NewsGuard, the self-appointed arbiter of media reliability, appears poised to peddle some more of its own misinformation—this time about George Washington University Law School Professor Jonathan Turley.
Turley exposed NewsGuard’s apparent plans in a Saturday column for The Hill. In “The Most Chilling Words Today: I’m from NewsGuard and I Am Here to Rate You,” the chaired professor of law detailed a recent communication he received from the ratings giant. Roughly a week after he had penned an earlier column for The Hill in which he criticized NewsGuard as infected with a “pro-Democrat and left-wing bias,” the for-profit organization “came knocking,” Turley explained.
NewGuard had decided to now review Res Ipsa, the blog the law professor hosts at jonathanturley.org, Turley explained. That alone is curious, because many of the articles posted at Res Ipsa have been published by other NewsGuard-rated outlets, such as The Hill and the Wall Street Journal. Beyond that fact and the suspicious timing of NewsGuard’s decision to evaluate the law professor’s writings, the questions posed were “bizarre,” as Turley explained.
For instance, why would he call his 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,” Turley quipped.
While one might laugh off that ridiculous, typo-infused question, NewsGuard’s outreach to Turley included a much more concerning and, as the law professor stressed, “illuminating” inquiry.
“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?” The NewsGuard reviewer queried Professor Turley.
As he noted in his The Hill op-ed on Saturday, Turley has “historically been criticized as a liberal, conservative or a libertarian depending on the particular op-eds.” “I certainly admit to libertarian viewpoints,” Turley continued, “though I hold many traditional liberal views. For example, I have been outspoken for decades in favor same-sex marriage, environmental protection, free speech and other individual rights. I am a registered Democrat who has defended reporters, activists and academics on the left for years in both courts and columns.”
Turley further stressed that his “blog has thousands of postings that cut across the ideological spectrum.” He has “criticized Trump in the past,” the George Washington University law professor added, while also refusing to “suspend [his] legal judgment when cases touch on the interests of conservatives or Donald Trump.” It’s another indication NewsGuard deigns itself not only the arbiter of truth, but also of a law professor’s political or policy-oriented views.
NewsGuard’s efforts to categorize Turley’s diverse ideological views as conservative or libertarian—and then to expect him to inaccurately label himself for his readers—perfectly illustrates a structural deficiency in NewsGuard’s business model: NewsGuard relies on employees and a Board of Advisors hailing from the so-called “mainstream media.” NewsGuard’s Board of Advisors, which serves as subject-matter experts for the for-profit enterprise, is also heavily stacked with former government officials.
Together, then, those conducting or assisting in NewsGuard’s reviews of new media outlets bring an establishment perspective and a siloed knowledge base to their work, leaving them particularly ill-suited to judging the reliability of the alternative press. That fundamental flaw supplants any claimed effort by NewsGuard to operate apolitically and without bias.
There is an even more fundamental problem with NewsGuard’s self-proclaimed unbiased ratings. It flows from the secretive methodology it uses to select articles for review. Here, another recent outreach by NewsGuard illustrates the deficiency—and this one appears purposeful.
Last week, NewsGuard contacted The Federalist’s CEO Sean Davis to inquire about Davis’s post on X that followed President Joe Biden’s sight-unseen announcement on the social media platform that he would not run for re-election. “Do we have any evidence Biden is even alive right now?” Davis queried.
“I just wanted to ask on what basis he made the aforementioned comment,” a News Verification Reporter for NewsGuard noted, seeking “clarity/context” for the post.
Now why would NewsGuard select Davis’s post among the millions made every day on X? Did NewsGuard make similar inquiries to other outlets that, rather than posing questions about the then-still unseen president, pushed Democrat talking points about former President Donald Trump?
For instance, did NewsGuard ask Reuters about its Sunday post on X of an out-of-context comment Trump made during a rally that “in four years, you don’t have to vote again”? While saying it wasn’t “clear what Donald Trump meant by his remarks,” Reuters nonetheless framed the quote as support for Democrats’ accusation that Trump was “a threat to democracy.”
Did NewsGuard ask Reuters what it meant by its post? Is NewsGuard analyzing all the outlets that misrepresented Trump’s comments as evidence of dictatorial tendencies, as opposed to an entreaty for low-propensity voters to drag themselves to the polls this one time? What about outlets like Newsweek, which reported “Donald Trump might not have been shot after all”? Were they on the receiving end of NewsGuard’s inquisitorial emails? If not, why not?
For all its claims of transparency, NewsGuard has refused to explain how it decides how many articles to assess per outlet, or its process for deciding which content to review. The lack of a random and proportionate survey of the media allows NewsGuard to manipulate its ratings.
Want to ensure The Washington Post or The New York Times receive favorable ratings? Avoid reviewing their articles about the Russia collusion hoax or Covid-19. NewsGuard can continue to guarantee favored outlets retain top reliability ratings by also ignoring the false and misleading coverage of the assassination attempt of Trump, which was framed at first as a fall by many outlets NewsGuard rates as reliable.
Without transparency concerning how and why NewsGuard selects posts or articles for review, as well as information about the relative quantity of materials assessed by outlet, NewsGuard’s ratings lack all credibility and are best branded GIGO—garbage in, garbage out.
