Federal funding of conservative media blacklist harms Americans
Henry Brechter
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An effort to defund “risky” news websites is misleading Americans about what qualifies as disinformation and which news sources are worthy of their trust.
The Global Disinformation Index (GDI) recently published its 2022 “Disinformation Risk Assessment” on U.S. news media sources. The U.K.-based company’s rankings of the 10 “riskiest” and 10 “lowest risk” sources are heavily biased in favor of mainstream, liberal-leaning news outlets.
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If done right, this list could be immensely powerful. Companies, platforms, and consumers could avoid ill-intentioned actors. The information ecosystem might gain a new sense of quality.
But GDI’s assessment has the opposite effect. It brands some sources as “risky” while ignoring issues with others, and conflates media bias with disinformation. This discourages readers from getting diverse perspectives and actually increases their risk of being misled.
And to make matters worse, U.S. taxpayers have helped fund GDI’s faulty methods.
GDI says the “lowest risk” sources include NPR, the New York Times, and the Associated Press. It ranks websites like conservative Newsmax, libertarian Reason, and aggregator RealClearPolitics as part of the “riskiest” group.
Many sources publish false information at some point. The “low risk” ones are no exception. NPR once dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story as “pure distraction.” The New York Times once falsely reported that Trump supporters killed a police offer at the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
AllSides, which uses multipartisan methods to rate media bias, rates 9 of the 10 “lowest risk” sources as having a left-wing bias. It rates 9 of the 10 “riskiest” sources as having a right-wing bias.
Why the discrepancy? Blame GDI’s convoluted definition of disinformation.
Common dictionaries define disinformation as “false information intended to mislead.” GDI goes much further: “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 or institutions.”
Most of that sounds like “media bias.” When sources advance “ideologically motivated adversarial narratives,” that’s bias — not “disinformation.”
Bias is more consistent. Sources display bias over time across scores of articles and topics. Disinformation, meanwhile, can vary from article to article and topic to topic. Ninety-nine percent of a news source’s content might be factual, but what about that other 1%?
Crucially, GDI doesn’t mention the political biases of its reviewers. This means readers have no clue whether its system is balanced or if it supports a partisan agenda.
Plus, who decides which views aim to “foster conflict?” Who deems some beliefs sincerely held versus “intentionally misleading?”
GDI’s rankings and methodology are skewed enough. The fact that the U.S. State Department has given the group hundreds of thousands of dollars is even more concerning.
The Washington Examiner and others have highlighted recent six-figure grants from two different wings of the State Department to GDI. Those agencies are listed on GDI’s funders page alongside George Soros’s Open Society Foundations.
GDI also offers a “Dynamic Exclusion List” of the “worst offending websites” that are at “high risk for disinformation.” The list seeks to help companies “defund and downrank these worst offenders, thus disrupting the ad-funded disinformation business model.”
U.S. news consumers shouldn’t stop reading some sources just because one online group says they’re “risky” — especially if that group isn’t transparent about the political leanings of its review team.
Those same consumers already don’t trust the media. Many go a step further and say the media is actively working against them. In a recent Knight Foundation poll, 50% of respondents said most national news organizations “intend to mislead, misinform, or persuade the public.”
The last thing the U.S. government should be funding is a partisan effort that makes this crisis worse. Instead, the solution lies in media transparency and accountability.
To do their jobs effectively, media watchdogs need to be transparent about their methods and possible political biases. And Americans need to take more accountability in their news consumption, read broadly across the political spectrum, and decide for themselves. They shouldn’t buy into questionable “disinformation” and “credibility” rankings that would limit their worldview.
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Henry A. Brechter is the Managing Editor of AllSides, a media solutions company that exposes people to information from all sides of the political spectrum. Email him: [email protected]