Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, who have launched an investigation into slanted news rating service NewsGuard, want to know what criteria the company uses to rate news outlets, Committee Chairm James Comer, R-Ky., told Newsmax.
"We know they received some federal funding," Comer told "Rob Schmitt Tonight."
Schmitt called NewsGuard a "biased left-wing attack dog" that labels conservative outlets like Newsmax as "disinformation."
In two annual studies, the Media Research Center has found that NewsGuard consistently gives liberal media outlets higher ratings than conservative ones.
The NewsGuard ratings are then used by major ad agencies to deny conservative media outlets advertising revenues.
"They have a government contract ... this is used as, you know, as a tool to dissuade advertisers from advertising on conservative networks,” Comer said.
Comer also alleged that cable and other platforms have used NewsGuard to block conservative TV media distribution.
Comer, in a letter sent to NewsGuard co-Chief Executive Officers Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz last week, said he is seeking documents related to their company contracts with federal agencies, as well as information about how it adheres to its "policies intended to guard against appearances of bias."
The congressman pointed out that through the "Twitter files," a series of articles published on social media, the government was "involved in a coordinated effort to censor conservative speech."
"We wonder if NewsGuard is also used as a tool to censor conservative speech," said Comer.
"We have a lot of questions for them, and because they get federal money, they fall under the jurisdiction of the House Oversight Committee," he said.
NewsGuard claims to be an objective news ratings agency, but the company makes subjective decisions as to what news reports are rated, allowing them to target conservative outlets.
As an example, Brill has called Hunter Biden’s laptop Russian disinformation.
So far, NewsGuard has not given news outlets a low rating for inaccurate reports on the matter, as the Department of Justice has stated the laptop was indeed Hunter Biden’s.
Brill is a long-time Democrat donor and operative, having backed candidates like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
"Their goal is obviously to bully conservative media out of existence," Newsmax host Rob Schmitt said.
"They want to have just one dialog in this country, they want to have left-wing authoritarianism," he added.
Last year, Congress included in the National Defense Authorization Act a provision that the Pentagon could not spend advertising for recruitment with ad agencies that use misinformation services such as NewsGuard.
NewsGuard's Crovitz told The Hill recently that this orgnaization was looking forward to clarifying a "misunderstanding" the Oversight Committee has about its work for the Pentagon.
"Our work for the Pentagon has been solely related to hostile disinformation efforts by Russian, Chinese and Iranian government-linked operations targeting Americans and our allies," he said in a statement.
He also said his company as the only "apolitical service" rating news outlets, and claimed its system has brought positive and negative scores alike for right-leaning and left-leaning sites.
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