After NewsGuard accused Consortium News of publishing “false content” on Ukraine, CN responded with a compendium of evidence that did not deter NewsGuard from assessing a red mark.
Torchlight procession in honor of the 106 anniversary of the birthday of Stepan Bandera, Kiev, Jan. 1, 2015. (All-Ukrainian Union CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
When the news rating agency NewsGuard first contacted Consortium News in March it accused us of publishing “false content” on Ukraine before CN had an adequate chance to respond.
NewsGuard’s subsequent condemnation of CN, with a warning to readers to proceed with caution before reading the site, flies in the face of Consortium News’ exhaustive, 9,000-word reply refuting the allegation.
Consortium News entered its 28th year of publishing in November after the late investigative reporter Robert Parry founded the site in 1995. Over those years, CN has published an estimated 27,000 articles.
In nearly three decades of journalism, NewsGuard found just six articles objectionable because of the use of four words and one phrase. The words are “infested,” “imperialistic,” “coup” and “genocide,” and the phrase is “false flag.” That’s it.
NewsGuard has not flagged just those six articles, however. Instead, every Consortium News article going back to the 1990s that can be found on the internet today is condemned with a red mark next to it on search engines and in social media.
If you have NewsGuard’s browser extension installed on your computer, you will also see the red mark next to the url of any video CN Live! has published since 2019, though NewsGuard never mentioned reviewing any Consortium News video. The entire history of this journalistic institution has been condemned as a purveyor of falsehoods, and readers and viewers are warned to stay away.
NewsGuard’s red mark appears next to a 1999 article written by Robert Parry in this Google search.
NewsGuard says Consortium News is publishing “false content” because it has reported on a 2014 U.S.-backed coup in Kiev and on the pervasive influence of neo-Nazism in Ukraine. NewsGuard says the coup never happened, calling it instead a “revolution,” and that neo-Nazism is negligible in the country.
It objected to the word “infested” to describe neo-Nazi presence in the Ukrainian government in articles by Patrick Lawrence and by John Pilger. It objected to the word “genocide” in an article CN republished by the Los Alamos Study Group and in the Pilger article regarding killings in the Donbass.
It rejected the word “coup” in a piece republished from Michael Brenner about the overthrow of the Ukrainian government, and the phrase “false flag” in a column CN republished from Caitlin Johnstone about the suppression of evidence by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in Syria.
NewsGuard appears to have overlooked the disclaimer found under all of these articles: The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News. CN responded to NewsGuard that it did not agree editorially with the use of “infested” or “genocide” but allowed the authors to make those judgements. Consortium News did, however, vigorously defend its reporting on the coup and the influence of neo-Nazism.
NewsGuard’s Assessment
NewsGuard begins its assessment of Consortium News by warning readers to “proceed with caution” as though it is dangerous for their minds.
It describes CN as: “A website that covers international politics from a left-wing, anti-U.S. perspective that has published false claims about the Ukraine-Russia war and other international conflicts.”
If CN were really an “anti-U.S.” website it would be happy to let things in the U.S. run its course towards steep decline. It would welcome rather than criticize foreign and domestic policy decisions by U.S. leaders that are harming the nation.
Because CN argues for a more equitable society and an end to U.S. aggression in pursuit of dominating the world, it wants the U.S. to improve the treatment of its citizens and to become a more responsible citizen abroad. Performing journalism’s supreme function of critically analyzing government does not make one “anti-U.S.”
‘Imperialistic’
“The site’s commentary is frequently critical of the foreign policy of the U.S. and other Western countries, often describing them as ‘imperialistic,'” NewsGuard wrote, with “imperialistic” in quotes. It says:
“For example, a May 2022 opinion article headlined ‘Caitlin Johnstone: If the US Wanted Peace in Ukraine’ stated: ‘Fighting Nazis, protecting democracy and waging peace are not things the U.S. empire actually does in real life. The U.S. is the most tyrannical and murderous regime on earth, by a truly massive margin, and it will happily risk the life of everyone on earth if it means securing planetary rule.’”
NewsGuard considers this proof of Consortium News “repeatedly publishing false content.”
Seen objectively, the United Sates has killed more people in military action than any nation since World War II, and no one can argue the U.S. does not seek global dominance, whether one is in favor of it or not.
That the U.S. has invaded numerous nations against the will of local populations (occupying several of them); has overthrown even more governments and has military bases across the globe are all matters of historical record.
The question of whether the U.S. is imperialist or not hinges on whether one believes U.S. intentions are somehow uniquely benevolent in the annals of invading and occupying powers.
No Nazis and No Coup
NewsGuard’s main two complaints against Consortium News are that it reported that there was a coup in Kiev in 2014 and that neo-Nazis have significant influence in Ukraine.
NewsGuard demanded CN correct both and because it did not, it docked CN points for failing to “regularly clarify and correct errors.”
In its 9,000-word reply, CN pointed out with copious evidence — most of it from NewsGuard, green-checked sources — that NewsGuard was in error and that it needed to correct its reporting on Ukraine.
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Consortium News has today separately republished its responses on the coup and on the question of neo-Nazism under the titles “Evidence of US-Backed Coup in Kiev” and “On the Influence of Neo-Nazism in Ukraine.”
The latter traces the history of U.S. and C.I.A. involvement with Ukrainian fascists from 1948 to the present. The heavily sourced, 3,490-word article draws on a U.S. government study to tell the story of Mykola Lebed, a top aide to World War II, Ukrainian fascist leader Stepan Bandera, whom the C.I.A. re-located to New York City. From there he organized propaganda and sabotage operations inside Soviet Ukraine that continued until Ukrainian independence in 1991.
The article then details the explosion of popular support for Bandera in Ukraine over the past 20 years and the role played by neo-Nazis in the overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically-elected government in 2014, which was fully documented at the time by a plethora of mainstream, green-checked news media.
The piece goes on to document Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy’s tolerance of neo-Nazis, including inviting one to address the Greek Parliament with him, which caused an uproar among former Greek prime ministers and other high officials.
Nevertheless, NewsGuard continues to insist that neo-Nazism has a marginal presence in Ukraine, citing low polling numbers of fascist parties, an argument that the virulently anti-Russian think tank Atlantic Council itself called a “red-herring.” NewsGuard flatly asserts: “There is no evidence that Nazism has substantial influence in Ukraine.”
The role of neo-Nazis in the March 2014 Kiev coup was then fully explored in the second article, a 3,203-word piece that documented the U.S. role in supporting the unconstitutional change in government.
It is hard to imagine how anyone could ignore this accumulated body of proof and continue to insist that neo-Nazism is insignificant in Ukraine and that no coup took place, unless one has a pre-determined position that will resist evidence to the contrary.
Maidan coup in Ukraine, 2014. (Wikipedia)
OPCW & Douma
NewsGuard objected to the use of “false-flag” to describe what happened in the Damascus suburb of Douma in 2018. It points to an article by Aaron Mate’ in The Nation, and whistleblower evidence published by WikiLeaks, which showed that reports by OPCW inspectors in Douma questioning whether there was a chemical attack at all was suppressed by the OPCW under U.S. pressure.
Deleted sections from the OPCW final Douma report indicated that a cylinder allegedly containing chlorine was likely staged to make it look like it was fired from Syrian aircraft, The Nation reported. Based on that “evidence,” the U.S. carried out air strikes against Syria.
In its assessment of Consortium News, NewsGuard wrote:
” … neither the leaked OPCW documents nor the Nation article support the Consortium News article’s claim that the chemical attack was a ‘false flag incident,’ in which the Syrian government would be blamed for an attack it did not commit. Also, there is no evidence that the OPCW performed a ‘coverup’ of evidence that contradicted the final report, let alone that such a coverup occurred as a ‘dictate’ from the U.S. government.”
While the exact term “false flag” is not found in The Nation article or in the leaked OPCW documents, the events described are indeed an attempt to plant evidence to falsely blame Syria — the exact definition of a “false flag” event. Also described is U.S. pressure to delete this information from the final OPCW final report, which can certainly be deemed a “coverup.”
Disinformation
Ignoring a massive body of evidence that undercuts one’s position and instead persisting in repeating falsehoods that have been ingrained in the public mind is a hallmark of disinformation.
This was on display, for example, at the National Press Club in Washington this month during a Michael V. Hayden Center event on imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. Hayden is the former Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency director who sits on NewsGuard’s advisory board.
Assange lawyer Barry Pollack told the audience that the indictment against Assange does not accuse him of hacking a government computer to steal classified documents but rather of trying to hide the identity of his source, Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. The indictment makes clear that Manning already had security clearance access to all of the material, Pollack said.
Sitting next to Pollack on stage was Holden Triplett, a former F.B.I. agent who was director for counterintelligence on the National Security Council in the Trump White House. He immediately accused Assange of “hacking,” despite what Pollack had just said. Triplett later told me he had read the indictment, so he knew what the truth was. His approach reflected the use of disinformation that becomes entrenched in the public and, after time, comes to be accepted as unquestionable truth.
Triplett’s actions echoed the practice of government disinformation, very much as U.S. intelligence officials feed journalists disinformation to create a false narrative that is intended to mislead the public and cover-up what is actually taking place.
Through such psychological operations, the American people, for instance, were led to believe for years that the United States was winning in Vietnam, when it was actually losing, as the Pentagon Papers proved. Many examples have followed of completely false stories being planted into minds to start and keep wars going, the fake WMD narrative in Iraq perhaps the most infamous.
Today the war people are being fooled about is in Ukraine. Sometimes a psyop doesn’t involve inserting false information, so much as leaving out the truth. The American people, and by extension people around the world, have, for instance, been led to believe that an unprovoked Russian madman started the war last February.
That’s because they are purposely not told that the war actually began in 2014 after the U.S.-backed coup in Kiev led Russian speakers in Donbass to declare independence, after which the coup government militarily attacked them.
Other facts are removed from the story, such as Russia’s proposed treaties with the U.S. and NATO last December that would have prevented Russia’s intervention in the Ukrainian civil war.
So many people are subject to psyops that telling the truth becomes a formidable task. You become the one that is out of step. You are the one that seems to be mad, the one that is portrayed as spreading disinformation.
Consortium News‘s mission since 1995 has been to fight against such psychological operations that have come to rule over Americans (in a ‘psyopcracy’), convincing them of all manner of falsehoods, such as the fantasy that their nation is motivated by humanitarian and democratic principles in the world. And that there was no coup in Ukraine and neo-Nazism is not a problem.
Who Is NewsGuard?
Former C.I.A. & NSA director Michael Hayden (left) at the National Press Club in Washington in December. (Joe Lauria)
NewsGuard set itself up in 2018 as a judge of news organizations’ credibility. The front page of NewsGuard’s website shows that it is “partners” with the State Department and the Pentagon, as well as with several major corporations, such as Microsoft. The nature of these “partnerships” is not entirely clear.
NewsGuard is a private corporation that can shield itself from First Amendment obligations. But it has connections to formerly high-ranking U.S. government officials in addition to its “partnerships” with the State Dept. and the Pentagon.
Among those sitting on NewsGuard’s advisory board are Gen. Michael Hayden, the former Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency director; Tom Ridge, the first U.S. Homeland Security director and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former secretary general of NATO.
NewGuard says its
“advisors provide advice and subject-matter expertise to NewsGuard. They play no role in the determinations of ratings or the Nutrition Label write ups of websites unless otherwise noted and have no role in the governance or management of the organization.”
The co-CEO, with former Wall Street Journal publisher Louis Gordon Crovitz, is Steven Brill, who in the 1990s published Brill’s Content, a magazine that was billed as a watchdog of the press.
NewsGuard is a government-affiliated organization judging Consortium News, which is totally independent of government or corporations. NewsGuard acknowledges CN‘s independence in its judgment.
NewsGuard’s ties to the U.S. government suggests that its role is to uphold government narratives and to fend off evidence that challenges it, at the risk of undermining its own position.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe
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I hope your commentators are activists in some way or another. Would help getting what little truth there is in the world, out to thise who are never exposed to it.
“So many people are subject to psyops that telling the truth becomes a formidable task. You become the one that is out of step. You are the one that seems to be mad, the one that is portrayed as spreading disinformation.” Struck home and too damn true and why I will spend hours replying to people who put Max B down with more info from CN and others. It’s an information war as Chomsky said. Wish all the folks who responded to you are involved in this info war in a way that matters and not just sitting on the sidelines and making safe comments that don’t make them targets as dissidents.
Voltaire said: “It is dangerous to be right when those in power are wrong.” He is right. Ive lost a few friends lately.
I don’t have much money but you are getting more of it. So is Grayzone. I shared your articles relevant to Max Blumenthal’s last twitter I know of where he tried to confront those walking towards capital to support Zelensky. Not sure how much people read anymore. Also, to everyone I responded to, or most, not only your article: On-the-influence-of-neo-nazism-in-ukraine.
I also shared Redacted’s interview of Whitney Webb who I admire. I do not hold Redacted in same esteem, but they gained ground with me on bringing that journalistic researcher into their podcast. Here’s the link: hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q28wkPhMQrY
I do not mind it took me some unpaid hours to share and reshare over and over again. I just hope it helps get out the truth your reporting and changes a a few peoples mind. Hope it’s not negative and makes you more targeted, but get ready for it just in case.
I get on the streets too and hold signs. I’m with you guys and gals even if I don’t have a ton of money to give you. I do not know what these other commentators do. I do hope it’s something.
It seems to me that the most appropriate and effective action for you to take would be a civil suit for damages for libel intended to harm your business, and defamation of character
Okay. You tried very hard to deal with this logically and with facts. It’s clear they function more like a bot. Time toignore them.
The most reliable use of newsguard is as an indicator of veracity. Those without the badge are propaganda outlets.
NewsGuard is our very own Ministry of Truth.
Not for nothing, these busy folks have provided a nifty, clickable index of articles. My father, who emigrated to the States in 1928 as a young schoolboy, used to bemoan the bureaucracies of Europe with their endless blind alleys and snooping, censorious bean counters. We can be grateful that somebody has taken the time and effort to compile this convenient webpage. Our tax dollars at work.
Not sure your or my tax dollars are at work here. I think our best journalists survive, like a politician should, by the number and donations of the people who believe in them.
Thanks for the “Who is NewsGuard” segment.
The “fact-checkers’ are mostly a scam; what they’re really doing is enforcing the government line.
I’ll make an exception for the high proportion of their posts that just say “that video is from 2015,” or the equivalent. That’s an establishable fact – and usually non-controversial.
But anything with political weight? Propaganda.
Agree
Keep the faith!
This so-called “newsguard” has nothing to do with identifying unreliable news outlets and everything to do with the US government trying to silence any organization that challenges the US government’s narrative. Their main complaint seems to be that CN is “left wing” (whatever the hell that means) and “anti-US”. How, precisely, does that make CN unreliable? If they really want to identify unreliable news sources, they should be hiring former staffers at Soviet era Russian news sources like Pravda and Izvestia. THOSE guys knew how to put out unreliable news reports and the US seems hell bent on replicating Russian mistakes.
Beautiful, elegant, courteously devastating. If I were in any way affiliated with Newsguard, I’d never again bear to look at myself in the mirror.
Dear CN, please, please hold the fort! The silence of critical voices is deafening these days, and your in-depth analysis of how criticism is throttled is fascinatingly instructive.
A point that gets usually lost by americans, is that the majority of citizens in the Donbass, used to have russian passports up until 1991. They used to differentiate between state and ethnicity. A child born in usbekistan to russian parents would be declared a russian, and vice versa. This makes, by soviet definition, those who held russian passports in 1991 as well as there descendants russians. This definition is widely accepted in europe. For example, after the fall of the berlin wall millions of sowiet citizens with german ancestry moved to germany, and became citizens. They could do so if they were able to proof that their ancesters origin was german. A large swoth of german crafters went to russia during the reign of tsar katharina the great. Many of there descendents came back after more than a century.
For the russian citizens, not acting on the killing of fellow russians in donbass, would have been unacceptable. If for the sake of the argument we say russia ist a democracy, it seems they had no choice but to invade, because otherwise the gouverment would have lost the next election. One of the many reasons why Vladimir Putin has to be depicted as a dictator by the MSM.
Yes, and it’s a very important point. Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, etc., are all Slavs – the same ethnicity/race. Note that Ukraine was a part of Russia, like a state, from the 1700s, until 1991. In simplest terms, many in western Ukraine want to align with the West, while many in eastern Ukraine want to restore their alliance with Russia. Zelensky’s forces aligned with the West, and set out to eradicate those who identify as Russian Ukrainian in the eastern oblasts – Donbas, Donetsk, etc.. (The fact that Zelensky is Jewish Ukrainian certainly complicates the popular Nazi theme. )
This view is not really “widely held in Europe”. The example of Germany is an specific artefact of (West) German law, created for political purposes.
Good oen
Who watches the watchers? I should think that is largely the job of independent, non-partisan news agencies such as CN with input from its consumers. Who grades Newsguard? Should CN want to generate some numerical assessment of that entity’s accuracy, veracity and honesty, my laboriously constructed opinion of its performance would be to assign it zero points on all these criteria and any others you might care to add.
CN stands out as excellent for insisting upon living in the real objective universe where facts are first ascertained and only later interpreted to guide our nation’s actions, unlike the modus operandi of 90% of all other organizations that purport to report “news,” conduct analyses of this alleged news and recommend future actions based upon what, in retrospect, turn out to be no more than premises without any real established bases–basically window dressing for some biased agenda. For example, if “Vlad” were truly “mad” and started wars without the slightest of provocations (just for kicks?), or if his stated purpose was to genuinely reconstruct the Soviet Union, CN would first give us chapter and verse on all the particulars, usually sourced from many different venues.
The American MSM, which together with the intelligence agencies designed from the ground up and thoroughly furnished and decorated this informational matrix in which all our citizens live, usually settles for a prima facie assertion of Vlad’s mania, psychopathy or unbridled lust for power from which all of the unpleasantness du jour, and now ripe for official condemnation, inevitably follows with no proof, or even any dodgy correlations, needed. If CN were the only odd-ball news/analysis/discussion venue to note this adopted technique, taken straight from Orwell, of stretching, contorting or even disappearing bits and snatches of objective reality to fit a conspicuous false narrative that serves as the official substitute for our history, it might be fair to request some soul searching by the latest gaggle of conspiracy theorists. However, there has been a critical mass of very diverse dissenters from the “conventional wisdom” dispensed by Washington and its media tools. Left, right, center and even the comedy corner have volunteered basically the same model in which there is not the slightest trace of truth or actual fact left in Washington’s accounts of its so-called reality. Moreover, the dire consequences of this folly are clearly discernable and have been convincingly predicted, seemingly without care by our leaders that they are leading their own people and the entire rest of the world to utter annihilation.
Look on the bright side: a red mark warning from Newsguard tells readers you have something to say which the establishment would sooner they didn’t read. Plenty of people are losing faith in mainstream media, and Newsguard conveniently identifies outlets like Consortium News offering insights into what’s really going on.
The ‘Streisland’ effect…?!
The governing criminal elite cabal is quite small when one examines the revolving relationships. These old timers just won’t go away with their tired ideas.
Do you suppose that Joe B. HAD to be president for the clique to get this Ukraine war going so profitably for their buddies?
I’m getting old still waiting for some ethical leadership in the USA. Imperialists, profiteers and all manner of liars prevail.
We regular folks can’t even get heard. The media tries to blame the victims of crapitalism every time.
Do you suppose the system is getting desperate? The con game is soooo obvious.
Thanks for your efforts.
On the positive side the articles by Joe Lauria are a great review of key issues where the obvious and well evidenced truth is being suppressed and denied by those seeking to permanently install their version of the Ministry of Truth.
Of the words “infested,” “imperialistic,” “coup” and “genocide,” and the phrase “false flag,” only “infested” seems to me always tendentious when applied outside the realm of biological infestations – lice, roaches, etc. The rest of these terms can be tendentious if they are judged to be inappropriate to the situation being described. They do reflect a judgement by the writer. Thus the January 6th attack on the Capitol is called an attempted “coup” by Democrats, but as a sort of prank by Republicans. Imperialism and genocide too are in the eye of the beholder, while a “false flag” describes an action carried out to discredit one’s opponent, and is usually hard to prove or disprove. In short, except for the first, they all can be used evenhandedly, but often reveal the writer’s own biases. To call the U.S. “imperialistic” shows that one disapproves of its foreign policy, since imperialism today has a bad name, but is not prima facie wrong.
If it’s true that “imperialism and genocide too are in the eye of the beholder,” then anything said by anyone about anything can never be “a prima facie wrong.” But this bit of whataboutism means that no delineations can made about anything – which makes the only “prima facie” duty of language the covering up of despotic acts by those who require obscure and manipulative language for those acts.
Speaking of “obscure and manipulative language,” most recently we have the monotonous repetition of “Churchillian” in the mainstream re Zelensky’s recent visit to Washington. What should accompany use of this term is analysis of its accuracy and its obvious relationship to herd poisoning (or “mass formation psychosis”). There is analogy and there is false analogy. To compare Zelensky to Churchill implies in knee-jerk fashion that Putin is indeed Hitler, which is absurd. Anyone closely examining the wars knows this.
Little is known about the history of Ukraine, including by the illiterate ‘left’. One political figure of the time was Dmitry Dontsov, an ultra-right theorist and neo-fascist you might refer to as a basement bargain Mussolini. His writings were imbibed by a right-wing following that took and shaped the history of the Ukraine, particularly the Western Ukraine. His ultra-nationalist doctrines have to go back well beyond the Orange ‘revolution’ of 2004-2005 maybe it should be called the ‘(Soros’ revolution) and the rise of the ultra-right movements which came of age during the German invasion in 1941. I am speaking here about the rise of indigenous fascism which emerged particularly in the west Ukraine around Lviv on the wrong side (i.e., the west side) of the River Dnieper.
The German occupation enabled the rise of these indigenous proto-nazi outfits with a collaborationist agenda – namely the (OUN-B) under the tutelage of one Stepan Bandera and its military wing the (UPA-Ukrainian Insurgent Army) under the military command of Roman Shukhevych. Their programmes were based on simple political imperatives, i.e., kill Jews, Communists, Poles, and any other enemy of the new order. The stamping ground was of course the western Ukraine – particularly the massacres which took place in Volhynia, Eastern Galicia, parts of Polesia and Lublin region from 1943 to 1945. The peak of the massacres took place in July and August 1943. The massacres of Poles (a large settlement of Poles in western Ukraine) were carried out by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the UPA, with the support of parts of the local Ukrainian population against the Polish minority.
In present day Ukraine the old heroes are lauded every January 2 (Bandera’s birthday) with mass torchlight processions in the major cities mainly in the west. Visitors to the west Ukraine will be impressed by statues of Bandera in almost every city, lovingly adorned with flowers at his feet.
This is the country that the ‘West’ sees fit to have gained and paid up as a loyal ally standing proud – in front of the Bandera statues – and confronting the ‘’Russian menace’’.
At the end of WW2 elements of the UPA carried on the fighting until 1959 and many sought refugee status abroad, Canada immediately comes to mind as a favoured base. But the beast still had the legs to carry on even as Bandera was assassinated in 1959. The cult of Stepan Bandera who was assassinated by the KBG while living in exile in Munich in the 1950s, and his widow moved to Canada, where there is a large Ukrainian diaspora community. She arrived with her three young children, including Steve’s father, Andri. Roman Shukhevych met the same fate.
According to Wikipedia, Newsguard’s “Clients include technology companies and the advertising industry, who view the ratings as a way to protect clients against advertising on sites that could harm their brand.”
So it would appear that Newsgaurd’s motive for red marking CN’s reporting is that CN’s reporting might harm NYT, WaPo and other mainstream media brands.
The issue boils down to, who do you trust?
The weapons of mass destruction debacle made it clear to me who I don’t trust.
What means is that giving a red mark to a publication is a warning sign to advertisers not to advertise there.
CN is obviously guilty of failing to follow the party line. Clearly you fail to understand that as loyal American you are obligated to agree with our leaders in everything they say and do. You must try harder.
Last June’s CN article, linked to in the Ray McGovern piece below, provides additional perspective for the first paragraph of this December 29 re-visit to the problem. Joe Lauria writes:
“Consortium News was contacted by NewsGuard analyst Zachary Fishman. In his request to speak to someone at Consortium News he said categorically that CN had published “false content” and that the interview would be on the record. “I’m hoping to talk with someone who could answer a few questions about its structure and editorial processes — including its ownership, its handling of corrections, and its publication of false content,” he wrote in an email.
As editor-in-chief, I informed him that our founder, editors and writers came from high levels of establishment journalism. I told him that in thousands of press interviews I’ve conducted over nearly half a century in journalism I had never known anyone accusing a prospective interviewee of misconduct upfront and then determining that the interview would be on the record, when the ground rules are usually set by the person being interviewed.
Fishman apologized and tried to say his mind wasn’t made up about Consortium News, when he had clearly stated that it was. “I do apologize that the wording of my email insinuated that I had come to a predetermined conclusion on whether your website has published false content, when I have not — be sure that I am interested in your responses to my questions,” he wrote in an email.”
That essay from last June (found at US State-Affiliated NewsGuard Targets Consortium News ) extensively and calmly disposes of the smear campaign by NewsGuard. It is a richly informed, rational consideration of what happened in Ukraine to understand the Maidan coup and what is happening today. It has 100 comments which valuably add to the discussion and indicate there is a thoughtful, critical body of individuals who are not taken in by the arrogance of NewsGuard and its cohorts in the propaganda industry.
hmmmm….Fishman violated some of the “Why You Should Trust Us” “principles” listed in the About Section of “NewsGuard”…I’ll take the liberty of making their Delta Tau Chi (Animal House movie) name “NewsGrift”
hxxps://www.newsguardtech.com/about/why-should-you-trust-us/
To be slightly more charitable I was thinking they might use “ViewsGuard” (?)
Anyone who would let newsguard decide what they should read and believe would probably not be a CN reader!!! Like the “social media” which tell you what to believe in the news, such aids to living your own life should be ignored.
All the best to CN and your work. Every article by Patrick Lawrence, for example, must not be missed. Thank you.
Almost exactly what i was going to say!
I was thinking about getting newsguard just to find anyone else worth reading.
A red mark is clearly a badge of honor.
I used ProporNot for exactly that purpose several years ago. Of course, being on their list is no guarantee of quality journalism, but it at least says a website isn’t just parrotting official narratives.
“Badge of Honor” were the words that came to my mind also.
Yes…exactly.
i never heard of newsgroup before. if i never hear of it again that’s okay.
fs
Same here.
At least Newsguard is to some extent open about who it is and what it does, with a website listing its partners, advisers, board of directors, and so on. Just as worrying, if not more so, are the organs of censorship and disinformation whose very existence is hard to establish, and those we know nothing at all about.
Yes, these are good points. But I cannot understand why anyone with a functioning brain would want Newsguard in the first place unless they are totally incapable of sifting through all available media and making up their own minds. However, the idea of using Newsguard to see what the establishment do not want you to see, is an amusing one!