Any climate scepticism rates the kiss of death from this ‘non-partisan’ rater of websites

‘Now, our team has expanded to Australia and New Zealand … to support quality journalism and systemically defund sources of harmful misinformation.’ — NewsGuard co-CEO Gordon Crovitz, 2023

I wrote this article for an Australian readership. I’ve now stripped out much of the local  material and added a score of UK sites rated by NewsGuard in the table below. 

While some of the material here is still a bit Australian-parochial, other findings are generic about NewsGuard and so of interest or inspiration to UK readers. It might inspire some “Up Above” person as distinct from “Down Under” persons to take a free two-week introductory subscription to NewsGuard and ascertain just what it’s doing in the UK.

So here goes with my stripped piece.

It’s bad enough with federal Labor, the e-Safety Commissioner and our Australian Academy of Science so keen for censorship of ‘misinformation’. It’s worse to find a green-leftist US corporate coming here to send dissident Aussie publishers broke by deploying its ‘misinformation’ card (or canard).

Just yesterday  The Australian revealed that Climate Minister Chris Bowen’s has launched a cross-agency working group, Greens-inspired, to fight “climate misinformation” supposedly thwarting the nation’s troubled green energy transition and undermining Labor’s climate and energy policy.

But NewsGuard for several years has flown below the radar in the Australian green-left’s censorial ecosystem. Its subscribers ($US8 a month) get an advisory rating for news and public-affairs/information websites – weirdly, it’s called a “Nutrition Label.” NewsGuard bases the scores on trustworthiness – but it awards more than half the maximum 100 points on purely subjective criteria.

These include publishing information ‘responsibly’ (18pts), ‘not publishing false or egregiously misleading content at a significant level’ (22pts), and ‘handling the difference between news and opinion responsibly’ (12.5pts). The other points are for procedural issues like transparency on ownership, authors and finance.

It claims to be agnostic towards sites pushing political lines. By last June NewsGuard had assessed 36,000-plus global sites since 2018, rating 12,000 generally reliable. Since it started here in 2023 it’s rated 250 local sites, failing a fifth through scores below 50.

The one-fifth ‘untrustworthy’-rated sites in Australia as at 2023 compares with UK (15%), Canada (4%), the US (46%), France (33%) and Germany (25%). Half (50%) earned their fail for publishing alleged “disinformation” about climate change.

The way it works is that NewsGuard pops up as an extension to your browser. Click the little icon and if the site is rated, it shows a score and header for the main report. My NewsGuard ratings chart below covers   a sampling of UK/US and some other site ratings including China/Russia official outlets.  

On politics, I’d call NewsGuard’s rating of Australian media ‘mixed’. NewsGuard’s perfect 100 score for the scandal-plagued and taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting Commission versus a poor 62% for Murdoch’s News24 (formerly “Sky News”) does look suspicious. But I’d add that NewsGuard responded promptly and carefully to my queries.

It rates the ABC and Murdoch’s Herald Sun and Courier Mail at 100, while the leftish Age (80), Financial Review (92.5) and Sydney Morning Herald  (87.5) languish below. However, the low rating for News24 and the Spectator (on 44.5) suggests the two outlets’ advertisers are   in NewsGuard’s cross-hairs. 

Subscribers can access NewsGuard’s detailed rationales for its ratings. The report (100%) for the ABC is quite brief, after removing boilerplate. Under the “Credibility” heading we are told that “ABC.net.au content is typically balanced and fact-based, citing information from [various media] and reporting by other reputable news outlets such as The Guardian and Sky News.” Assuming NewsGuard refers to Sky Australia, this is anomalous as NewsGuard rates News24 (formerly Sky) at only 62%, claiming News24 is irresponsible in handling both information and news vs opinion.

  Now for NewsGuard’s Pollyanna quote: “The [ABC] site does not typically publish opinion content.” In fact the ABC is wall-to-wall opinion from the green-leftist staffers and if challenged , it just re-titles their opinion as “analysis”.

From this soggy melange emerged NewsGuard’s finding that the ABC merits a 100% trustworthy score.

The main or almost only interest in the report involves who wrote and edited the original (published long ago on 1 July, 2022). Writer was stringer Zain Nabi, who did casual jobs for NewsGuard from April 2022-January 2023 while his day job was being an SBS (ethnic taxpayer-funded TV/Radio) journo. Then, nine months after his ABC report, he quit SBS (March 2023) to cross over to the ABC (big surprise!) as a district chief of staff.

NewsGuard properly updated his ABC report a day after his departure, noting his new ABC role and affirming, “He had no involvement with ABC when he drafted the ABC.net.au Nutrition Label.”  

A contributing writer of the ABC report was Amina McCauley,^[1] an enthusiast for preaching climate change. Post-NewsGuard she joined News Decoder, an international lobby using journalists to push climate alarm at students.^[2]

And now, how evidenced is NewsGuard’s poor rating of Murdoch’s News24? It clobbers News24 (62%) for not presenting news responsibly, not distinguishing news and opinion enough and not labelling ads clearly. It justifies its stance in a giant 3200-word report. Under a “Credibility” heading, it remarks how News24’s feeds include material from “reputable news outlets including Guardian Australia and the ABC”.

We are also told that News24 has been advancing “false or misleading claims, including about US elections, climate changes and vaccines”.  

When NewsGuard rates a site, any scepticism there about renewables, net zero, and heat apocalypses in 2100 is kiss of death. Rating News24, the authors spend pages complaining that the channel had suggested sea level rise is not accelerating, contrary to the orthodox “peer reviewed” climate clan.

NewsGuard is being absurd – all such findings are a morass of legitimate scientific dispute. The report on News24 also cut and pasted its sea-level diatribe from its earlier trashing of Wattsupwiththat – US meteorologist Anthony Watts’ globally most-read climate blog with 600 million views and rising. As punishment for deviating from IPCC mantras, NewsGuard rates Wattsup at a near rock-bottom 15%, compared with Communist China’s outlets earning 40-45% NewsGuard scores and Pravda at 49.5% (see tables).

Likewise, NewsGuard finds fatuous reasons to downgrade to 37.5% the Perth (West Australian)  globally-popular sceptic blogger Joanne Nova, to scores below the CCP and Pravda.

A common thread in all three reports – News24, Wattsup and Jonova – is Zack Fishman as NewsGuard’s US writer/editor. He has a Bachelor in Engineering Physics and a one-year Master’s in journalism. A university profile says, “One topic of misinformation that he sees often is climate denial.” I’d be surprised if he’d give any climate sceptic a NewsGuard tick, not ever. Sceptic sites aren’t flush with advertising but if NewsGuard can send them broke, that’s fine, judging by CEO Crovitz’s crusade to “systemically defund” them.  

Joanne Nova to date has published 7,759 articles attracting 1.1 million comments. She accepts hostile but not hateful feedback, unlike the universities’ The Conversation (NewsGuard rating 100) which bans any climate-critical comments.

Joanne’s main problem now is robot intrusions – yesterday her site registered an apparent 58,000 visitors. She says, “I regularly get attacked by computers in China, Vietnam and Bangladesh. But stripping out the AI bots I estimate we get 15,000 – 20,000 unique users globally per day.”

The other “denialism” by News24 that outrages NewsGuard is any questioning of official Covid nostrums and vaccine safety. The report jumps again on presenter Rita Panahi for wrinkling her nose at vaccines’ efficacy, although recent revelations about vaccine guru Dr Tony Fauci’s honesty or otherwise have led to him to ‘take the Fifth’ more than 100 times against self-incrimination.

After this magisterial reasoning, NewsGuard’s report on News24 says it “has determined that the site does not gather and present information responsibly.” It goes on to complain and dock points of News24 for including “opinionated statements” in items labelled as “World News”, citing three items with some emotive phrases.

For heaven’s sake! All news everywhere these days is riddled with us journos’ beat-ups and cliches like someone’s “stinging” attack (against anyone they don’t like).  

Let’s turn now to the authors. Not one of the total five writers of the News24 rating has any discernible background on Australia – their scenes are the US, UK, Italy and Russia. Two of their five editors, Jim Carroll and Virginia Padovese, had long-time fellow-travelling SBS TV/Radio careers, the other three editors evidence no overt Australian connections.

Lead co-writer John Gregory, who is NewsGuard’s “expert” on alleged vaccine/lockdown misinformation, has no medical or science qualification. In March 2020 he boldly claimed to US osteopathic physician Dr Joseph Mercola that there was “no evidence” for the “unfounded conspiracy theories” about the Wuhan lab releasing the virus, either deliberately or negligently, thus creating the epidemic.

Mercola hit back, saying among other things that the lead investor for NewsGuard’s start-up was PR giant Publicis Group, with a major client base of Big Pharma companies out to make a killing on vaccine sales.

Last March, Republican Matt Gaetz called for a Congressional investigation, given that NewsGuard’s ratings can drive ad revenue from one news company to another. A survey by the conservative Media Research Center (US) of NewsGuard ratings for three years to 2023, found they favored left-leaning outlets by an average 26 points (91% average score vs 65%). “NewsGuard is just another leftist group trying to censor conservatives,” said the Center’s President Brent Bozell.^[3]  

To date, the Republican states of South Carolina, West Virginia and Florida have legislated to deter use of NewsGuard in the blacklisting of conservative media.When these states disburse their advertising budgets, they deny funds to ad agencies which use NewsGuard to screen which publishers get the money. Trump has done the same with federal funding of military recruitment ads. ^[4]

Curiously, NewsGuard US’s advisory board from 2019-24 included Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. Today NewsGuard’s label says Wikipedia material “may or may not be reliable”. NewsGuard provides no actual score out of 100 for Wiki.

A US media outfit Consortium News sued NewsGuard three years ago over its unfavourable 47.5% rating, claiming defamation and US$14 million in damages. The judge threw the case out last year.

Rating the sites, with the reports of up 3000 words attached, is a labour-intensive job which NewsGuard seems to mostly farm out to stringers run by its editors. The stringers need to be both expert and neutral – but few are both and some neither. NewsGuard also has a problem of its detailed reports going stale– the ‘updates’ I see are perfunctory, not re-writes. The ABC rating from mid-2022 is a case in point.

NewsGuard US views a college ticket and a couple of years’ experience as an OK start. It isn’t a high payer, judging by its latest offer for full-time staff at $US52,000 – $70,000, and that’s a New York posting. Journalism is so poorly paid these days that many American journos treat their pay as pocket money while being financed by their parents. 

In Australia there seems little rhyme or reason to NewsGuard’s selection of sites to rate. After four years and 250 ratings, it’s yet to review many key media sites   along with the conservative IPA and other think-tanks (except the leftist Australia Institute on 92.5 points.) Strangely, Tim Flannery’s media-savvy net-zero shill Climate Council and the race-obsessed Reconciliation Australia are unreviewed.

NewsGuard also has a blind spot about our universities, which function like the Climate Council as media advocates and manipulators.^[5] Many or most have media “hubs” or “centres” pushing net-zero and other woke causes at variance with large swathes of the electorate – as One Nation’s 30% support suggests. 

The only such hub rated by NewsGuard is Monash/ANU’s quasi-wire service, 360info (rated 92.5%, originally 100%), that recycles the academics’ effusions – especially climate-focused –  into the mass media. 360info had pestered NewsGuard to be rated, and now it apparently can’t bear to mention on its website that it’s lost the 100pt rating: “In recognition of our fastidious work… US ratings agency NewsGuard has awarded 360info its highest possible trust rating – 100/100 – one of very few Australian outlets to receive a perfect score.” 

Melbourne University’s unrated hub likewise yearns to “lead climate action”, to “enact real change” for a “sustainable, safe, fair and equitable climate future” and to be a “guiding voice for policymakers, industry, the public”. Griffith University’s unrated Climate Action Beacon burbles about building “knowledge, capacity and leadership for just climate action”.

NewsGuard is keen for middlemen to propagate its ratings to the public. It has offered free access to close to 1000 public libraries worldwide. At its Australian launch it cited Victoria’s Bayside and Yarra Plenty library hubs as users, along with Monash and Deakin universities. Yarra Plenty Library enthused that its patrons can now “draw their own conclusions” — properly, NewsGuard’s conclusions — about trusted sites.

I have found no evidence so far that NewsGuard has infiltrated Australia’s school systems, which would reinforce the left’s invasion of classrooms. In 2022 the American Federation of Teachers licensed NewsGuard for its 1.7 million members, with potential reach to tens of millions of kids. The deal was still current in 2024.

Meanwhile, artificial intelligence engines are being trained on sites rated well by NewsGuard, hence giving a left flavour to AI answers. The Washington Free Beacon claims the chatbots would treat many American sites as less reliable than Chinese Communist propaganda.

When NewsGuard Australia launched in 2023, a US media newsletter made no bones about the purpose:

…a move that will pit the digital news trust ratings company against the heart of Rupert Murdoch’s publishing empire.

It hasn’t (sort of) worked out that way, with some Murdoch papers getting objective treatment while the flagship TV site News24 suffers a hit job. Overall, NewsGuard’s operations here, and especially its desire to mobilise financial muscle to quash scepticism about renewables and net zero, makes its Australian incursion a pernicious development indeed. #

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NewsGuard Ratings

Zero = Unrated by NewsGuard

United Kingdom

 BBC 95

The Guardian 100

The Times 100

The Daily Telegraph 95

Financial Times 100

Daily Mail 69.5

Sky News 100

ITV News 77.5

Channel 4 News 100

GB News 77

The Economist 100

The Independent 92.5

Daily Mirror 87.5

The Sun 69.5

Chatham House 0

Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) 0

Institute for Government (IfG) 0

Policy Exchange 0

Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) 0

Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) 0

Daily Sceptic 37.5

Conservative Woman 40

Notalot (Homewood) 0

Tallblokes Talkshop 0

Net Zero Watch 0

GWPF 0

US Rightist
Fox News US — 69.5
NY Post — 69.5
WSJ — 100
Washington Times — 62
Daily Signal — 62
Daily Wire — 62
Wash.Free Beacon — 80
WattsUp (climate sceptic) — 15
Heartland (thinktank) — 62

US Leftist
NYT — 100
Washington Post — 100
LA Times — 100
Chicago Tribune — 92.5
USA Today — 100
Boston Globe — 92.5
Phil. Inquirer — 100

Jewish
Jewish Chronicle UK — 92.5
Israel Times — 100
Jerusalem Post — 80
Haaretz — 92.5

Communistic
China Daily — 44.5
Global Times China — 39.5
Pravda Ru — 49.5
RT Russia — 20
Novosti Ru — 12.5
Tass Ru — 15

ends

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^[1] McCauley also co-wrote the SBS rating label.

^[2] News Decoder headlines from last month: “Why so few human stories within the climate crisis?” and “Decoder Replay: A flood of migration from climate change”.

^[3] NewsGuard also gave the now-folded left outlet Buzzfeed a perfect score despite the media frenzy Buzzfeed started by publishing the Democrat-funded fake Steele pee-dossier element of the Trump/Russia hoax.

^[4] NewsGuard Co-CEO Steven Brill made more than $US28,000 personal contributions to Democrat causes, according to Open Secrets data base.

^[5] I couldn’t find an Australian university per se that NewsGuard rates.