The Media Research Center’s war on NewsGuard for exposing the factual shoddiness of right-wing websites continues — and gets angrier as its partisan smear campaign does not appear to be hurting NewsGuard’s business. Gabriela Pariseau ranted in a May 2 post:
You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours seems to be NewsGuard’s attitude toward OpenAI.
Gordon Crovitz, the Co-editor and chief of so-called media ratings firm NewsGuard, wrote an article praising OpenAI artificial intelligence ChatGPT’s use of “Trustworthy Journalism” in its answers. But trustworthy according to whom? Well, NewsGuard’s biased ratings system, of course. This comes just two and a half months after ChatGPT refused to answer which news sources are the worst and instead directed MRC Free Speech America researchers to look to NewsGuard ratings for answers.
“Trusting legacy media to train AI is just about as ridiculous as chickens trusting a fox to guard the hen house,” said Michael Morris, Director of MRC Free Speech America. “But that’s exactly what NewsGuard is asking users to do here, and that can only lead to one thing: a really bad day for the chickens.”
In his recent article, Crovitz applauded OpenAI for its recent licensing agreement with The Financial Times (FT), which just so happens to have a 100/100 NewsGuard rating.With that attack failing, Pariseau lashed out at the Financial Times for not being a right-wing lapdog, with a bit of Soros derangement on the side:
FT has repeatedly shown its bias over the years including when in 2018 it made leftist billionaire George Soros its “person of the year.” The outlet has also propped up President Joe Biden when his bad economic policies predictably led to bad economic outcomes. “Unemployment rate in US falls unexpectedly to 13.3%,” FT wrote in a headline. The Financial Times editor and columnist Edward Luce also parroted claims of the Russian collusion hoax when he was interviewed on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
Pariseau didn’t explain how giving Soros that designation equated to “bias.” She also offered no evidence that the headline claim about unemployment was in any way inaccurate. And the MRC link to Luce’s segment about the “Russian collusion hoax” itself linked to an analysis that also stated of the Mueller report: “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
Pariseau also dutifully repeated her employer’s designated talking points: “Crovitz is also in no position to label what news is ‘trustworthy’ as his own ratings firm has repeatedly shown bias and relaxed standards toward leftist media outlets while giving right-leaning media outlets low scores. MRC Free Speech America has repeatedly shown that NewsGuard’s ratings system favors leftist media outlets.” As we have repeatedly documented, the MRC’s “media research” on NewsGuard is driven by partisan animus and demands false balance by assuming all media outlets are equal and refusing to admit that right-wing outlets are, in fact, right-wing.
Catherine Salgado served up another attack on a NewsGuard official in a June 12 post, with some added whataboutism:
NewsGuard’s co-CEO advocated financial censorship and sneered at the American principle of free speech in a recent interview.
During a C-SPAN appearance June 9 to promote his new book, The Death of Truth, NewsGuard co-CEO Steven Brill sneeringly and hypocritically pontificated about those who “actually believe in reality, and people who don’t.”
Brill mourned the fact that anyone can post online without censorship from “gatekeepers,” making the following shockingly anti-free speech statement: “The idea that everybody can have an opinion, [for instance] about who won the election … I think that is a dangerous idea.”
While touting himself and NewsGuard as online arbiters of truth versus “misinformation,” Brill himself made glaringly inaccurate statements.
“The conservatives argue that the social media platforms veer to the left, when, in fact, all the data I’ve ever seen says that they seem to favor right-wing voices over left-wing voices,” Brill absurdly asserted.
Yet multiple MRC Free Speech America studies have shown that right-leaning voices are targeted for censorship more than leftist voices.
Again, those “studies” denied the bias and factual inaccuracies of right-wing outlets and cherry-picked issues with non-right-wing outlets whine ignoring how those outlets worked to correct its errors. Salgado further huffed:
At another point in the interview, Brill dismissed censorship of the Great Barrington Declaration, a 2020 document signed by over 60,000 experts that critiqued COVID-19 protocols, alleging, “The notion that that was suppressed, it wasn’t suppressed. It’s just people just looked at it and said ‘that’s totally bogus.’”
Yet The Twitter Files exposed how Big Tech specifically targeted the declaration and its co-authors.
As we’ve pointed out, the Great Barrington Declaration dangerously promoted “herd immunity” for COVID at a time when a vaccine had not yet been developed and though it was unclear that herd immunity would even work (and it doesn’t, given the need for regular vaccinations).
Salgado called on her boss to personally attack Brill:
Vice President of MRC Free Speech America Dan Schneider slammed Brill’s record of misinformation about the Hunter Biden laptop. “When pressed to answer a serious question, Brill had to admit that he was dead wrong about the Hunter Biden laptop,” Schneider said. “Brill’s NewsGuard, however, pretends to be an unassailable arbiter of online reliability. Yet more hypocrisy from NewsGuard’s Steven Brill.”
Slagado then whined that Brill argued COVID disinformation is not actual “free speech”:
Throughout his interview, indeed, Brill argued that supposed expert consensus should always be prioritized over free speech, despite making contradictory or false statements more than once.
Brill even advocated for financial censorship regarding speculations about COVID-19 vaccine-induced deaths, quoting medical experts whom even Brill was forced to admit had been wildly wrong about some Covid-19 recommendations like not touching cardboard for days.
“There is no way that any social media platform should be free … just to publish that stuff and get the associated advertising revenue,” Brill claimed of the vaccine debate, smugly suggesting that C-SPAN should divide callers not based on political views but on “who, you know, actually believe[s] in reality.”
Salgado didn’t explain why lies and misinformation should never be fact-checked or corrected.
Luis Cornelio cheered right-wing lawfare against NewsGuard in a June 14 post:
Congress is finally taking the dystopian website traffic cop NewsGuard to task for its years-long vendetta against right-leaning media.
On Thursday, the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into NewsGuard over its assault on free speech and its taxpayer-funded contracts with the federal government.
In a letter to NewsGuard CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) requested the submission of documents related to the firm’s ties to the federal government as a potential “non-transparent agent of censorship campaigns.”
This congressional probe follows a lawsuit filed by The Daily Wire and The Federalist — in conjunction with the State of Texas — against the federal government for awarding nearly $750,000 of taxpayer money to NewsGuard in exchange for licensing its data.Comer stated that the investigation will also examine NewsGuard’s abysmally poor adherence to its own policies designed to “ guard against appearances of bias” and “how it tries to avoid and manage potential conflicts of interest arising from its investors and other influences.” Moreover, per Comer:
“One concerned journalist expressed fear that NewsGuard’s activities are an extension of federal efforts—since struck down by courts—to coerce social media companies and to ‘destroy the financial survival of disfavored outlets…”
The congressional investigation will also scrutinize NewsGuard’s “actions that may have the impact of delegitimizing factually accurate information,” Comer added.
Cornelio added personal attacks on NewsGuard writers by Comer.
Another post by Cornelio that day touted even more right-wing legislative targeting of NewsGuard and fellow MRC target Ad Fontes:
Somebody do a wellness check on the embattled media ratings firms NewsGuard and Ad Fontes.
On Friday, the House of Representatives passed 217 to 199 the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), featuring a provision that blocks the Biden administration from exploiting taxpayer dollars for contracts with media rating entities like NewsGuard and Ad Fontes.
This provision is a significant win for free speech advocates and marks the second year in a row that the House, led by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), has put the Department of Defense (DoD) on alert after it controversially awarded $750,000 to NewsGuard for access to its ratings data.
The new provision prohibits the DoD from partnering with entities that do not “rate or rank news or information sources for the factual accuracy of their content” or “provide ratings or opinions on news or information sources regarding misinformation, bias, adherence to journalistic standards, or ethics.”
In a statement to MRC, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) lauded the House for passing the 2025 NDAA. “This year’s NDAA will refocus our military on its core mission of defending America and its interests across the globe,” he said.
In 2023, Speaker Johnson and Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) led efforts to include similar language in the FY24 NDAA to prevent the DoD from contracting with these controversial media ratings firms.
MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider hailed McCormick and Johnson’s leadership. “Speaker Johnson and Congressman McCormick have been fierce fighters for free speech,” he said. “They have done so much behind the scenes and, frankly, do not get enough credit for what they have done to save the most important right we have to keep our constitutional democracy alive.”
Again: All of this is based on partisan attacks that have nothing to do with legitimate “media research.” The MRC — and by extension House Republicans — are trying to destroy companies for not sucking up to them and spouting their preferred partisan narratives.