NewsGuard

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NewsGuard Technologies was founded in 2018 by Steven Brill (left of center SJW journalist), and L. Gordon Crovitz (who is not). The NewsGuard extension is installed in browsers and warns users when they view content from "FakeNews" websites -- but so far, color me far from impressed with their biases. They seem to segregate not by quality/reliability, but by establishment (left leaning MSM) and everything else (right or centrist). And since they go by website and not story, the same exact story can be credible or not, depending on who is re-posting it.


They Green/Red label agencies as credible or not - even their FakeNews stories, that have long been discredited.

Examples

Here are a few examples of their Green Check (organizations that get a green light), so stale disproven hoaxes still show up as OK, despite being long debunked: 3 items

  • 2019.01.17 Impeachment - Buzzfeed released an article that said Trump had ordered his Attorney (Michael Cohen) to lie to investigators, which set off the Democrats impeachment Tourettes again. ("Get the noose!") Nevermind that: it was implausible, from an unreliable author and publication, with anonymous sources, and made no sense -- the left and their media was all over it, and Congress was already demanding an investigations: which forced Mueller to release an unprecedented statement (during an investigation), that said the story was bullshit. And the left-press was crestfallen over the truth.
  • 2016.12.31 Russians hack our power grid - Amid rising tension over the DNC's fake Trump Russian Collusion narrative, WaPo (Ellen Nakashima and Juliet Eilperin) invented that the Russians were also responsible for a Vermont PowerGrid attack. The Utility denied the claim, and WaPo tries to blame them, and claims they'd contacted them, and rewrites the story... but botches the rewrite as well. And it appears that they lied about trying to contact the power companies, and hadn't done their due diligence.
  • 2014.11.19 UVA Rape on Campus -
    2014.11.19 UVA Rape on Campus.png
    💩 Rolling Stone magazine published "A Rape on Campus" that describes a purported gang rape of Jackie Coakley by 7 frat brothers (Phi Kappa Psi) at the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville, Virginia, as part of an initiation rite. This fed a false "Campus Rape" lynch-mob that suspended the fraternity, vandalized their FratHouse, started marches against them (and all men, especially fraternities), and impugned the character of many innocents: who sued and won. A few piled on (HuffPo), but a few other outlets were mixed or skeptical, and later broke stories putting her version of events in doubt. Rolling Stone apologized (5 months later) and retracted the story in its entirety on April 5, 2015, long after the harm had been done. They were sued, and settled.


In the mean time, Organizations that have never had fuck-ups nearly that bad, are given warnings. Like moderate and factual reporting by Breitbart.

Conclusion

The left will call it racism if you blanket at entire race, sexism if you do the same with a gender, or will cry foul if everyone in the DNC is stained with their long history of racism (ties with the KKK, BLM, Farrakhan, etc). But if they do it to right of center News outlets or blogs, that's fine.

So CBS is fine, despite Dan Rather, and a rich history of FakeNews. CNN is an even lousier News organization, but is green lit, entirely -- so every story shows up fine -- despite hundreds of FakeNews stories in the last few years. MSNBC? Same.

But FoxNews, Breitbart, Drudge (an aggregator) or The Daily Wire -- those places get red-flagged for having less losers in their portfolio, based on whether they are responsive to some new startups cold calls? Drudge doesn't even write stories, it just links them from elsewhere: how is that not credible? WikiLeaks gets a remark, but no one has ever shown a single thing they published that was not 100% accurate. (They're publishing things like other people's emails and documents: which might be misleading without context, but they're still 100% accurate).

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📚 References