This site takes a great deal of pride that we are approved and certified as factually trustworthy by NewsGuard, a service that reviews reporting and, though it has no problem with opinion and analysis, that opinion and analysis must be based upon verified facts. We don’t have much trouble.
Fox News has a lot of trouble. Indeed, Fox News has the ultimate in trouble. It has lost its NewsGuard certification due to its “fake news” (so ironic).
HOLY SHIT: @NewsGuardRating [1] just downgraded @FoxNews [2]' official rating from "Green — Trustworthy" to "Red — proceed with caution."
THIS IS HUGE. pic.twitter.com/9F3HguLf8k [3]
— Nandini Jammi (@nandoodles) July 21, 2022 [4]
It is huge. A lot of news feeds will not accept any story from any news service that isn’t certified by NewsGuard because, well, it can no longer be trusted, and it reflects poorly upon the feed. Fox News now faces getting kicked off those services. It can and will cost Fox News… it is almost impossible to guess how much money this can cost Fox.
The really odd thing is that reporting the truth doesn’t require one to be a MENSA member, just cautious. One simply has to care. And from the very beginning, Fox has been more about pushing opinion rather than reflecting the actual news and facts.
As explained by Nandini Jammi, the head of Check My Ads:
“Newsguard may not be a household name, but it is a highly influential player in the adtech industry. They solve a very important problem for ad exchanges: they give them access to a ratings library of 7000+ media outlets on a scale of 0-100 that tell them whether a media outlet is disinformation or not.”
“The product, known as BrandGuard, is a godsend for ad exchange executives who are under pressure to keep hate and disinfo outlets out of their networks, but don’t want to deal with the public (and potentially political) fallout of making those decisions themselves. A Newsguard partnership gives them something neutral and objective to point at. After all, the company is staffed by trained journalists and insists that their ratings process is ‘apolitical.’”
Fox News losing advertisers would put them in major trouble. They already have lost advertisers due to campaigns against Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. But losing the green NewsGuard rating will cause Fox to lose advertisers automatically, no boycott or letter writing is necessary. It’s terrible news for the network, that is still facing a major lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems.
NewsGuard has downgraded Fox News dot com to a score (57/100) that puts it in the red, warning that the site "fails to adhere to several basic journalistic standards" and has "published numerous false and misleading claims." pic.twitter.com/TalR7Qcr4U [5]
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) July 21, 2022 [6]
Fox News is responding to NewsGuard downgrading its site to red by accusing the company's management and editorial teams of relying "heavily on left-leaning sourcing to attempt to silence diversity of thought in the media." pic.twitter.com/J9Qk3F5DNY [7]
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) July 21, 2022 [8]
And of course, Fox News blames the rating slip on NewsGuard being left-leaning, which we can personally tell you, they are not. They have put us through the wringer, and rightfully so.
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jmiciak@yahoo.com, @JasonMiciak, with Nicole Hickman