Ric Grenell to Newsmax: NewsGuard Demonetizing Govt 'Dissent'

Former Amb. Ric Grenell called out NewsGuard's taking government contracts to potentially demonetize conservative speech and Biden administration dissent.

"Look, I see what's happening with NewsGuard: They're trying to be the referees, and instead of really calling out misinformation, which I think the State Department could do, they're calling out dissenting information," Grenell told Newsmax's "The Count." "They're trying to figure out who is against the narrative that the political types in Washington, D.C., want to push.

"This is how regimes control the narrative. This is how they control the media. And what's happening right now with NewsGuard is that they are absolutely a far-left organization taking taxpayer dollars and finding ways to manipulate the rating system and control Big Tech and all of the other tools of the media.

"And they're trying to push out conservative media. They're calling conservative media, you know, disinformation machines. We all know that that's not true. It's just dissenting information."

Grenell was commenting on NewsGuard remarks from Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., with independent Twitter Files journalist Michael Shellenberger during a House weaponization committee hearing this week.

"What you're describing now, it's literally the directing of revenue to certain media companies over other media companies designed and implemented with the U.S. government funding and support," Gaetz said during a hearing.

NewsGuard is a for-profit company founded in 2018 by Steve Brill, a media entrepreneur who has also been a long-time and prolific Democratic Party supporter, including having made donations to former Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

The Media Research Center has examined NewsGuard's "ratings" system and found the service continually favors left-wing and liberal news outlets as "trusted" and negatively rates conservative ones as not reliable.

NewsGuard negatively rates leading conservative outlets like The Washington Times, Newsmax, Breitbart, Federalist, Epoch Times, Red State, Prager U, Daily Wire, and others.

Unfortunately, Grenell noted, one-party rule in Washington, D.C., has allowed biased, liberal media protecting Democrats, allowing them to get away with censorship and throttling of conservative speech and media.

"We have seen the weaponization of the Democratic Party when they control government — whether it's the IRS, whether it's DOJ, whether it's the FBI," Grenell told host Lidia Curanaj. "We all see government kind of coming at the conservatives — coming at us. They would not be able to do that if we had a free and fair media.

"In the old days, if government got out of hand, there would be a news report in The New York Times or The Washington Post or AP, and that doesn't exist anymore. Now we have cheerleaders at those news organizations that literally protect the Democrats."

The media control is rapidly expanding to justice and law enforcement, too, particularly as it pertains to attacking its chief political rival in former President Donald Trump, Grenell continued.

"The reason why Joe Biden and his DOJ and the FBI are getting even crazier with going after President Trump constantly, coming at conservatives, canceling conservatives — the reason they're allowed to do this is that no one in Washington, D.C., is stopping them," Grenell said.

"So they go to their little cocktail parties with all these reporters, and they're all yucking it up together, and it's getting worse."

The bias in the media might even warrant some oversight, according to Grenell.

"I think there needs to be a whole investigation into all of these entities that pretend to be unbiased, when they're actually working for one party or the other," he said. "I don't think that you get to be a journalist, for instance, and pretend like you're unbiased journalist and claim to be this guardian of the system, and you're really a partisan, and you're playing one side."

Ultimately, the answer will be to vote out the uniparty to bring balance back to Washington, D.C., Grenell concluded.

"One thing that people can do if you're watching this show: You absolutely have to stop voting for Democrats — that's my opinion," he said. "You cannot give them any more power. They already control corporations. They control the media. They control Big tech. They control Big Pharma. It's out of hand.

"Washington, D.C., is exploding, and the rest of our communities are not."

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