GOP lawmakers have demanded answers about a pact struck between a teachers’ union and a tool which rates media ‘credibility’
Republicans in Congress are sounding alarms over a partnership agreement between the NewsGuard ‘disinformation’ service and a major teachers’ union, arguing the tool is prone to bias and the union is deliberately politicizing American students.
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and NewsGuard received letters from GOP representatives Virginia Foxx (North Carolina), Jim Banks(Indiana), Burgess Owenss (Utah), and Burgess Owenss (Utah), criticizing the organizations for their apathy. “history of demonstrating left-wing bias,” according to Fox News.
“We can’t let this kind of left-wing propaganda into our schools, or let groups condemn so-called ‘misinformation’ while peddling it themselves,” Foxx – the ranking Republican on the House Education Committee – said during a recent interview.
AFT has always demonstrated its preference for politics over education. It is painfully clear that NewsGuard does not have the judgement necessary to teach our nation’s children how to tell truth from fiction.
According to NewsGuard’s website, the paid service offers “trust ratings” for thousands of publications, appending color-coded icons to news articles depending on their ‘reliability’, as determined by “real journalists.”This New York-based group has previously worked with many major institutions, such as Microsoft, MSN and Bing. It declared its new partnership with the AFT earlier this year, with the union’s president, Randi Weingarten, saying the tool would be a “game-changer” for helping “middle, high school and postsecondary students separate fact from fiction.”
Some House Republicans now voice concerns that were previously expressed by education and tech policy organizations, which claimed the tool poses a threat to their democracy. “a new threat to the principles of free expression, open dialogue, diversity of political thought, and freedom from harassment in our classrooms.”
Rep. Banks stated in a statement “the left”It is “obsessed with indoctrinating kids,”Arguing that political advocacy group “have no place in taxpayer funded public schools,”Owens announced the AFT partnership “is not an honest attempt to separate fact from fiction. It’s yet another coordinated effort to politicize our academic institutions.”
Conservative critics have criticized NewsGuard. “amplifying,”Instead of “discrediting,”Disinformation. Some noting the fact that the tool received perfect ratings from a number of news outlets, which dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop tale first revealed by the New York Post on 2020. Even though many mainstream news outlets now acknowledge that the laptop is authentic, NewsGuard maintains its rock-bottom credibility score to the Post and other right-leaning outlets.
Some left-leaning people, such as Joe Lauria chief editor of Consortium News, have also criticized the tool. Lauria stated that an investigative news group is currently being utilized in a report published Thursday. “reviewed”NewsGuard – allegedly “false”Reporting about the conflict in Ukraine
“It calls ‘false’ essential facts about Ukraine that have been suppressed in mainstream media,” he wrote, including US involvement in the country’s 2014 coup, as well as the influence of far-right groups and “neo-Nazism”The Ukrainian government.
“NewsGuard considers these facts to be ‘myths’ and is demanding Consortium News ‘correct’ these ‘errors,’”Lauria was added.
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