After months of demanding that its fellow Republicans punish media-ratings service NewsGuard for exposing the shoddiness of right-wing media, the Media Research Center got its narratives rewarded with a provision inserted into a defense funding bill that would restrict government contracts with firms like NewsGuard. But even that wasn’t enough — Luis Cornelio raged in a Dec. 27 post that the Biden administration will find a way around the biased provision:
President Joe Biden signed on Friday the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which included a pro-free speech provision effectively prohibiting the Department of Defense from contracting with radical leftist entities that discriminate against right-leaning media. Hours later, however, Biden invoked a George Soros-tied Supreme Court case to hint at his potential rebellion against the provision he just signed into law.
“While I am pleased to support the critical objectives of the NDAA, I note that certain provisions of the Act raise concerns,” Biden whined, drawing attention to Section 1555(a) of the NDAA. Specifically, the provision prohibits the Pentagon from doing business with NewsGuard, the infamous Internet traffic cop, and the Global Disinformation Index, the blacklisting rag, among others who would use taxpayer dollars to censor.
Biden claimed the Pentagon “will comply with this provision by requiring recipients of such contracts to certify that they will not place the Department’s advertisements based on the enumerated grounds.” But here’s the caveat. Biden cunningly warned that the Pentagon will also comply with the “First Amendment,” claiming that the government cannot force entities — in this case, NewsGuard and GDI — to adopt a specific ideological belief.
Most strikingly, Biden cited a distantly analogous and readily distinguishable case brought by the Soros-funded Alliance for Open Society International to defend his take. The Court held in that case that the federal government “may not use funding and the threat of the loss of funding as a method for the regulation of speech and policies of non-governmental organizations.”
Cornelio then quoted his boss complaining that their game was called out:
MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider torched Biden’s pledge to usurp the pro-free speech provision by citing “one of the biggest censors” in the world as “his get out of jail card.”
Schneider said, “The U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from censoring political speech; likewise government cannot collude with private companies to violate the First Amendment. Several courts already rebuked and ordered him to stop colluding with Big Tech. Congress has also stepped in to pass a law to force Biden to comply with the Constitution. It appears nothing will deter Biden from using government to silence his political opponents.”
Of course, NewsGuard doesn’t “censor” anyone — it merely tells the truth, and for all its right-wing ranting, the MRC has never proven otherwise. The whining continued in a Feb. 1 post by Joseph Vazquez filled with stenography for his boss:
MRC Founder and President Brent Bozell blasted the top brass at leftist internet traffic cop NewsGuard for once again trying to malign research exposing its bias rather than addressing its own shortcomings.
NewsGuard co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz spear-headed their company’s “Social Impact 2023” annual report in which they whined about MRC’s third study exposing that the firm drastically favors leftist media outlets in its ratings. MRC’s latest analysis, using the AllSides Media Bias Chart, showed how NewsGuard blessed left-leaning media (e.g. The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, CNN and Vox) with a stellar average score of 91/100 while slapping right-leaning media (e.g. New York Post, The Washington Times, Breitbart and Washington Examiner) with an abysmally low 65/100 score.
NewsGuard panned the analysis as “fatally flawed” and arbitrarily accused MRC — AGAIN — of having “cherry-picked” the websites we researched and analyzed using its so-called “apolitical ratings.” That’s despite the fact that the MRC relied on another organization’s list entirely.
Bozell blasted Brill and Crovitz in response: “Thank you for recognizing the work of the Media Research Center in your annual report, even if it was to mischaracterize our widely recognized study of NewsGuard’s bias.”
Vazquez didn’t demonstrate that anything NewsGuard did was wrong or unfairly mischaracterizing of his employer; instead, he huffed that “MRC didn’t pre-determine how the results of any of the analyses would turn out. And after three studies, the needle of NewsGuard’s leftist bias has barely budged.” Of course, that could also be a sign that NewsGuard’s ratings are correct and that Vazquez and Bozell are simply complaining about that accuracy.
Christian Baldwin touted more right-wing lawfare against NewsGuard in a Feb. 8 post:
Texas asked the courts to put a halt to the vast web of online censorship operations, funded by the State Department.
New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) announced Wednesday that it filed for a preliminary injunction requesting that the court immediately block Biden’s State Department from funding censorship projects like the Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard. “No arm of the federal government has any business participating in the suppression and blacklisting of domestic media based on its content and viewpoint,” said Peggy Little, Senior Litigation Counsel for NCLA. “The State Department scheme infringes all Americans’ First Amendment rights. Permitting such tools of oppression would render the First Amendment meaningless.”
If affirmed by the court, the injunction would prohibit the federal government from funding or encouraging “the development or use of technology that targets in whole, or in part, Americans’ speech or the American press.”
NCLA is representing The State of Texas, The Daily Wire, and the Federalist who allege that by funding censorship projects through the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, the Biden administration is suppressing the press.
Baldwin failed to disclose the right-wing slant of the Daily Wire, the Federalist and the New Civil Liberties Alliance — which means he’s hiding the partisan nature of their attack on NewsGuard. Instead, he whined that the unreliability of those sites were revealed:
In an October 2022 report, the GDI listed both The Daily Wire and The Federalist, two of the plaintiffs, in its list of “riskiest sites” for advertisers.
NewsGuard, the other alleged malefactor, also had it out for both The Daily Wire and the Federalist, rating them each as unreliable. NewsGuard gave The Daily Wire a rating of 49.5 out of 100 indicating that users and advertisers should “proceed with caution.” Federalist, however, has an abysmal rating of 12.5 out of 100 and a warning to “proceed with maximum caution.”
Baldwin offered nothing to dispute the accuracy of those ratings, let alone that NewsGuard and GDI “had it out” for those right-wing websites. He’s simply spouting the lazy broad-brush argument that those low ratings are ipso facto evidence of bias — the only real thing that MRC has claimed all along in its war against NewsGuard.