WorldNetDaily’s David Kupelian joined the Media Research Center in whining about the website-rating service NewsGuard. He kicked off an April 14 column this way:
Is NewsGuard, the controversial media-rating company that recently sued the Trump administration for investigating it, genuinely committed to impartially assessing news organizations’ “accountability, transparency and credibility,” as it claims?
Or is it – as three different federal investigations all now contend, including an ongoing congressional probe and independent investigations by the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission – that NewsGuard is actually all about driving conservative news organizations out of business?
Kupelian then revealed the reason he cares about NewsGuard so much:
Case in point: WorldNetDaily, one of the Internet’s earliest conservative news sites, founded back in 1997, received a low (“Red label/Unreliable”) rating from NewsGuard several years ago. This was soon followed by multiple major advertising companies suddenly blacklisting the site, causing severe financial repercussions still felt to this day.
It can’t possibly be that WND is, in fact, unreliable. We’ve repeatedly documented how numerous WND articles are misleading or even wrong, which tells us that NewsGuard’s label is quite accurate. Kupelian then served up what he called “a highly revealing and never-before-published account of one pivotal interaction between NewsGuard and WND”:
Back in April 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, NewsGuard contacted WND by email, regarding supposedly “inaccurate information” about COVID on the site:
“We are in the process of updating several of NewsGuard’s reviews with information about news websites’ coverage of coronavirus. I’m writing because we have found inaccurate information about the topic on WND.com and wanted to get your comment before publishing.”
“For example,” NewsGuard continued, “in the story ‘Hold your breath – coronavirus is coming!’ the site makes claims that the virus may have originated in a biosafety lab in Wuhan … [but] medical authorities have found no evidence that the virus was created intentionally or otherwise in a lab; the CDC states that its research suggests ‘recent emergence of this virus from an animal reservoir’ and the World Health Organization states that it likely emerged from bats and that ‘it is believed that the virus jumped the species barrier to humans from another intermediate animal host.'”
The article to which NewsGuard referred was a commentary piece authored exclusively for WorldNetDaily by veteran journalist and former TV news anchor Barbara Simpson, and was published on Jan. 24, 2000 – just four days after the very first confirmed COVID-19 case in the U.S.
Simpson’s article introduced to readers the possibility that instead of having originated spontaneously from an outdoor food market in Wuhan, China, as virtually all the “experts” and news organizations were then claiming, the pandemic virus might rather have originated in the only biohazard level-4 laboratory in all of China, the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Located just seven-and-a-half miles up the road from the supposed “ground zero” outdoor food market, the Wuhan lab – as a shocked world would later find out – just happened to be conducting dangerous “gain-of-function research” (the controversial practice of genetically altering a pathogen to purposely increase its transmissibility and virulence) on bat coronaviruses at the time.
Of course, today it is widely believed that COVID-19 originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology – the so-called “lab-leak theory” – as a 2024 congressional investigation affirmed and this detailed, official White House document explains.
In fact, the “lab-leak theory” remains just that — a theory — despite what the White House claims, and critics have pointed out that the White House document is “pure propaganda” and that “factually incorrect, embellished, or presented in a misleading way.” It seems that Kupelian has fallen for this document because if reinforces his biases. Kupelian continued to complain:
Yet WorldNetDaily was severely penalized by NewsGuard over its early acknowledgement of the “lab-leak theory” and other violations of NewsGuard’s standards.
In reality, however, far from being a “COVID misinformation site,” WND proved to be one of the very best news and information sites in its pandemic coverage – boldly, accurately and relentlessly reporting on the routinely suppressed realities of COVID-19. Not only the outrageously concealed medical realities associated with COVID prevention and treatment – from the shocking health dangers inherent in the mRNA “vaccines” to the proven safety and life-saving efficacy of mocked and maligned drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine – but also the outrageous deceptions of key players, from NIAID Director Anthony Fauci to White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Deborah Birx to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. WND’s unrelenting and painstakingly accurate pandemic coverage – featuring exclusive video interviews with many of the world’s most knowledgeable, courageous and often persecuted doctors and scientists – undoubtedly saved lives and helped preserve the health of many others.
WND’s COVID coverage was “painstakingly accurate”? Yeah, not so much. Again, we’ve repeatedly documented how WND has misled or lied about numerous COVID-related issues, from attacking the efficacy of the vaccines to the fact that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are ineffective against COVID. WND has never responded to any of our documentation against its bogus reporting.
Kupelian concluded with one last whine:
Sure enough, shortly after the 2020 communication from NewsGuard about COVID-19 detailed above, the media team handling WND’s advertising informed WND management that three major advertising companies had suddenly decided to officially blacklist WorldNetDaily. Explaining that advertisers routinely rely on NewsGuard ratings to protect them from doing business with disreputable news sites, WND’s advertising reps also revealed that an astounding 23 other advertising companies had recently either declined, or failed to respond to, all of their inquiries about serving ads on WorldNetDaily, once the poisonous “Red Label” rating from NewsGuard was attached to the site.
As a direct result, WND has had to go without a major share of its previous advertising-based revenue and has thus been forced to rely largely on reader support to continue its mission.
Kupelian should face the fact that WND is, in fact, a disreputable website and that NewsGuard’s assessments of it are accurate.