The Media Research Center has been waging war for years against NewsGuard for exposing just how shoddy and unreliable right-wing media is. Let’s see how that war has been going since the last time we checked in, shall we?
A Feb. 16 post by Christian Baldwin cheered how right-wing congressmen were targeting government contracts with NewsGuard, which would seem to be all about destroying a company’s free speech:
Four members of a House Armed Services subcommittee have issued a new letter demanding answers from a major advertising agency contracted by the U.S. Air Force for its shady connections to leftist media ratings firms with a track record of trying to bankrupt right-leaning media.
Reps. Jim Banks (R-IN), Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Mike Waltz (R-FL) and Jack Bergman (R-MI) issued the letter on Feb. 9. Citing the failures of the U.S. military to meet its recruiting goals, the letter demands answers from the GSD&M CEO Duff Steward, whose agency received a $741 million contract from the Air Force in an effort to attract new recruits.
The lawmakers sought information to determine whether the ad company distributes Air Force ads in a politically biased manner and conducts business with website traffic cops NewsGuard and the George Soros-tied Global Disinformation Index (GDI).
[…]The investigation is meant to enforce Section 1555 of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act which “requires that any entity placing advertisements on behalf of the Department of Defense certify that the entity does not place advertisements in news sources based on personal or institutional political preferences or biases, or determinations of misinformation.”
But aren’t these right-wing congressmen using the power of government regulation to impose their own personal preference or biases in order to harm a company?
The next day, Jeffrey Lord wrote a column pushing the exact same narrative:
What we have here is typical of the way the federal bureaucracy works. Way below the visibility line, some lefty bureaucrat buried deep inside sends taxpayer funds to promote X lefty cause of the moment.
In this case the subject is the media and the real world effect of using a left-leaning media company – NewsGuard in this case- to promote lefty cause X. That cause here being putting some sort of brake on US military recruitment.
[…]Bearing that in mind, the fact that this lefty outfit is charged by Congressman Banks with injecting “woke Pentagon policies — including the use of left-wing media monitors” into military recruitment drives? And that as a result this has “been choking military recruitment”? Hmmm.
Lord offered no proof that NewsGuard is “lefty,” and its ratings of right-wing outlets do not count as proof. Indeed, all he referenced is the MRC’s shoddy and partisan work. Still, he huffed:
This letter from Congressman Banks and his colleagues is a serious look at just how, in the high-tech world that is the 21st century, left-leaning media can have a serious impact on, in this case, the very basic instrument of advertising for a strong, fully recruited, American military. With no one taking notice.
These four Members of Congress – again they would be Reps. Banks, Waltz, Bergman, and Stefanik – should be applauded for stepping up and taking action. The liberal media response that may be coming be damned.
Good for them.
Joseph Vazquez cheered a right-wing radio host parroting the MRC’s anti-NewsGuard propaganda in an April 2 post:
Blaze Media host Glenn Beck emphasized the utter ridiculousness of leftist website traffic cops like NewsGuard masquerading as unbiased truth gatekeepers, and relied on original MRC Free Speech America research to do it.
Beck ripped into the discredited NewsGuard that has been outed as a leftist operation targeting the advertising dollars of right-leaning media sources during the March 27 edition of Glenn TV. In his X post promoting the segment, Beck referred to NewsGuard as “propaganda” for continuing to behave like an Orwellian arbiter of truth, despite the glaring evidence of its so-called ratings system consistently being shown to favor left-leaning media while punishing the right.
[…]NewsGuard’s treatment of right-leaning media got even worse. “Left” and “lean left” outlets maintained their stellar average of 91/100, while the average for “right” and “lean right” outlets dipped to an outrageously abysmal 65/100, indicating a 26-point disparity.
As usual, Vazquez is falsely portraying correlation as causation — he offered no actual evidence that this disparity is result of NewsGuard’s purported “liberal bias” and not an objective look at the questionable factual record of right-wing outlets. Vazquez then weirdly stuck this at the end of his column, in bold italic:
EDITOR’S NOTE: Readers should be aware that MRC’s NewsGuard studies only use the AllSides media bias list to analyze NewsGuard ratings of outlets considered by AllSides to be “left” and “lean left” or “right” and “lean right.” It does not necessarily reflect MRC’s characterizations of these outlets.
In fact, AllSides is a right-wing company whose assessments of the media largely reflect those of the MRC itself — portraying anything that’s not explicitly right-wing as “left-leaning.” Given that, Vazquez’s little editor’s note seems superfluous.