NY Post: State Dept Paid NewsGuard to Tar Conservative Media

The Biden administration could not get around the First Amendment in silencing dissent, but it has effectively found a way through the State Department paying NewsGuard to defund conservative media, according to a trio of researchers from the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER).

The First Amendment is "is so clear that only a politician could manage to miss the point," AIER senior researchers Phillip Magness, James Harrigan, and Ryan Yonk wrote in the New York Post this week.

"And when politicians miss the point of a straightforward, necessary protection, they manage to find all kinds of people willing to help them place ideology above constitutionality, common sense, and simple decency.

"We give you the Biden State Department and NewsGuard."

The Post and AIER have been targeted by NewsGuard — founded by Steven Brill, a Democrat activist and donor, in 2018. Newsmax has reported it has been, too.

NewsGuard's rankings have since been used by advertising agencies to target and block conservative media from obtaining advertising revenue.

"NewsGuard bills itself 'The Internet Trust Tool' and purports to offer 'transparent tools to counter misinformation for readers, brands, and democracies,' which admittedly sounds impressive," the AIER researchers wrote for the Post.

"But what is the likely outcome when the U.S. government funds this corporation through something called the Global Engagement Center?"

They point to the lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton this week along with The Daily Wire and The Federalist, alleging the State Department has been funding technology to "render disfavored press outlets unprofitable."

"Conservative voices, it says, are being suppressed," they wrote. "And when they're suppressed, their advertising revenues drop. And if their advertising revenues drop far enough, they will eventually be forced to exit the market.

"We know this to be NewsGuard's modus operandi because it did this to us at the American Institute for Economic Research."

NewsGuard's silencing of COVID dissent hit AIER went it hosted the conference that led to the "Great Barrington Declaration, a statement that opposed the use of lockdowns during the COVID pandemic," they wrote.

That led to the National Institutes of Health's Francis Collins to direct Dr. Anthony Fauci to a "quick and devastating published take down" of the GBD, which placed AIER on NewsGuard's radar with a "fact-check," they continued.

NewsGuard's fact checker then used a lockdown British liberal politician, former U.K. Health Secretary Matt Hancock, to attack the scientific research.

"As the architect of Britain's draconian lockdown policies, Hancock was hardly a neutral party," the researchers wrote. "Indeed, he left his position in disgrace after being caught violating his own lockdown rules.

"Despite presenting itself as a fact-checker, NewsGuard also has a penchant for spreading misinformation of its own. NewsGuard spent most of 2020 specifically targeting websites that shared or promoted the lab-leak hypothesis of COVID-19."

NewsGuard attacked conservative websites that discussed the potential of COVID leaking from the Chinese virology lab, using the same fact-checker that attacked the GBD.

"NewsGuard had its facts wrong, yet toed the Biden administration line," the researchers wrote. "But, hey — that's where the money was.

"After revelations about the likelihood of a lab leak forced its hand, NewsGuard quietly retracted 21 ratings it had inappropriately applied to other websites.

"That's what happens when politicians enlist the help of (read: pay for) ideologically motivated but wholly unqualified journalists to determine what should and, more important in this case, should not be freely available for the public to read.

"And now we know the U.S. government is paying their salaries to do so."

AG Paxton's lawsuit might even uncover more pay-for-play allegations.

"Who knows what else we'll find as the federal lawsuit enters discovery?" the researchers concluded. "The filers are doing the First Amendment — and all Americans — a real service."