Recent research by the British think tank Global Disinformation Index (GDI) found that conservative U.S. media outlets perform poorly. The data is stored in GDI’s “Dynamic Exclusion List.”
It’s not only Microsoft’s Xandr that’s been accused of bias towards conservative media sources.
There have been reports that the firm uses the Dynamic Exclusion List to remove information from conservative outlets, but the company has not commented on these assertions.
This past December, the Global Disinformation Initiative (GDI), a think tank that creates policy proposals and solutions to combat disinformation, and the Global Misinformation Lab (GDIL) at the University of Texas at Austin authored a report outlining the purported “disinformation risk” for the American online media sector.
The Global Disinformation Index (GDI) gave grades ranging from A+ to F to 69 news outlets in the United States depending on how likely they were to propagate disinformation. The Global Disinformation Index concludes that, while looking for reliable information, it is best to stick to left-leaning sites rather than right-leaning ones because the former are less likely to transmit false information.
The most credible news outlets were determined to be many left-leaning publications.
HuffPost
Edition One of The New York Times
Just to give you an idea, I’ll use these examples: Behind the Scenes at BuzzFeed: According to GDI, the “four minimum-risk sites” are (in order) NPR online, AP News, the New York Times website, ProPublica, and the Wall Street Edition of USA Today. the Washington Post and Reuters are two others. The GDI has restricted access to Breitbart News, according to a senior source who spoke anonymously to the Washington Examiner.
On the other hand, right-leaning media regularly spread misinformation such
TNN, short for “The Federalist,” is the American Frustration News Network, and it features the most recent news along with articles from Reason, RealClearPolitics, and other sources.
As far as conservative influence in the United States goes, it’s on par with Newsmax.
Many attempts by Breitbart News to contact American Spectator GDI to learn more about its Dynamic Exclusion List and the groups with whom it communicates have been met with silence. Our requests for comment addressed to GDI on December 13, December 27, January 5, and January 23 have gone unanswered.
Despite claiming on its website that it is dedicated to “neutrality,” “independence,” and “transparency,” GDI has frequently denied media requests for access to its Dynamic Exclusion List.
Some Breitbart writers work there. GDI has made some of the List public, but it is still not available on its whole.
Clare Melford asked Professor Daniel Rogers for help with her GDI project.
According to the World Economic Forum, ECFR broke connections with George Soros’s Open Society Foundation when Melford was chairman. She has held positions as CEO of the International Business Leaders Forum and MD of MTV Networks in the Nordic countries before joining GDI.
Rogers is the current CEO and one of the organization’s original members. After leaving the CIA, he founded Terbium Labs, an intelligence and cyber security startup. Jake Sullivan, Vice President Biden’s national security advisor, is a fellow at the Truman National Security Project and an adjunct lecturer at New York University. Sullivan played a key role in spreading the false claim that Trump had ties to Russia.
GDI is supported by a grant from the US Department of State’s Global Engagement Center (GEC).
With “much fewer truth-based Ledes and far more Bias, Negative targeting, and Sensational language than the rest of the sample,” GDI determined that this site had a greater risk of spreading misinformation than the others in the study.
As far as GDI is concerned, the spread of disinformation is facilitated by prejudice, sensationalism, and targeting.
The GDI does not purport to reveal which individual publications publish erroneous information; rather, it indicates which outlets are more likely to do so. Scientists are attempting to foresee which social media platforms will play a role in the future propagation of disinformation. Based on data from the Global Disinformation Index, even reputable news organizations have been guilty of spreading disinformation in the past.
The Global Misinformation Initiative (GDI) was set up to develop a false information prediction system on par with Tom Cruise’s in “Minority Report.”
When most people think of “disinformation,” they probably don’t image poor reporting but rather bold, dramatic news.
The term “disinformation” was coined by this group to describe “adversarial narratives, which are intentionally misleading; financially or ideologically motivated; and/or, aimed at fostering long-term social, political, or economic conflict; and which create a risk of harm by undermining trust in science or targeting at-risk individuals and institutions.”
According to GDI, it doesn’t matter how credible a website seems on the surface, they all have the potential to publish inaccurate or biased information or engage in sensationalist reporting. Because they all subscribe to the same high-quality wire services, the New York Times and other “papers of record” wield disproportionate influence over the American digital media landscape.
Breitbart News has shed light on several problems that have long plagued established GDI news outlets. Among these ideas are the ones that Russia aided Trump in the election, that Russia launched missiles at Poland, and that Russia hacked Trump’s laptop.
HuffPost
In contrast to other news outlets, HuffPost does not resort to “sensational language or pictures” in favor of reporting the “truth,” as GDI puts it.
Here are some of the most contentious examples of dishonesty covered by HuffPost.
Huffington Post has not corrected articles that cast doubt on the reality of the contents even though other major media, including The New York Times, have confirmed the truth of the content on the Hunter Biden laptop. There was “no evidence from either Biden [Hunter or Joe],” claims a story from October 2020 on HuffPost.
In 2018, Karen Geier of The Guardian and The Huffington Post hoped that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would “launch a bomb on CPAC.”
During President Trump’s jubilation over the passage of the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December 2017, political and cultural blogger Andy Ostroy singled out Republican South Carolina senator Tim Scott, labeling him a “black… prop.”
Huffington Post’s South African version published an editorial in April 2017 in which the authors argued that the “progressive cause” necessitated the elimination of white men’s voting rights.
Despite Clinton’s lack of an electoral college majority in 2016, a writer for HuffPost called her the “real president-elect” in January 2017.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, a staple of holiday filmgoers for decades, was labeled “difficult” and “marginalized” in a November 2018 HuffPost post.
Edition One of The New York Times
The New York Times has earned the titles of “Gray Lady,” “Paper of Record,” and “The Times” due to its massive readership and excellent reputation. Some key details were skimmed over in the article, such as the deliberate slaughter of millions of Soviet citizens in the 1930s.
Some of their most recent points of contention are as follows:
Breitbart News political writer Emma-Jo Morris first disregarded the story as “baroque legend,” but she later wrote extensively about the laptop’s veracity in the March 2022 issue of the New York Post.
According to “the laptop from hell” story by Miranda Devine, Vice President Joe Biden was involved in Hunter’s financial dealings and allegedly owned 10% of a firm Hunter founded with officials from the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
By the time of the presidential election in 2020, this coalition of leftist media outlets, including the Times, had conceded that the laptop from hell was real.
According to Arthur Sulzberger Jr., CEO and publisher of the New York Times, this is a “big black eye” for the paper.
To him, the magazine had betrayed the confidence of its readers.
In June 2017, then-FBI Director James Comey stated that claims that President Trump collaborated with the Russian government during the 2016 presidential election were “not true” in light of the evidence presented.
GDI should have taken notice of New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet’s admission in August 2019 that the publication was “built” around promoting the Russia connection fiction.
After prominent author Maggie Haberman claimed that 17 intelligence agencies had decided that Russia had sought to influence the 2016 presidential election, The New York Times updated its original report.
Russian military intelligence reportedly paid payments to terrorists with ties to the Taliban in return for the deaths of American and coalition forces in Afghanistan, according to a June 2020 story in The New York Times. A statement from the Defense Department, directed at the Times, was then released.
According to a recent New York Times article, climate change and rising oceans will devastate most East Coast beaches (east coach beaches are still there).
The New York Times reporter Jayson Blair resigned in 2003 after allegations of plagiarism and/or fabricated sources surfaced in at least 36 of his 73 published stories.
Articles published by the New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today all disproved claims that then-President Trump had devised a plan to forcibly separate parents and children who crossed the southern border illegally.
Central Times Square in New York City
GDI suggests The Washington Post due to its extensive coverage, despite the newspaper’s flaws. It’s surprising to see this journal, which has been so critical of Trump and his administration, receive such an award.
Putin, the president of Russia, reportedly claimed to The Post that he had dirt on Trump. Numerous news organizations, such as the Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Times, and Washington Post, reported the story.
There have been reports from many media sites claiming that the piece in the Post should cause readers to lose faith in the political system.
After Trump bought the Post from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in 2021, the story that claimed he had directed a Georgia state elections investigator to “find the fraud” was taken down. There has been no such announcement from the White House.
The Post wrongly stated that the knife wasn’t in the man’s hand when he was shot last year in Kenosha, Wisconsin, but surveillance evidence proves otherwise.
The Washington Post reports that Trump and outgoing FCC Chairman Ajit Pai met in secret despite strong opposition to Pai’s efforts to pull back net neutrality standards established during the Obama administration.
According to a Post piece from September 2021, Donald Trump Jr. allegedly yelled “Let’s go, Brandon” and “F*ck Joe Biden” during a campaign event in Georgia.
The erroneous accusations that Trump had established a system to separate children at the southern border were so widely reported that the Washington Post, the New York Times, and USA Today were all forced to withdraw their original stories.
Everyone connected to the Associated Press
The Associated Press wire service is extensively utilized by American media organizations because of its reliability and timeliness. Sharing election outcomes with the general public is an important part of its mission. But propaganda may have impacted it, leading to the dissemination of inflated or erroneous claims (or “fake news,” in the lexicon of the Global Disinformation Institute).
Earlier this month, Associated Press (AP) writer James LaPorta spread false rumors that a Russian missile had hit the NATO member country of Poland, killing two people. One high-ranking American intelligence official confirmed LaPorta’s account after hearing it. Russia and NATO nations have both made nuclear war threats in recent years.
A New York Times investigation by the Associated Press published in July 2017 found that just three of the 17 intelligence agencies had concluded that Russia had sought to influence the 2016 presidential election.
The Associated Press reported in June 2017 that Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris met with former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. Both the purported encounter between Liveris and Pruitt and the Associated Press’s subsequent discovery of “impropriety” were completely made up.
There is no indication that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter had “spoken” about the family’s offshore business dealings, as reported by the Associated Press on November 30th. Nonetheless, Vice President Joe Biden blasted the deal Hunter had signed with a Chinese energy business in a voicemail he left for Hunter. Since news of Joe Biden’s participation with the corporation leaked, the Republican Party has made an effort to publicize his ties to the company.
At RFIP, we tune in to RFIP, or Radio France International de la Public Service (NPR)
This list only scratches the surface of the numerous occasions NPR has gotten big news items incorrect.
For example, this year NPR disseminated a false article claiming that Donald Trump Jr.’s testimony before the Senate contradicted Michael Cohen’s remarks on the Trump Tower project in Moscow.
An NPR article from April of 2021 claims that U.S. intelligence and independent examinations of the emails found on Hunter Biden’s laptop disprove the accusations made against him.
NPR incorrectly said that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor did not appear because Justice Neil Gorsuch refused to wear a mask.
ProPublica
ProPublica is an investigative website with a left-leaning bias that is funded by George Soros, and as a result, it regularly publishes stories that attack Republicans and their policies. Even with Soros’s funding, GDI still considers ProPublica to be an “investigative journalism charity.”
The journalistic organization ProPublica is not biased, but it has made some errors in the past. During Gina Haspel’s consideration for the job in February 2018, the terrorist Abu Zubaydah was “subjected to waterboarding and other extreme interrogation tactics that are normally considered as torture,” according to a report. As reported by ProPublica, Haspel “mocked the prisoner’s agony in private discussion.”
ProPublica has decided to backtrack on its previous denials of these two allegations. Haspel did not assume control of the jail until after her conversation with Zubaydah concluded, and this is now beyond dispute. Also, it’s not as if she was lurking about in that ominous basement when it all went down.
Despite using crowdsourcing to expose Brett Kavanaugh’s presence at a Washington Nationals game, ProPublica received a good trust score from the Global Disinformation Index (GDI).
…
Magazines Printed and distributed in the USA
USA Today is a secure option compared to other magazines because of its regularly high readership numbers. The Good News Initiative (GDI) recommends that USA Today do a better job of giving credit where credit is due when using the research, statements, or media of others.
The highly-read newspaper has been accused of publishing deceptive content with real-world repercussions, causing a storm of criticism.
Twenty-three articles were scrubbed from the USA Today website when it was discovered that a reporter had made up quotes and sources.
Senior editor at Breitbart News, John Nolte, pounced when USA Today accused Russian propaganda for the Hunter Biden laptop episode.
According to a report published by USA Today in September 2017, Russian intelligence agents allegedly attempted to hack into election systems in twenty-one states throughout the United States.
According to Breitbart News, the Communist Party of China spent $230,000 on adverts in USA Today between November 2021 and April 2022. The Communist Party of China controls the publication China Daily.
The transgender assistant secretary for health at HHS, Dr. Rachel Levine, has been selected as one of USA Today’s 2022 women of the year.
As of September 2022, USA Today sports columnist Mike Freeman had branded as “right-wing conspiracy theorists” anyone who would not accept the existence of a “racial heckling” problem. BYU authorities, when questioned about the event, stated there was no proof a Cougars fan had used the n-word about a black Duke volleyball player.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams had an opinion article published in USA Today that was later altered to make it seem like she agreed with Major League Baseball’s decision to relocate the All-Star Game from Atlanta because of the state’s new election integrity legislation. She modified her previous criticism of the campaign to postpone the All-Star game in Georgia to appear more balanced.
When USA Today journalist Hemal Jhaveri wrote in March 2021 that mass killers are “usually enraged white dudes,” he lost his job. The sad event was the topic of conversation among locals in Boulder, Colorado. Officials have identified a Syrian man as a suspect.
In June of 2020, a USA Today intern published an article fact-checking a Breitbart News story that falsely claimed amnesty always refers to a permanent pardon, even though other publications like the New York Times, The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, and National Public Radio also use the term “amnesty.” Once Meta realized the Breitbart News report was legitimate, she deleted her reference to the outlet from Instagram.
For example, in September of 2018, a sports writer for USA Today suggested that Brett Kavanaugh shouldn’t be allowed to coach girls’ basketball because of an allegation of sexual assault.
In June of 2018, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today all published retractions to clarify that they had been wrong to report that President Donald Trump had ordered the separation of children from their parents at the border.
BuzzFeed
Despite former editor-in-chief Ben Smith’s “BenSmithing” notoriety, BuzzFeed News scored high on the GDI’s “neutrality and journalistic best practices” scale. Many people may thank Breitbart News for popularizing the phrase. The New York Times defines “BenSmithing” as follows:
Who exactly is this BenSmithing, and what is his deal? It was Republicans who first referred to Mr. Smith in this way, last year, presuming that because he was a Democrat he shared their criticisms of President Obama and so deserved to be called such.
BuzzFeed’s stories may occasionally include intentionally deceptive material.
BuzzFeed was responsible for disseminating the shaky “pee dossier” on the Trump administration.
NewsGuard, a Microsoft partner and browser plugin developer, nevertheless uses BuzzFeed despite the site’s periodic publication of bogus news.
Upon condition of anonymity, two law enforcement sources told Buzzfeed that they believe former Trump attorney Michael Cohen lied to Congress at the instruction of President Trump and that Cohen kept Trump and his family abreast of developments about the proposed Trump Tower in Moscow.
Special counsel Robert Mueller issued a rare public statement in which he strongly refuted the claims contained in the BuzzFeed article.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) said he will “definitely” investigate BuzzFeed as a direct result of the outrage the site’s prank provoked.
According to BuzzFeed, Trump instructed his former attorney Cohen to mislead lawmakers. Robert Mueller’s team, in response, has categorically disputed the charges.
The International Research Organization’s Global Disinformation Index has infiltrated the American political scene and is using a blacklist dubbed the Dynamic Exclusion List to damage financing for conservative media outlets. History of media bias, distortion, and limitation of conservative viewpoints has not prevented this (such as the New York Times, Huffington Post, NPR, and the Associated Press).