose conclusions may fall anywhere on the political scale, depending on the legality of a topic. Turley delivered this exchange from his interrogator.
“I cannot find any information on the site that would signal to readers that the site’s content reflects a conservative or libertarian perspective, as is evident in your articles. Why is this perspective not disclosed to give readers a sense of the site’s point of view?”
Their calling his content a “conservative perspective” exposes the slanted approach, but you also get the impacted logic behind this. You rarely see the demand for a disclosure of a liberal perspective from the likes of MSNBC, for instance. Operating from a leftist position is largely regarded as the norm. Additionally, you see stunted reasoning at play. If this alleged conservative perspective by Turley is so evident, why would there be a need for some type of warning label?! (CAUTION! Possibly Conservative viewpoints and opinions may be contained herein: Govern yourself accordingly!)
This is the common tactic seen in the media; look at the Trump court cases as just one example. Note in coverage of his classified documents trial we always hear that Judge Aileen Cannon is a conservative or a Trump appointee. Yet in the other cases, we hardly hear of Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis, or the judges who are democrats or which president appointed them. The “conservative” label has come to mean “toxic” in the delivery system of the press.
This type of aggression and the intimidation tactics of NewsGuard and the like will be ramped up in the coming months. We have been covering last week the flood of news outlets who fraudulently attempted to report that Kamala Harris was never in charge of the border crisis. It is doubtful many - if any - will incur the wrath of becoming downgraded by NewsGuard for these blatantly deceptive attempts at rewriting their own history.
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