MRC Study Finds NewsGuard Continues Left-Wing Bias

NewsGuard, the left-wing media ratings group, continues to target conservative news outlets, a new study by the Media Research Center (MRC) finds.

In its annual review of NewGuard's rankings, an MRC Free Speech America study found that for the third year in a row NewsGuard continues to significantly outrank liberal and far-left news outlets over conservative ones.

"NewsGuard is just another leftist group trying to censor conservatives," MRC President Brent Bozell said in a statement. "We have the proof."

MRC used a media list provided by AllSides and determined that NewsGuard gave an average "credibility" rating of 91 out of 100 to "left" and "lean left" media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, and Vox.

Meanwhile, it gave an average rating of 65 to "right" and "lean right" outlets — including Newsmax, Fox News, The New York Post, The Federalist, Breitbart, and The Daily Wire.

The analysis called the scores for the right-wing organizations "outrageously abysmal."

The MRC said the 65 rating was worse than its previous two studies, released in January 2023 and December 2021, that found NewsGuard gave those organizations an average rating of 66.

The MRC said NewsGuard, whose CEO Steven Brill is a high-profile Democrat activist and donor, "continues to try to hoodwink Americans into believing it adjudicates media outlet credibility using an 'apolitical' process.'"

"NewsGuard's treatment of legacy media outlets that egregiously maligned the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell by the New York Post during the 2020 election as 'disinformation' is case-in-point," the MRC said.

"NewsGuard's treatment of outlets who deceived readers into believing that the bombshell was fake news is damning given the significant impact Big Tech and Big Media's censorship of the story had on the electoral outcome."

Even though outlets such as The Washington Post, USA Today, and Politico were among the media outlets proven wrong about the Hunter Biden laptop story, NewsGuard left their perfect 100 ratings intact.

In fact, CEO Brill went on CNBC just before the 2020 election to label the Hunter Biden laptop story as a probable Russian "hoax."

NewsGuard has claimed it was not a "vocal advocate" in seeking to censor stories about the laptop.

But its top board adviser, Gen. Michael Hayden, was a prominent signatory to an October 2020 letter that first made the false claim the laptop was simply Russian disinformation, a claim Brill embraced.

"NewsGuard wields its ratings as a cudgel, attempting to scare away advertisers from doing business with media and organizations that have been accused of promoting so-called 'misinformation' or wrong-think on a whole host of issues like abortion, climate change, COVID-19, and elections," the MRC said.

"In so doing, NewsGuard effectively strips media outlets with which it disagrees of their ad money, slowly bleeding out their coffers."

The MRC said NewsGuard kept its perfect 100 scores for The New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, Reuters, and Time even after those organizations were proven wrong for reporting a claim by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry that an Israeli airstrike blew up the al-Ahli hospital in the Gaza Strip.

U.S. and Israeli intelligence determined a parking lot outside the hospital, and not the hospital itself, was struck by rockets fired from within Gaza toward Israel by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group.

Even after clear evidence disproved the false claims that Israel bombed the hospital, NewsGuard continued to chastise conservative media, including Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire, for reporting the true facts.

NewsGuard strongly criticized MRC's study.

"The analysis in question is highly flawed, relying on a cherry-picked sample of just 66 ratings out of more than 9,500 NewsGuard has issued, less than 0.7%.," NewsGuard's Matt Skibinski told Newsmax.

"In fact, NewsGuard's apolitical process has resulted in many conservative publications outscoring similar left-leaning publications and vice versa — for example, The Daily Caller outscores The Daily Beast, The Daily Wire outscores the Daily Kos, and FoxNews.com outscores MSNBC.com."

MRC told Newsmax that these "outscores" have not always reflected the rankings for conservative media like The Daily Caller, The Daily Wire, and Fox News.

It also noted that outspoken conservative critics of NewsGuard, like Newsmax and The Federalist, have also been targeted for extremely low scores.

The MRC called out NewsGuard's cozy relationship with the Biden administration, saying that in 2021, the Pentagon awarded NewsGuard a nearly $750,000 contract to investigate "misinformation fingerprints."

The relationship prompted Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., and Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., to propose an amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act that would prohibit military recruitment funding from being funneled into entities like NewsGuard and the George Soros-tied Global Disinformation Index (GDI).

The amendment also blocks any advertising agency that receives Pentagon funding for recruitment ads from using misinformation media monitors like NewsGuard or GDI.

A version of the amendment was championed by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and was included in the final National Defense Authorization Act.