NewsGuard, the establishment “news rating” project that claims to fight untrustworthy media outlets, continues to give its seal of approval to establishment media outlets, including the New York Times, that spread the hoax story that mounted border patrol agents used whips against Haitian migrants.
Both the New York Times and Axios have corrected the bogus “whipping” claim, but it continues to be repeated by establishment media outlets including Reuters, Business Insider, and Yahoo News.
We deleted a previous tweet that referred to Border Patrol agents as whipping at Haitian migrants.
The story has been updated to include comments from some journalists on the border who did not see whipping occur.
— Axios (@axios) September 26, 2021
“We’re keeping a close eye on this story, as we typically do whenever there’s a disputed story that is covered widely by news sources, to see how different sources apply their practices for correcting or clarifying errors, or fail to do so,” said a NewsGuard representative.
“If a site publishes a demonstrably false claim and fails to correct it, and especially if that failure is part of a larger pattern of failing to correct errors, that absolutely would impact their rating from NewsGuard.”
The representative said that NewsGuard continues to “assess exactly what claim the publication[s] made, whether it is demonstrably false, and whether it was clarified in a transparent manner, and if not, whether the failure to do so is part of any larger pattern.”
NewsGuard maintains a list of news outlets it considers “trustworthy” and “untrustworthy,” data which it uses in a browser extension that users can add on to various mainstream browsers, including Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.
When the extension is installed, it displays red warning labels alongside links to websites NewsGuard considers untrustworthy, and green labels next to links to websites it considers trustworthy.
In 2019, NewsGuard partnered with Microsoft in a deal that made it a default extension on Edge Mobile browsers.
Currently, the green stamp of NewsGuard’s approval continues to be displayed next to links that continue to falsely allege that border patrol agents were “whipping” the migrants.
Meanwhile, publications that fact-checked the error, such as Breitbart News, get NewsGuard’s red warning label, with readers warned about “false and misleading claims.” Other publications that reported the hoax as a hoax, such as the Epoch Times and TownHall.com, receive similar treatment from NewsGuard.
Earlier this month, Breitbart News reported that NewsGuard had yet to take any action against Rolline Stone for spreading the unverified claim that Oklahoma hospitals were filling up due to Ivermectin overdoses.
At the time, NewsGuard said it was assessing Rolling Stone’s status. Three weeks later, the left-wing magazine continues to receive NewsGuard’s green stamp of approval.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.
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