NewsGuard Exposes Journalistic Rascals

When I initially heard about the online technology tool NewsGuard, I focused on the credibility and integrity ratings it gives news websites, a critical service in a media landscape marred by disinformation and deceit. Digging deeper, though, I discovered NewsGuard plays an equally important role with reports that expose everything from faulty news algorithms to charlatans masquerading as journalists.

Steven Brill displayed NewsGuard’s skills as journalistic sleuths in a piece he published Tuesday of this week. He exposed “a pink slime” network of five “news” websites orchestrated by political operatives with a hidden agenda.

photo by Philipp Katzenberger

“Five news websites that launched in April 2022 look like benign, politically independent state news outlets with local stories about the best Pennsylvania lakes to visit in the summer and The Michigan Museum of Natural History,” wrote Brill, who founded NewsGuard along with Gordon Crovitz, a former publisher of the Wall Street Journal. But NewsGuard’s reporting revealed the network to be a nefarious effort ahead of the 2022 midterms to promote Democrats running for office in battleground states.”

Brill borrowed the term “pink slime” from the meat-based filler allegedly added to ground beef products without a label, and he probably invited skepticism from critics who think that he, like the rest of the media, has a liberal bias. But NewsGuard is an equal opportunity media critic. Brill’s reporters also published a recent story identifying 88 Truth Social users that promote QAnon conspiracy theories on the website created by former Republican President Donald Trump, who created the site after being banned by Twitter. Trump relayed many of the messages on Truth Social, which has 3.9 million followers, many of whom are predisposed to believe QAnon, an organization that claims that a cabal of sex-trafficking and Satan-worshipping liberals control the federal government. QAnon also has been linked to numerous violent incidents, including the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In the spirit of transparency, Jim Warren, NewsGuard’s executive editor, is a long-time colleague as I revealed in an earlier report that focused on NewsGuard’s rating service, which rates news websites like Standard and Poor’s grades financial services and J.D. Powers ranks cars. Nevertheless, I find NewsGuard’s ratings and special reports on journalistic rascals important enough to override my concerns about the perception of a conflict. NewsGuard is a credible counterpoint to the misinformation and deceit that pollutes a growing slice of America’s fragmented news landscape, a trend that coincides with the collapse of the mainstream media’s business model and the rise of the Internet. The media, in effect, now operates on two levels. One includes a small group of companies or non-profits with the financial muscle to serve elite national and international audiences. The other — a potpourri of failing or struggling, well-known or little-known, journalistic organizations serves the rest of us, or at least the dwindling pool of readers and viewers that seem interested in local news, an endangered species. Scrupulous and devious operators alike percolate on both levels. Instead of informing the public, many simply promote content designed to attract eyeballs and readers for financial and ideological reasons.

Brill and Crovitz deserve some credit for stepping into this chasm They are trying to create an independent business (It costs $4.95 a month) that supports credible journalism and takes on unscrupulous forces that want to capitalize on the media’s vulnerabilities – forces like the “pink slime” network.

In its report, NewsGuard unearthed evidence that identified five “pink slime” news outlets” -- the Michigan Independent, the Arizona Independent, the Pennsylvania Independent, the Ohio Independent and the Wisconsin Independent — with strong ties to The American Independent, a progressive organization founded by Democratic operative David Brock. Stories supportive of Democratic aims appear in the publications and their websites, amplified by Facebook ads designed to increase their reach in the five crucial states.

In the grand scheme of things, the “pink slime” network with its relatively small, obscure print and digital audiences might seem like fringe operation. Taken together, though, they are not. And NewGuard doesn’t limit its targets to small fries.

An equally revealing NewsGuard report this month exposed some disturbing news practices at TikTok, which vies with Google as the most popular worldwide website, particularly among young people.

Four U.S. based NewsGuard analysts in September scrutinized 540 TikTok search results on topics ranging from “2022 election” and “mRNA vaccine” to “January 6 FBI” and “Uvalde, Texas conspiracy. “Many of these charged phrases were suggested by TikTok’s search bar when NewsGuard typed in neutral phrases,” the organization’s report says. NewsGuard found that 105 (of the 540) videos — about one in five — contained false or misleading claims. “TikTok’s users, who are predominately teens and young adults, are consistently fed false and misleading claims when they search on TikTok for information about prominent news topics,” such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine or hydroxychloroquine, a dangerous drug when not taken as prescribed by a doctor, the investigators concluded.

Representatives of TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese Internet conglomerate partially owned by the Chinese government, said it reviews all videos with an artificial intelligence tool designed to weed out harmful information. The company says its reviews aren’t limited to AI. But NewsGuard’s investigation showed much inappropriate and misleading content slips by TikTok guardrails, and even if one gives TikTok the benefit of the doubt, NewsGuard’s investigations clearly shows that an AI tool is not enough.

Pink Slime, Truth Social and TikTok represent a few samples of the reports NewsGuard publishes. There are many more special reports and a misinformation monitor that scrutinizes the media, often with surprising results. “We’ve encountered a lot of surprises along the way. The first and arguably the most substantive, involves the stunning amount of health misinformation. And this was even before the pandemic” Warren says. “For me, the second involves the interest in many sites to actually change their ways when confronted by us. …That said, the amount of misinformation, and just total crap, is indeed head turning. We have a daily window on how the Internet has changed our world, by giving us both more access to accurate information, and to more unadulterated junk.”

I don’t know if NewsGuard will succeed as a business that makes money by supporting honesty and integrity in the news. But I feel a lot better knowing that NewsGuard and its’ 40 journalists are out there trying. Indeed, Brill and Crovitz represent what journalism really needs: Journalists willing to roll the dice on something new.

—James O’Shea