By: Mark Glennon*
This was Media Literacy Week, and the Chicago Tribune’s contribution was an op-ed by the executive editor of NewsGuard, a supposed warrior against media misinformation.
For-profit NewsGuard purports to rate news-source credibility, offering a subscription services you can buy and it even appears in classrooms teaching media literacy.
In truth, its bias is shameless and it’s part of the cesspool of government efforts rigging news to support its narrative. NewsGuard is now subject to a lawsuit over just those government connections.
Among NewsGuard’s partners are the U.S. State Department, the Defense Department, and the World Health Organization, whose establishment views it dogmatically endorses as undisputed fact. The Defense Department has given it at least $749,000.
As reported in Just The News, in 2020 NewsGuard began a partnership with the National Security Innovation Network, which is a joint State and Defense Department program dedicated to finding solutions for the agencies to track “disinformation.” NewsGuard boasted of its collaboration with the government in a press release saying that its “human intelligence approach proved a unique and valuable offering.”
Perhaps worst of all, NewsGuard has partnered with the American Federation of Teachers to spread use of NewsGuard throughout schools. That’s the teachers’ union is headed by Randy Weingarten, who championed prolonged school closings because of Covid and now dishonestly claims otherwise.
“We’ve been able to get our news reliability ratings tool into more than 800 public libraries, where 7 million public library patrons use NewsGuard when they go to the library for their broadband access,” boasted NewsGuard in its AFT announcement. “And we’re already being used in dozens of public schools and universities, as well as independent schools.”
NewsGuard’s advisors include former CIA director and retired Air Force General Michael Hayden, who signed the original letter warning about Hunter Biden’s laptop being a Russian information operation shortly before the 2020 election. He thereby helped cover up the laptop story and the multiple scandals it pointed to. Most recently, Hayden essentially said that a U.S. senator he didn’t like should be removed “from the human race.”
A report by Media Research Center showed that NewsGuard has for years rated left-leaning, establishment news sites consistently higher than conservative news sites.
I can personally attest to that bias. I subscribed to NewsGuard over recent months to see for myself. Its bias is brazen in its 0 to 100 rankings for credibility, with 100 being best.
These rankings may have changed a bit since I unsubscribed, but I, too, saw that left-leaning and establishment sights got far higher rankings than comparable conservative ones. The left’s Axios, for example, which actually tells you what progressive viewpoint you are supposed to think is important in every article, got a perfect 100. Fox got 69.5 but CNN got 80. Radically left Mother Jones got 87.5 but the conservative Federalist got a horrible 12.5. Our local Cook County Record, which is excellent though leans a bit conservative, got a paltry 32. The ridiculously biased and widely ridiculed Politifact got a perfect 100. The list goes on and on.
Most of the rankings that I saw were based on whether the publication adhered to CDC and government messages on Covid. It’s as if NewsGuard is oblivious to how much of that establishment Covid information has been discredited.
Most importantly, and unsurprisingly, the biggest establishment outlets that flak for the government establishment and the left got perfect 100 ratings from NewsGuard — The New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press and National Public Radio. Those are the very sources that suppressed, before the 2020 election, news about the Hunter Biden laptop and multiple scandals it points to. They continue to suppress news about those scandals.
At long last, NewsGuard is getting sued, as discussed here by media critic Matt Taibbi. This week, Consortium News sued NewsGuard for labeling it as a purveyor of “disinformation,” “misinformation,” and “false content,” and, worst of all, “anti-U.S.” The Biden Administration is also a defendant, and the lawsuit also named the Pentagon’s Cyber Command for “contracting with NewsGuard to identify, report and abridge the speech of American media organizations that dissent from U.S. official positions on foreign policy.”
Elon Musk chimed in labeling NewsGuard a “scam,” and additional dirt on NewsGuard is summarized here, among many other places.
The author of the Tribune op-ed mentioned above, NewsGuard’s executive editor, is Jim Warren, formerly with the Tribune. I remember him as an interesting columnist. Why he would have sold out to an operation that disgraces journalism as badly as NewsGuard truly baffles me. It’s not the first op-ed the Tribune has published by Warren on behalf of NewsGuard.
Meanwhile, Gallup reported last week that public trust in media remains at an all-time low, with less than a third of Americans placing any trust in it.
Who needed a Gallup poll to know that?
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/11/chicago-suburb-approves-emergency-disaster-resolution-100-migrants/ So many stories are either completely not reported or stories in the Chicago Media are fabricated nonsense with a one sided view. Not even a joke anymore and still not widely reported by the MSM. The message has been since the pandemic is “shut up and take it, we are in charge, and you have no voice”. This is Illinois and is most certainly Chicago. Yet there are those who continue the cheerleading as if there is a way out of this mess. There is a very clear way forward. By moving and leaving, your hard earned tax dollars… Read more »
Well, that explains AFT’s $350,000 payment for “subscription fees” to NewsGuard Technologies last year.
Regarding the media a quote from Malcom X
The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make the criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press. It will make the criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.
Perhaps NewsGuard and their fellow Stalinist are trying to carry out the aims of Joe’s Ministry of Disinformation that almost sailed under the wire until one of the many nutjobs he has hired made her stupid video and blew the cover. Joe’s handlers are always looking for another angle when their socialist/ progressive/ liberal schemes blow up in their faces.
NewsGuard and the Chicago Tribune. Two rotten apples intent on spoiling the barrel of apples. After reading tha artcle it seems to me they go together like peanut butter and jelly. Unfortunate for the Trib. Looks like they stepped in it again. Whatever happened to doing your research before you print? Maybe they did and they agree with Newsguard. Big mistake, but no surprise.
I don’t need a source that rates the objectivity of other sources. My BS indicator still works pretty well.
I have come to the conclusion that readers are simply poor readers or do not know how to read as they simply rely on headlines for their news source. Consider just a few days ago the New York Times printed a headline about a hospital in Gaza accompanied by a two year old photo of another building that so many took, and still do, as Gospel truth. Fake news at its finest is the pablum that flows from the fish wrap media these days and now we see the ratings agencies are even worse.
That’s a terrible conclusion. We’re still making progress with new gadgets and improving living standards. It doesn’t make sense that we’re going backwards in one metric and moving forward in others. How do you know if anybody took it as true? How do you quantify your research? NY Times is losing readers every day.
Have faith in others and work together to make a difference.
Its absolute on point and you are in left field where the ball sailed over your head yet again. Can’t you even be Ron Leflore and let the ball hit you in the head to maybe knock some common sense into your head? Riverbender is commenting on the propaganda and the amount of absolute reporting bias and complete fiction which is damaging to the republic. There is no relevance to your comments on new gadgets or improving living standards in this article. The media is a mouthpiece for the government. The MSM is no longer a credible source of news… Read more »
This phenomenon is called the Cathedral and modern philosophers have written extensively about it.
Your phenomenon is called Stockholm Syndrome. You do realize you’re the most downvoted guy here, don’t you?
You guys are negative clowns. Hilariously, I can’t figure out if you’re a poor reader, a bad propagandist, in need of mental help, or all of the above. However, I can guarantee that all the useful idiots like you are more damaging, with religiously persistent negativity and sad outlook, than legacy media propaganda. Nobody reads the legacy media or takes them seriously, but lots read sites like Wirepoints and study the sentiment here closely. This comment section is somewhat of a leading indicator and an interactive environment for political action, legislation, and more. Any business manager or sportsball coach is… Read more »
We know you are busy on Halloween with your cheerleading gear on the corner of Madison and Pulaski getting this country and this city turned around with every Rah Rah siscom bah with your Obama Hope and Change sign board. Back on Earth we have a shortage of reality and an excess of propaganda and lies perpetrated daily on the American people. The modern communists do not hide their intentions to anyone at all. No amount of spirit lifting can stop the momentum of what will inevitably be more people leaving Illinois and Chicago. What was a slow drip is… Read more »
Trib strives to be relevant only to its politically-progressive readers, even as it readership continues to plummet. Suspect that Trib editorial board thinks progressive NetGuard content reviewers will give Trib a 100% positive review, so as to garner some new readers. Rather than undergoing some much-needed editorial introspection, Trib steadfastly maintains its progressive woke agenda with little genuine investigative reporting, relying heavily on 2-day old NYT-generated content, and always promoting its lefty reporters’ feelings and personal politics. Trib is no longer providing the competent journalism of a generation ago. Trib’s news content is far too often biased, progressive propaganda reflecting… Read more »
Go woke, go broke is truer than ever.
I unsubscribed to the Tribune rag years ago after a full page story was published about bias against, wait for it, LGBTQ fly fishermen (or fisher-whatever). No more of my $s to stupidity; you all should do the same.
Spot on Jimmy. I used to get the Trib home delivered but canceled with their increasing prices + woke content in the naughty. How that rags continues to stay in business is the 8th Wonder of the World.
‘State Media’ is required for censorship. If another Democrat extremist somehow makes it into the WH, watch out – the Mao Marxists will be very emboldened.
The Trib, for those who still read it, works had to get the facts straight. That’s why you get the Monday evening baseball score on Thursday morning.
what ratings does NewsGuard give at local news outlets—trib, st, crains, wttw, wbez, etc?
It’s ridiculous: WTTW 100, WBEZ 100, ABC7 100, Sun-Times 100, Tribune 92.5.
Hmmm…..those seem like North Korea polling numbers to me.
It’s like how the old communist East Germany, which called itself the “German Democratic Republic” used to boast about “99.8% voter turnout”… “This is proof of our democracy!”, the commie rulers crowed…