NewsGuard Strikes Again, Threatening Free Speech

NewsGuard strikes again.

The Globe recently reported that we, along with other online news outlets which specialize in accurate, honest news reporting, have been the target of political censorship by the U.S. Defense Department-backed, Microsoft-backed, Big Pharma-backed “NewsGuard.”

The attacks on the Globe started in 2021 when we received an email from John Gregory, health editor at NewsGuard. We exchanged many emails with Gregory in 2021 and 2022 about NewsGuard’s rating of CaliforniaGlobe.com, where Gregory accused the Globe of publishing misinformation and disinformation about Covid protocols.

We also recently reported that Dennis Prager’s “Prager U” had just launched a campaign to expose NewsGuard with a petition, and an enlightening Prager U video explaining how this is being done.

Now another NewsGuard victim is fighting back. Jonathan Turley, a Constitutional Law Professor at George Washington University Law School, dared to criticize NewsGuard, which he describes as “a rating operation being used to warn users, advertisers, educators and funders away from media outlets based on how it views the outlets’ ‘credibility and transparency.’”

“Roughly a week later, NewsGuard came knocking at my door,” Turley said. “My blog, Res Ipsa (jonathanturley.org), is now being reviewed and the questions sent by NewsGuard were alarming, but not surprising.”

Turley said he’s not sure why he’s receiving the sudden interest from NewsGuard as he has  previously criticized NewsGuard “as one of the most sophisticated operations being used to ‘white list’ and ‘black list’ sites.”

In our case, NewsGuard’s Gregory kept his inquisition up demanding to know how and why we reported the way we did on Covid, the efficacy of mask mandates, the shots, reactions and injuries from the shots. He even claimed that the CDC’s VAERS reporting system (vaccine accident reporting system) was unreliable, demanding to know why we used it as a source.

He questioned how and why we chose the articles to write. He challenged our sources. He said we reported falsely about Covid. He demanded corrections and retractions – or else he would see to it our Google rankings suffered.

It became evident that no matter how much time we invested in sincere answers to his many questions, our Google ratings would suffer – i.e. there was no answer that would satisfy Gregory as his job was to figuratively “crush” the California Globe’s online presence.

As Turley said, “For any site criticizing the media or the Biden administration, the most chilling words today are ‘I’m from NewsGuard and I am here to rate you.’”

Turley continues:

My new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” details how such sites fit into a massive censorship system that one federal court called “Orwellian.”

Conservatives have long accused the company [NewsGuard] of targeting conservative and libertarian sites and carrying out the agenda of its co-founder Steven Brill. Conversely, many media outlets have heralded his efforts to identify disinformation sites for advertisers and agencies.

Brill and his co-founder, L. Gordon Crovitz, want their company to be the media version of the Standard & Poor’s rating for financial institutions. However, unlike the S&P, which looks at financial reports, NewsGuard rates highly subjective judgments like “credibility” based on whether they publish “clearly and significantly false or egregiously misleading” information. They even offer a “Nutrition Label” for consumers of information.

In our fight with NewsGuard, it felt as if we were buried under a mountain of big tech censorship, even though the Globe’s reporting on Covid, our skepticism and questions about lockdowns, masking, social distancing and mandatory shots, was proven valid and correct. The science has conclusively proven that we were right to be skeptical about mask effectiveness, lockdown harms and vaccine overpromising.

But NewsGuard didn’t want us to prove that we were reading the science, talking to scientists and doctors, and were on to something – they wanted us to grovel, to apologize, to beg forgiveness and to make “corrections” or retractions to our articles.

Turley experienced similar irrational demands as the Globe:

NewsGuard also claimed that it could not find a single correction on my site. In fact, there is a location for readers marked “corrections” to register objections and corrections to postings on the site. I also occasionally post corrections, changes and clarifications.

NewsGuard also made bizarre inquiries, including about why I called my blog “Res Ipsa Liquitur [sic] – the thing itself speaks. Could you explain the reason to this non-lawyer?” Res ipsa loquitur is defined in the header as “The thing itself speaks,” which I think speaks for itself.

But one concern was particularly illuminating: “I cannot find any information on the site that would signal to readers that the site’s content reflects a conservative or libertarian perspective, as is evident in your articles. Why is this perspective not disclosed to give readers a sense of the site’s point of view?”

“Point of view.” Is Axios or Politico required by NewsGuard to disclose on their sites “perspective to give readers a sense of the site’s point of view,” because their websites’ content reflects a liberal or leftist perspective, as is evident in their articles, to use NewsGuard’s lingo.

As I have repeatedly lamented, we were punished for journalistic skepticism, which flies in the face of practicing journalism. We weren’t pushing a narrative, we were just asking important questions and talking to experts for answers.

Recently, NewsGuard’s John Gregory emailed us again from his ivory tower in the Ministry of Truth, but had switched up subjects – with no apology for the two+ years of harassment and apparent big tech censoring.

Most recently, he questioned our reporting on California Governor Gavin Newsom, abortion laws, climate change, crime, trans kids, race/racism and DEI, and… sudden deaths of athletes.

Turley reports:

My blog has thousands of postings that cut across the ideological spectrum. What I have not done is suspend my legal judgment when cases touch on the interests of conservatives or Donald Trump. While I have criticized Trump in the past, I have also objected to some of the efforts to impeach or convict him on dubious legal theories.

Yet, NewsGuard appears to believe that I should label myself as conservative or libertarian as a warning or notice to any innocent strays who may wander on to my blog. It does not appear that NewsGuard makes the same objection to HuffPost or the New Republic, which run overwhelmingly liberal posts. Yet, alleged conservative or libertarian sites are expected to post a warning as if they were porn sites.

It does not matter. Apparently from where NewsGuard reviewers sit, I am a de facto conservative or libertarian who needs to wear a digital bell to warn others.

Our job as journalists is to hold government accountable and suss out the truth. NewsGuard is funded by the government, Big Pharma, and Big Tech to prevent that.

Dennis Prager says, “If truth is allowed to prevail, the Left will fail.”

Turley’s “book calls for a number of reforms, including barring federal funds for groups engaged in censoring, rating or blacklisting sites. NewsGuard shows that such legislation cannot come soon enough,” Turley says.

Media plays a critical role in democratic societies, as a watchdog, ensuring government transparency, enabling informed decision-making, promoting free expression, exposing corruption and holding politicians accountable – and the Left will crush every attempt to do so, if allowed to.