(Article republished from Revolver.news)
Nowhere is the scam of “disinformation” journalism more apparent than in the services of a shadowy company called Newsguard. Newsguard markets itself as an “internet trust tool” that assigns “nutrition label” ratings to news sites to indicate their “trustworthiness.”
We help you decide which news sources to trust — with ratings from humans, not algorithms.
With trust ratings for over 6,000 websites produced by real journalists, NewsGuard gives you all the context you need as you read news online. Try NewsGuard today for free with a two-week trial. After two weeks, membership costs just $2.95/month in the U.S., £2.95 in the UK or €2.95 in the EU.
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Click through to see a detailed trust rating and “Nutrition Label” for the site written by NewsGuard’s analysts. [Newsguard]
Newsguard was rather scandalized by Revolver News’ reporting in 2020 that many of the same people who run so-called “Color Revolution” regime change operations overseas were using the very same tactics to thwart Trump during the 2020 election. Just days ago, Newsguard sent one of its minions to admonish us and ask some loaded questions for a “follow-up” report on Revolver News.
Evidently, the Narrative guardians at “Newsguard” took issue with the fact that Revolver dared to publish a guest piece by a Naval Commander that asked some inconvenient questions about the Pfizer jab. Here’s the e-mail from Newsguard employee Lorenzo Arvanitis:
Hi,
I hope this finds you well. My name is Lorenzo, and I’m an analyst at NewsGuard, an independent organization that reviews news outlets for accuracy and transparency. We’ve reviewed more than 6,000 news and information sites based on nine apolitical and widely-accepted journalism criteria. I’m writing because NewsGuard is updating its review of Revolver News, and I had some questions about the site that I was hoping you could clarify:
1. Could you give me some information about who is behind the site? Why doesn’t the website provide details about its ownership, editors, or authors?
2. I found that some stories on the site advanced claims that are disputed or, in some cases, inaccurate. For example, one article claimed that the FDA did not grant full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, but instead, approved a separate vaccine called Comirnaty that is not yet available, which is not true. The same article also made inaccurate claims about the COVID-19 vaccines being “gene therapies” and misrepresented data from VAERS to assert that the vaccines cause “more harm than the disease itself.” What is your perspective on these claims, which have been refuted by public health experts and the FDA?
3. Does the site ever issue corrections to stories that contain errors, either factual or grammatical?
4. How should readers distinguish between news and opinion given that the site does not disclose its point of view and many of its news stories contain opinionated language advancing an undisclosed right-wing perspective?
Thanks again. I hope to hear from you soon.
Best,
Lorenzo
Usually, the Regime narrative guardians are not sending their best. This time, they actually did us the courtesy of sending a halfway decent “fact-checker,” at least by pedigree. Arvanitis (from the e-mail above) is a 2021 Yale graduate, summa cum laude, in Cellular and Molecular Biology. Impressive!
Newguard’s special concern for policing Covid information might have something to do with the fact that its third largest investor is a multi-billion dollar global communications company called Publicis Group. An excellent investigative report on Newsguard conducted by MintPress News revealed not only Publicis’ shadowy ties to the government of Saudi Arabia, but the fact that pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Bayer/Monsanto are some of Publicis’ top clients.
Newsguard, the company that charges clients to vet their news for them, conveniently fails to disclose this conflict of interest in its evaluation of news that could directly affect the profits of said pharmaceutical companies.
Newsguard’s special selling point is that they employ actual journalists to decide whether a website is appropriate for you to look at or not, rather than outsourcing this critical censorious task to AI algorithms.
Given that journalist coverage of the Trump administration was 92 percent negative, and that 96 percent of journalist donations went to Hillary over Trump 2016, we might be forgiven a dose of healthy skepticism that Newsguard is truly interested in providing fair and neutral assessments of news sites.
Back in August of 2020, assiduous hall-monitoring in defense of Regime-mandated narratives actually earned Newsguard a coveted prize from the Pentagon and State Department for combating “Covid disinformation,” which only demonstrates that Big Tech, corporate media, Big Pharma, and the military-industrial complex all comprise one gigantic incestuous cesspit.
Indeed, the Newsguard service that markets itself as an “internet trust tool” has among its board of advisors:
- Michael Hayden: former head of the NSA head and architect of national electronic surveillance system on US citizens, who went on to lie about the existence of said system (or at least engaged in vigorous deception) about it to Congress. After whistleblower Edward Snowden famously exposed the existence of illegal NSA surveillance on US citizens, Hayden revealed his attitude toward truth telling by (jokingly?) calling for Snowden’s assassination. In addition to heading the NSA, Hayden also headed the CIA—an organization renowned for its respect for truth. Hayden’s name appears hundreds of times in the Senate’s scathing 2014 report on CIA torture methods. Charming fellow.
- Arne Duncan: former Secretary of Education for President Obama. In his capacity as Secretary of Education, Duncan is perhaps best known for his defense of “safe schools czar” Kevin Jennings. Jennings came under fire when it was revealed that, as a school teacher, Jennings refused disclose to authorities his knowledge that a 15 year old student was having an illegal sexual relationship with an adult. A Washington Times report revealed that Jennings was also involved in promoting a reading list for children 13 years old or older that made the most explicit sex between children and adults seem normal and acceptable, and also praised Harry Hay, supporter of the notorious North American Man Boy Love Association. When these controversies were brought to light, Arne Duncan responded that Jennings was “uniquely qualified for his job” and that he was ” honored to have him on our team.” We wonder what it is about Mr. Duncan, then, that makes him uniquely qualified to advise a company like Newsguard, which is responsible for assigning Orwellian nutrition labels to news websites.
Hayden and Duncan only scratch the surface when it comes to the list of censors and moral scolds advising Newsguard on which websites they deem suitable for consumption. Newsguard also features on its advisory board a man named Richard Stengel. Stengel is a former senior official in Obama’s state department who once described his role as being that of “chief propagandist”:
Yes, you heard that right. That is Obama’s former self-described “chief propagandist” at the State Department stating that he has no problem whatsoever with propaganda, and in fact supports the idea of countries using propaganda domestically against their own citizens.
That Newsguard chose this self-described “chief propagandist” of the Obama era to sit on its board is deeply troubling, and destroys any semblance of neutrality or credibility that would be needed in a company that insists on adding “nutrition labels” to determine which news site the cattle are allowed to consume.
When it comes to Stengel, the above clip is only the tip of the iceberg. Here is a fascinating clip of Stengel discussing Fox News and his role as board member of Newsguard:
Here Stengel proclaims his dislike for Fox News, while begrudgingly conceding that Newsguard can’t give them a red mark as that would completely undermine their already thin pretense of balance. Stengel identifies two Fox News journalists he respects—Chris Wallace and Shephard Smith—the two most anti-Trump anchors associated with the network. The Artist Formerly Known as Fox News’ Shepard Smith has since found a more welcome home at NBC, where his lowly-rated show is reportedly on the outs.
Stengel’s attitude reflects a deeper truth about Newguard’s approach to balance and bipartisanship. Even the minimal concessions they make to bipartisanship are exclusively “Never Trump.” Where Rick Stengel and Newsguard deign to make a concession to bipartisanship, it simply means Never Trump Republicans and Resistance Democrats joining arms to silence and suppress Trump and his supporters.
This brings us to the most disturbing of all of the clips that Revolver News’ investigative team found on Newsguard’s Obama-era “chief propagandist” Rick Stengel. In the following clip, Stengel argues for curtailing the free-flow of information on the internet, and even proclaims that the First Amendment ought to be modified in the digital age to allow for the censorship of so-called “hate speech”—that is, presumably, speech that Rick Stengel’s former boss Obama and current boss Joe Biden hate.
And this is not simply a one-off interview on Stengel’s part. As reported by the New York Post, Stengel wrote a shocking op-ed in the Washington Post advocating for the repeal and replacement of the First Amendment in order to accommodate hate-speech laws.
Stengel’s Washington Post piece prefigures and supports a New York Times hit by Emily Bazelon, a former senior editor of the far-left liberal Slate blog who has attracted controversy even among her fellow leftists for allegedly unethical reporting practices. In her New York Times piece Bazelon entertains a “re-imagining” of the First Amendment to combat so-called “disinformation.”
... story continues
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