The gatekeepers are now gnashing their teeth.
In a report published by Axios on Tuesday, the outlet bemoaned the fact that news websites that the corporate, establishment media deems “unreliable” increased their engagement on social media by nine percent in 2020 compared to 2019.
The analysis, conducted by NewsGuard using data from social intelligence company NewsWhip, found that social-media platforms’ filters didn’t stop headlines from “fringe-right” sources from gaining traction.
In 2019, sources that NewsGuard considers “unreliable” accounted for eight percent of engagement among the top 100 news sources on social media. In 2020, this number increased to 17 percent — nearly one-fifth.
NewsGuard noted that its top “unreliable” site, The Daily Wire, experienced 2.5 times as many interactions in 2020 as in 2019. And Bongino.com, the website of former Secret Service agent and popular conservative social-media personality Dan Bongino, increased engagement by more than 1,700 percent this year.
NewsGuard uses “trained journalists” to rate thousands of news and information sites based on criteria such as whether a given website reveals its sources of funding or regularly publishes content that fact-checkers determine is “false.”
Sara Fischer of Axios noted that engagement from the top American news sources on social media doubled in the first 11 months of 2020 compared to the comparable period in 2019, driven, in part, by the high-impact nature of the news cycle this year, which included not only a presidential election, but COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter riots.
“That’s not surprising given the major events swallowing the news cycle this year, including the election, COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter protests,” Fischer wrote. “But the report, which was created using data from social intelligence company NewsWhip, shows that low-quality news sources tend to flourish amid lots of breaking news cycles, where a lack of certainty can be exploited.”
Axios also pointed to a NewsGuard study that said the “vast majority” of Facebook groups that were “super-spreaders” of election-related misinformation were associated with right-wing movements. This included Facebook pages for The Gateway Pundit, Viral Patriot, and MAGA Revolution.
The study read:
The myths identified by NewsGuard include false claims of mail-in ballots getting thrown away, narratives that dead people’s cast ballots count as votes, and false claims about poll watchers. The claims about poll watchers cut both ways, with players on both the right and the left pushing their own, self-serving myths, NewsGuard found.
NewsGuard’s analysis also found that election-related myths often seize on routine and solvable voting errors as examples of malpractice or deception, sowing distrust in the electoral process. Others seem based on either an unintentional or willful misunderstanding of rules and practices.
… Despite Facebook’s announced efforts to stop the spread of this type of misinformation, these pages continue to be allowed to publish blatant misinformation about voting and the electoral process — seemingly in violation of the platform’s content policies. New false stories emerge daily, with inaccurate and deceptive interpretations of events that are perfectly normal.
The question remains: Who fact-checks the fact checkers?
As The New American has previously reported, Facebook’s fact-checking partner, Lead Stories, has many Democrat donors and former CNN employees among its top brass. In fact, a whopping 50 percent of Lead Stories’ staff have been affiliated with CNN. Together, they total more than 100 years of experience with Cable News Network, making for a strong left-wing bias.
The establishment is clearly worried that, despite their best efforts to suppress alternative media and the inconvenient truths such outlets report, the American people are still getting access to the prohibited content.
If anything, the dramatic growth in engagement with “unreliable” news websites in the face of major Big Tech crackdowns shows that the public is increasingly deciding that corporate outlets are the unreliable ones and that the truth must be sought elsewhere.
Fox News is discovering this first-hand. Since the station aided in the election steal by prematurely calling Arizona for Joe Biden, its ratings have plummeted to the point where Newsmax recently scored a ratings win over Fox News Channel for the first time in history.
Moreover, thanks to the growth of alternative social-media platforms such as Parler, MeWe, and Rumble, and BitChute for video, Big Tech’s gatekeeping abilities are being reduced, meaning readership at non-establishment sites is likely to continue growing even if Facebook and company ramp up censorship.
