NewsGuard: Fact Checkers with Too Much Power | 5 Minute Videos

Have you heard of NewsGuard? Its mission is to “counter misinformation on behalf of readers, brands, and democracies.” In other words, it “guards” the news by telling you what you can and cannot trust. Of course, this begs the question: can you trust NewGuard?

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Script:

Good news!

Thinking for yourself is no longer necessary.

The new heroes of the Internet will do it for you—companies you’ve never heard of, but who are watching out for your best interests.

Meet one of them.

They call themselves NewsGuard.

A perfect name.

Because that’s what they do.

They “guard” the news.

They make sure you only get the good stuff.

The stuff you can trust.

Best of all, NewsGuard is backed by Big Pharma, Big Tech, the teachers' unions, and even the government.

So, if Newsguard says something isn’t safe to read, you know you should scroll on.

I mean, if you can’t trust the government who can you trust?

Wait … you don’t like what I just described?

Sounds more like a nightmare than the world you want to live in?

You like to do your own thinking?

You’re perfectly capable of figuring out which sources are credible, and which aren’t.

That, you say, is the right and obligation of a free citizen in a free country.

If so, welcome to my world.

I’m the CEO of PragerU.

We’re fighting against companies like NewsGuard every day.

We didn’t pick the fight.

They did.

We have our own take on the events of the day and on the events of yesterday.

We’re happy to have you make your own judgment on whether we’ve got it right or whether we’ve got it wrong.

But there are many organizations that don’t have that attitude.

Like the aforementioned NewsGuard.

Let’s look a little more into this company which, by the way, is a for-profit enterprise. PragerU is a 501c3, a non-profit. We’re big fans of profit. Profit makes the world go round. But if your business is, say, promoting COVID vaccine efficacy, and your biggest client is the public relations firm for Pfizer, it’s fair to ask whether you would be completely unbiased when judging a story questioning the safety of COVID vaccines.

But that doesn’t trouble NewsGuard.

They’re convinced their judgments are free from any taint.

Just ask them.

They’ll tell you.

But who are “they”?

Their co-founder and CEO is a Democratic party loyalist. He’s on record dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop as likely a “hoax . . . maybe even . . . perpetrated by the Russians.” The NewsGuard staff, not surprisingly, is mostly comprised of left-leaning activists and ex-journalists.

And guess who they don’t like?

Yeah, they really don’t like PragerU, The Daily Wire, Breitbart, The Federalist, and other news and opinion sources that are not on the left.

But let’s not be too harsh. If you stray from NewGuard’s way of seeing things, they will give you a chance to redeem yourself.