The Media Research Center cheered on right-wing lawmakers carrying on its war on NewsGuard through lawfare and punishment in a June 27 post by Luis Cornelio:
The House is set to send a strong message to the Pentagon regarding its collusion with leftist media ratings firms like NewsGuard: Enough is enough.
House Republicans introduced H.R. 8774 on Thursday, a Defense appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2025, which contains language that bars the Pentagon from using taxpayer funds for contracts with so-called media ratings firms like Ad Fontes and NewsGuard.
Led by House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Chairman Ken Calvert (R-CA), this bill, which is aimed at stopping censorship, is a response to the baffling $750,000 contract between the Department of Defense and NewsGuard.
Section 8159 specifies: “None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be made available to NewsGuard Technologies Inc.”
Moreover, Section 8147 prevents the Pentagon from labeling communications by American citizens as “mis-, dis- or mal-information.”
The same section also bans the military agency from partnering with or funding “nonprofit or other organizations that pressure or recommend private companies to censor lawful and constitutionally protected speech of United States persons, including recommending the censoring or removal of content on social media platforms.”
In remarks before the House floor, Chairman Calvert said, “The bill includes multiple general provisions from the House’s fiscal year 2024 bill that pivot the Pentagon away from divisive partisan policies, and towards military readiness.”
Cornelio didn’t point out that Calvert is engaging in divisive partisan policies through government punishment of a private company for failing to promote his preferred right-wing narratives. He added:
The same section also bans the military agency from partnering with or funding “nonprofit or other organizations that pressure or recommend private companies to censor lawful and constitutionally protected speech of United States persons, including recommending the censoring or removal of content on social media platforms.”
He didn’t explain why lies and misinformation should be treated as “protected speech,” given that at least some of it could be considered unlawful and actionable in court.
Tom Olohan gave Ben Shapiro a chance to whine about NewsGuard in a July 10 post:
The Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro took discredited leftist website ratings firm NewsGuard to task during his explosive testimony against advertiser group collusion.
On July 10, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a World Federation of Advertisers initiative, which allegedly exploited its control of 90% of world advertising dollars to starve conservative websites of ads.
Shapiro, whose publication has frequently faced demonetization and censorship on social media, testified against GARM. The Daily Wire editor and GOP members of the committee bashed GARM for allegedly violating antitrust laws and showing flagrant bias against right-leaning voices. They also shed light on bias at NewsGuard, the discredited source GARM uses for identifying sources of misinformation.
“GARM and other organizations like it have worked in conjunction with [the Global Disinformation Index] and NewsGuard to set standards and again those standards are purportedly objective, in practice they rarely are, and so NewsGuard for example has penalized us openly for being a conservative site,” Shapiro said.
When Rep. Barry Moore (R-AL) asked Shapiro about how GARM’s “misinformation” sources— namely NewsGuard and GDI—have impacted The Daily Wire, Shapiro said that they used their unclear standards to harm the reputation of conservative publications.
“The lack of transparency in the standards is actually a weapon that’s used against one side of the political aisle and I keep asking the question over and over and over again: Can NewsGuard name a major right-wing outlet or conservative outlet that it deems brand safe? Can GARM do the same?”
Olohan did not quote Shapiro citing any specific example of NewsGuard having “penalized” the Daily Wire solely for being conservative. Instead, he quoted Shapiro lamely playing whataboutism:
Drew asked Shapiro to provide examples of the absurdity of NewsGuard’s refusal to hold the left accountable while demonizing the right. “The list is extraordinarily long,” Shapiro told him before listing off the media attacks on the Covington Catholic kids at the March for Life; covering for President Joe Biden by calling embarrassing videos of him “cheap fakes” and the ravings of MSNBC host Joy Reid. Shapiro added legacy media’s rhetoric accusing former President Trump of Russian Collusion[.]
As we’ve pointed out, the Covington kids were so not demonized that a defamation lawsuit got thrown out of court and they likely got only token go-away money from CNN (while baselessly portraying such litigation as massive victories), some videos of Biden touted by right-wing media were cheap fakes, and even the FBI and a Department of Justice watchdog agreed that that an investigation of Trump’s relationship to Russia was justified.
Olohan portrayed right-wing lawfare against NewsGuard as a “victory” for the MRC in a July 26 post:
Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) revisited a huge Media Research Center (MRC) victory over a public-private partnership to censor publications on the right.
McCormick spoke with MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider about the successful attempt to add a ban on government funding of NewsGuard censorship campaigns into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). McCormick issued a dire warning: the government is seeking to “weaponize the agencies like NewsGuard.”
McCormick said, “Now they want to use our taxpayer monies in the defense industry to hire industries like–NewsGuard which would keep people off of Newsmax and other conservative venues.” He explained how NewsGuard rates publications according to its biased standards of what is “true” or “factual” and said that failing their metrics will have severe consequences for the publications and their advertising, which is needed to survive.
Three studies conducted by the MRC have demonstrated that NewsGuard is extremely biased in favor of the left.
As we’ve documented, the MRC’s so-called “studies” of NewsGuard are biased garbage designed to advance a dishonest partisan narrative to benefit its right-wing overlords rather than offer genuine “media research.”