House Oversight Chair James Comer announced an investigation Thursday into NewsGuard, an outfit that rates news agencies’ reliability but which has been beset with allegations of left-wing bias.
Mr. Comer said NewsGuard may violate its own pledges of neutrality based on its employees’ posts on social media. He also said NewsGuard punishes news outlets with bad ratings if they don’t alter their reporting to fit the watchdog’s demands.
The firm analyzes news outlets’ work, gives them ratings and offers that information to companies who use it to decide where to advertise. But some who have dealt with NewsGuard say it pushes them to pursue liberal angles on stories.
Mr. Comer cited one example where The Daily Sceptic, a British site, published a piece on a study that questioned the helpfulness of coronavirus pandemic lockdowns.
NewsGuard prodded the outlet over the study and the Sceptic updated its piece to include a note that the research had not been peer-reviewed. But NewsGuard said only a retraction would satisfy its demands.
“It subsequently lowered the outlet’s reliability rating shared with advertisers after the outlet chose to stand by its published story on the study,” Mr. Comer wrote in a letter to NewsGuard’s top executives.
Mr. Comer also highlighted what he saw as problematic social media posts by NewsGuard employees and contributors, including posts and reposts critical of former President Donald Trump.
Mr. Comer had questions about NewsGuard’s work and its backers.
He said NewsGuard’s “most significant” corporate supporter is Publicis Groupe, an advertising holding company. He said NewsGuard must demonstrate that it can operate free of influence from those kinds of funders.
“The Committee does not take issue with a business entity providing other businesses and customers with data-based analysis to protect their brands. Rather, we are concerned with the potential involvement of government entities in interfering with free expression,” Mr. Comer said in a letter demanding NewsGuard detail its work for lawmakers.
NewsGuard has contracted with the U.S. government in the past, including work with the Defense Department. That prompted Republicans to write language in the annual defense policy bill to limit how the department can spend its advertising money.
NewsGuard co-CEO Gordon Crovitz said Mr. Comer has a “misunderstanding” of the firm’s work.
“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.
“We also look forward to explaining that NewsGuard is the only apolitical service rating news sources — the others are either digital platforms with their secret ratings or left-wing partisan advocacy groups,” he said in a statement. “Under NewsGuard’s apolitical rating system, many conservative outlets outscore similar left-leaning brands: The Daily Caller outscores The Daily Beast, the Daily Wire outscores the Daily Kos, Fox News outscores MSNBC and The Wall Street Journal outscores the New York Times.”
The Media Research Center, a right-leaning news watchdog, last year conducted a study of NewsGuard’s ratings. It found that the firm averaged a 91 credibility rating for “left” and “lean left” media outlets, compared to a 65 rating for “right” and “lean right” outlets.
NewsGuard has questioned MRC’s methodology, saying it cherry-picked the examples it used for the comparison.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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