Slashdot Mirror

First, this "why should you trust us" is actually a pretty good list of rules. If they abide by them, it'll be pretty sweet. The moment they break them, or appear to be bending them for a bias, they'll have lost all trust.

Their rules seem pretty vague to me. Here's all I need to know to distrust News Guard: apparently they rated a Web site called "The Palmer Report" (which I've never heard of before). The Palmer Report complained, and News Guard published the complaint. Good for them, acknowledging all two complaints they received, but the response from News Guard is really stunningly inadequate. The Palmer Report made 12 specific points. The response from News Guard was, "this letter does not point to any specific errors." Their credibility dropped from low to zero, as far as I'm concerned. Not to mention the credibility of anyone who trusts News Guard to be objective and unbiased.

"Well, what do you think all these new censorship tools & systems are really for?"

Narrative control?

https://www.mintpressnews.com/...

"it will soon become almost impossible to avoid this neocon-approved news site’s ranking systems on any technological device sold in the United States ... the latest venture to result from the partnership between Steven Brill and Louis Gordon Crovitz"

https://www.newsguardtech.com/...

"Our Advisory Board - Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security (George W. Bush administration) - Richard Stengel, former editor of Time magazine and Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy (Obama administration) - (Ret.) General Michael Hayden, former Director of the CIA, former Director of the National Security Agency and former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence (George W. Bush administration) - Don Baer, chairman of Burson, Cohn & Wolfe and former White House Communications Director (Clinton administration) - Elise Jordan, political analyst, NBC, and former speechwriter for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - John Battelle, co-founding editor of Wired and founding chief executive of Industry Standard magazines - Jessica Lessin, founder and editor-in-chief of The Information"

My list was by no means supposed to be exhaustive. My intention was to give everyone else access to the API so they can form their own opinions. I suppose I could write up a script to generate a google sheet from every news source on google news / slashdot / reddit, or something, but I'm far too lazy.

If it makes you feel any better, I'll drop the dailyKos one here.

- Not Trusted: Daily Kos

For a tool that claims they care about transparency they really do their best to prevent you from looking up a list of sites and their ratings.

If anyone is interested, I dug into the code for the chrome extension and grabbed their API URL so you can look up sites without having to install their extension:

- Trusted: CNN
- Trusted: Daily Caller
- Trusted: The Independent
- Trusted: Mother Jones (lol)
- Trusted: Huffington Post (lol)
- Trusted: The Daily Beast (lol)
- Trusted: BuzzFeed News (ok this is just sad)
- Not Trusted: Breitbart
- Not Trusted: Daily Mail

Looks fair and balanced to me.

For a tool that claims they care about transparency they really do their best to prevent you from looking up a list of sites and their ratings.

If anyone is interested, I dug into the code for the chrome extension and grabbed their API URL so you can look up sites without having to install their extension:

- Trusted: CNN
- Trusted: Daily Caller
- Trusted: The Independent
- Trusted: Mother Jones (lol)
- Trusted: Huffington Post (lol)
- Trusted: The Daily Beast (lol)
- Trusted: BuzzFeed News (ok this is just sad)
- Not Trusted: Breitbart
- Not Trusted: Daily Mail

Looks fair and balanced to me.

For a tool that claims they care about transparency they really do their best to prevent you from looking up a list of sites and their ratings.

If anyone is interested, I dug into the code for the chrome extension and grabbed their API URL so you can look up sites without having to install their extension:

- Trusted: CNN
- Trusted: Daily Caller
- Trusted: The Independent
- Trusted: Mother Jones (lol)
- Trusted: Huffington Post (lol)
- Trusted: The Daily Beast (lol)
- Trusted: BuzzFeed News (ok this is just sad)
- Not Trusted: Breitbart
- Not Trusted: Daily Mail

Looks fair and balanced to me.

For a tool that claims they care about transparency they really do their best to prevent you from looking up a list of sites and their ratings.

If anyone is interested, I dug into the code for the chrome extension and grabbed their API URL so you can look up sites without having to install their extension:

- Trusted: CNN
- Trusted: Daily Caller
- Trusted: The Independent
- Trusted: Mother Jones (lol)
- Trusted: Huffington Post (lol)
- Trusted: The Daily Beast (lol)
- Trusted: BuzzFeed News (ok this is just sad)
- Not Trusted: Breitbart
- Not Trusted: Daily Mail

Looks fair and balanced to me.

For a tool that claims they care about transparency they really do their best to prevent you from looking up a list of sites and their ratings.

If anyone is interested, I dug into the code for the chrome extension and grabbed their API URL so you can look up sites without having to install their extension:

- Trusted: CNN
- Trusted: Daily Caller
- Trusted: The Independent
- Trusted: Mother Jones (lol)
- Trusted: Huffington Post (lol)
- Trusted: The Daily Beast (lol)
- Trusted: BuzzFeed News (ok this is just sad)
- Not Trusted: Breitbart
- Not Trusted: Daily Mail

Looks fair and balanced to me.

For a tool that claims they care about transparency they really do their best to prevent you from looking up a list of sites and their ratings.

If anyone is interested, I dug into the code for the chrome extension and grabbed their API URL so you can look up sites without having to install their extension:

- Trusted: CNN
- Trusted: Daily Caller
- Trusted: The Independent
- Trusted: Mother Jones (lol)
- Trusted: Huffington Post (lol)
- Trusted: The Daily Beast (lol)
- Trusted: BuzzFeed News (ok this is just sad)
- Not Trusted: Breitbart
- Not Trusted: Daily Mail

Looks fair and balanced to me.

For a tool that claims they care about transparency they really do their best to prevent you from looking up a list of sites and their ratings.

If anyone is interested, I dug into the code for the chrome extension and grabbed their API URL so you can look up sites without having to install their extension:

- Trusted: CNN
- Trusted: Daily Caller
- Trusted: The Independent
- Trusted: Mother Jones (lol)
- Trusted: Huffington Post (lol)
- Trusted: The Daily Beast (lol)
- Trusted: BuzzFeed News (ok this is just sad)
- Not Trusted: Breitbart
- Not Trusted: Daily Mail

Looks fair and balanced to me.

For a tool that claims they care about transparency they really do their best to prevent you from looking up a list of sites and their ratings.

If anyone is interested, I dug into the code for the chrome extension and grabbed their API URL so you can look up sites without having to install their extension:

- Trusted: CNN
- Trusted: Daily Caller
- Trusted: The Independent
- Trusted: Mother Jones (lol)
- Trusted: Huffington Post (lol)
- Trusted: The Daily Beast (lol)
- Trusted: BuzzFeed News (ok this is just sad)
- Not Trusted: Breitbart
- Not Trusted: Daily Mail

Looks fair and balanced to me.

For a tool that claims they care about transparency they really do their best to prevent you from looking up a list of sites and their ratings.

If anyone is interested, I dug into the code for the chrome extension and grabbed their API URL so you can look up sites without having to install their extension:

- Trusted: CNN
- Trusted: Daily Caller
- Trusted: The Independent
- Trusted: Mother Jones (lol)
- Trusted: Huffington Post (lol)
- Trusted: The Daily Beast (lol)
- Trusted: BuzzFeed News (ok this is just sad)
- Not Trusted: Breitbart
- Not Trusted: Daily Mail

Looks fair and balanced to me.

For a tool that claims they care about transparency they really do their best to prevent you from looking up a list of sites and their ratings.

If anyone is interested, I dug into the code for the chrome extension and grabbed their API URL so you can look up sites without having to install their extension:

- Trusted: CNN
- Trusted: Daily Caller
- Trusted: The Independent
- Trusted: Mother Jones (lol)
- Trusted: Huffington Post (lol)
- Trusted: The Daily Beast (lol)
- Trusted: BuzzFeed News (ok this is just sad)
- Not Trusted: Breitbart
- Not Trusted: Daily Mail

Looks fair and balanced to me.

So I haven't installed the extension, but I'm considering it. There are a couple things that make me feel good about the concept.

First, this "why should you trust us" is actually a pretty good list of rules. If they abide by them, it'll be pretty sweet. The moment they break them, or appear to be bending them for a bias, they'll have lost all trust.

Second, based on their samples it looks like you get a lot more than a little red flag -- you get a bunch of data backing up their decision, and can make your own choices.

The unfortunate reality is that most people -- even smart people -- have trouble seeing past their own biases and get fooled all the time by the spin cycle. People have been trained to have a visceral reaction of denial/deflection to any criticism aimed at their tribe. Having a group specializing in detecting bullshit seems like not just a good idea but a necessity. It also seems like one that can very easily go bad, so it needs constant oversight and it needs people to call them on any of their own bullshit. I'd like to see them maintain high levels of transparency.

Because we are trained journalists who have spent our careers dedicated to the profession. We care deeply about reliable journalismâ(TM)s pivotal role in democracy. (In case youâ(TM)re wondering, our experienced journalists come from diverse backgrounds and have no political axes to grind.)

Because you can see the credentials and backgrounds of everyone responsible for every NewsGuard reliability rating and Nutrition Label that you read. For the names and biographies of our staff and contributors, click here.

Because we have an ethics and conflicts of interest policy to which all of our analysts and editors have to agree. You can read that policy here.

Because we are totally transparent about how we make all of our decisions. Our Nutrition Label write-ups explain what is behind our decisions. We disclose and explain in detail the nine criteria we use to rate each news site on its journalistic practices. Weâ(TM)re not a black box algorithm.

Because we make concerted attempts to get comment from every websiteâ(TM)s editor or manager before we write anything negative about the site, and always include the comment in our Nutrition Labels (or make changes after weighing the comment and realizing our initial conclusion was wrong). Algorithms donâ(TM)t call for comment.

Because we will post any complaints from website proprietors about anything we have written about them. And we will answer them publicly â" and when warranted will make corrections, publicly, after we consider the complaint. You can read our policy for correcting errors or mistakes here.

Because we accept no fees from the news websites we rate. (Our revenue comes from the platforms and search engines for licensing our ratings in order to include them in their feeds and search results.) We rate all news and information sites among the approximately 4,500 sites responsible for 98% of the online engagement in English in the United States.

Because we do not collect any personal information of any kind from those who download and use our browser plug-ins. None. You can read our privacy policy here.

Because bringing more information to people about the news sources they encounter online is our only business. Our success depends entirely on being trustworthy and reliable.