Truth police downrate website for quoting Trump
Popular conservative website Timcast.com was demoted this week by fact-checking company NewsGuard for quoting President Donald Trump. NewsGuard lowered the site’s ranking to 82/100 and said it “has occasionally inaccurate and misleading claims.”
“We got one ding for around five stories over a year and a half that we corrected immediately, apparently that’s not good enough for them,” tweeted Timcast.com owner and popular political commentator Tim Pool. “They claimed reporting on a Trump quote is false information because Trump is wrong.”
Pool did not respond to America's Frontline News' request for comment.
While the offending quote is still unknown, the move fits within NewsGuard’s modus operandi.
A December study conducted by the Media Research Company (MRC) shows that NewsGuard rates Left-leaning news outlets 27 points higher, on average, than Right-leaning media outlets.
The company sees itself as the vanguard against “misinformation” which it fights “with journalism – not algorithms.” Instead of using unbiased technology, NewsGuard, promoted by CNN as “the Librarian of the Internet,” prefers to use journalists as the arbiters of truth.
“NewsGuard employs a team of trained journalists and experienced editors to review and rate news and information websites based on nine journalistic criteria," the company’s website site claims.
"The criteria assess basic practices of credibility and transparency. Based on a site’s performance on these nine criteria, it is assigned a Red or Green rating and 0-100 trust score, indicating its credibility.”
As reported by America’s Frontline News, perhaps the biggest irony lies with NewsGuard’s co-founder, Steven Brill. Brill has extensive experience in the media world and has made waves in the past with his investigative reporting skills.
In February 2013 for example, Brill wrote a cover story for Time magazine titled Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us. In the report, Brill revealed how hospitals manipulate the medical system to maximize revenue, and how medical bills have less to do with the actual care provided than we think.
Two years later, Brill wrote a book on the same subject titled America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System. He also released a documentary on Big Pharma company Johnson & Johnson. The documentary exposed how J&J marketed Resperdal to children and the elderly while concealing the side effects. J&J made billions of dollars in profit from the drug.
Now, however, it seems Brill has done an about-face as NewsGuard runs heavy interference for Big Pharma and COVID-19 vaccines.
In fact, NewsGuard has a dedicated section for pushing the COVID-19 narrative in which the vaccine is the only cure. It’s called the Coronavirus Misinformation Tracking Center and it includes a section on the “Top Ten COVID-19 Vaccine Myths”, which it then tries to rebut.
To cite one example, the first listed myth is, “The mRNA vaccines being developed for COVID-19 will alter human DNA.” NewsGuard dedicates two paragraphs trying to claim this is false.
However, a study from Lund University shows that the COVID-19 vaccine does indeed create new DNA after attaching to the host’s liver cells.
This same organization is targeting schoolchildren.
In January, Axios posted a news article that NewsGuard will become the news-of-choice for schools around the country as the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the second largest teachers' union in the U.S., buys 1.7 million licenses.
"We are constantly trying to help our students, particularly our middle, high school and postsecondary students, separate fact from fiction, as we help them develop their critical-thinking and analytical skills," said AFT president Randi Weingarten.
The partnership between Brill and Weingarten is a stark change from their previous relationship. In 2011, NewsGuard co-founder Steven Brill blasted Weingarten for protecting incompetent teachers. He also slammed Weingarten for fighting necessary reforms and merit-based pay.
Weingarten has notoriously pushed for schools continuing to mask children. In January, Weingarten referred to parents who disagree with mask mandates for children and Critical Race Theory brainwashing as racists.
